With the help of Traci, I bled the brakes on the Taurus today (in the rain), and replaced a good deal of the brake fluid with Valvoline SynPower synthetic fluid. When I replaced the brake pads a couple weeks ago, I opened the bleeder valve on one side to let some fluid out while I compressed the piston. It apparently didn’t do any good because fluid leaked out of the reservior anyway, but I also must have let some air into the system when I did it. Even though the grinding was gone with the new pads, the pedal wasn’t as responsive, and sometimes would go all the way to the floor when braking hard. Now that the system is bled, everything seems to be just fine.

We’re going to Grand Junction sometime next week, just for the hell of it, and I wanted to car to be in good shape. I’ve still got to check all the fluids, but the hard part is over. I’m glad that I won’t have to disarm like I did during my trip to Vegas earlier this year. Anyhow, we’ll probably just do some xmas shopping and geocaching–I’ve got a few travel bugs that I got from another cacher that’ve been in Utah for too long, and only one of them’s been to Colorado, so it’ll be good to put some mileage on them.

P.S. Mike, I thought you’d like this [375K JPEG]. Save it to your hard drive, ’cause I’ll probably delete it after you get it.