It should be no secret to the readers of this site that I love the Smart Fortwo. I have each generation of Fortwo that sold in America, and even one that was never officially sold here. My affinity for the tiny German car was tested yesterday when my second-cheapest and objectively worst Smart tried to bite me. This car, which I paid only $1,200 for, blew its wheel cylinder, something that, until now, I have never experienced before. Here’s what that was like.
If you live a life of collecting crapboxes like I do, you’re bound to experience some truly stupid issues that normal people basically never have to worry about. Until recent times, I have almost always purchased cars at the very bottoms of their depreciation curves, when they’ve accumulated enough miles to have reached the moon. These cars are often riddled with issues like bad paint, rust, non-functional air-conditioners, or leaks large enough to make the Exxon Valdez blush. I used to lord over a hoard of absolute beaters. I’m talking cars where “runs and drives” are their sole positive attributes.
Thanks to the Autopian, I now have the ability to buy nicer cars and not feel so bad about it. I have since scored such finds as my pristine 27,000-mile 2009 Smart Fortwo, my beautiful 1997 Honda Life, and an almost minty 1998 MGF roadster. I then purged myself of the worst of the worst, like my crashed Volkswagen Touareg VR6, my rustbucket Volkswagen Passat TDI, and my bargain basement Volkswagen Phaeton. Yet, I have still held on to at least one car from my janky past, and it was my 2008 Smart Fortwo. Well, that was until it tried to burn me.
I bought this Smart Fortwo back in the fall of 2020 for a strategic reason. Until that point, I had been using my 2012 Smart Fortwo as an off-road car. My little car was so good at punching above its weight off-road that, at the Gambler 500 Tennessee 2019, I won an award for doing the most with the least.
However, my 2012 Smart was originally my baby. I bought it new in 2012, and while the car was an absolute beast at doing what it wasn’t built to handle, I felt guilty for ruining my teenage dream car. That’s when I cooked up a plan. What if I bought a Smart that was already well past its prime? I’d just buy a Smart that already had a lot of problems, and, in theory, I wouldn’t feel bad about beating it up some more.
My Worst Car
That opportunity came in fall 2020 when a fellow near Road America in Wisconsin put his Smart up for sale. Sure, the car had 100,000 miles, the decals of a defunct business stuck on it, and a laundry list of to-do items. It already had a somewhat mismatched body due to taking on the brunt of hitting a deer. But it was listed for the princely sum of just $1,200 (or was it $1,400? I don’t remember). I pounced on it as soon as I could.
Sure enough, this car was a pile of crap. Documentation I got with the car indicated that the control arm bushings were on their way out, the strut springs had snapped off their upper inch, and the ABS tone rings also left the chat years before. Perhaps even weirder than all of those issues was the big rust spot on the inside of the car, which I had never seen in a Smart before or since. But this was perfect! I didn’t want a good Smart to beat up, after all.
I then took the car on the Gambler 500 as planned, and the car got absolutely trashed. Somehow, I did not consider that my 2012 Smart had a 1.5-inch tire lift and a healthy suspension. This car was at least 2.5 inches closer to the ground thanks to the bad springs and stock tires. Add in a Sheryl, who was my passenger, and I wouldn’t be surprised if I had lost 3.5 inches of ride height compared to the 2012. I didn’t realize that until I attempted to drive the car up the same small waterfall that my 2012 had aced the year before, and heard the loud crunch of the vehicle’s front bumper breaking after it failed to clear rocks. Oops.
I’d spend the rest of the weekend hearing all sorts of crunches and cracks, but the car survived. I even got the chance to drive the car through the famous Nemo Tunnel before it closed.
I was surprised to learn that, unexpectedly, I was actually quite sad about beating this car up. Sure, it was crap when I bought it, but it didn’t deserve to get brutally beaten. So, I just started driving the car as my daily. This car witnessed some of the earliest moments of my car journalism career. I drove it to my first-ever press event, the spring 2021 launch of the 2022 Volkswagen Taos. I used this car to pick up David from the train station before he embarked on his journey to buy a Jeep FC and get “twrenchfoot.” I drove this car when I went to the old Packard plant in Michigan for the first time. Weirdly, I created a lot of memories in this absolute pile of junk.
But it was a steaming pile, one that very quickly developed a paint peeling problem, bad wheel bearings, and a transmission that didn’t know if it wanted to shift. So, once I started buying better cars in 2021, I parked the car in outdoor storage. I occasionally started the car’s engine, but otherwise didn’t do anything with it. I thought that, maybe, one day I’d install a lift kit and turn it into a little mud buggy. But that time would never come, and the car just sat.
Back in late 2024, I finally gave the car a purpose again after I sold off all of my terrible Volkswagens. I gave the car a much-needed bath, fluid changes, and a few repairs. I thought I’d use this car as my own Autopian Test Car. I wanted to make a yoke for this stupid car and try out some experiments. But, admittedly, time got in my way. Still, I drove the car as my daily, anyway. Besides, it was an impressive junker, with a working air-conditioner and in okay enough shape to at least drive a road trip. Here it is at the second annual Opposite-Lock OppoX earlier this year!
What Was That Sound?
Fast-forward to last week, and I find myself driving to my mini warehouse to take pictures of my moldy Saturn Sky Red Line for that piece. I take my pictures and start heading home, stopping at a gas station near my apartment. After I topped up the tank, I hopped in and attempted to set out. That’s when I heard a loud pop from behind my ears.
It didn’t take long to figure out the cause, as I saw some slow drips coming from the left rear wheel. A little poking around suggested that what popped was the wheel cylinder.
Yes, I had such a bad week last week that I discovered mold on my Saturn and then had this brake problem on the same day.
If you’re curious about how drum brakes work, check out this video from Bendix:
But what you need to know here is that the wheel cylinder uses pressure from the brake fluid to push two pistons outward. These pistons then move the brake shoes out, which causes the shoes to rub on the inside of the drum. The seals of the wheel cylinder can fail, causing a leak.
Now, one of the symptoms of a failing wheel cylinder is a mushy brake pedal. Weirdly, my braking action was fine until I heard the loud bang from that wheel.
The brakes still worked, but they had a slow leak. Thankfully, the gas station where the wheel cylinder decided to break was near my apartment, and I crawled the car back to its parking space without needing to punch the brakes. Still, the car leaked an impressive amount of fluid in that time.
I fully tested the braking system when I got home, and it was enlightening. After about 20 pumps or so, the leak increased from a slow drip to a darn near torrent.
The pedal travel was inconsistent, with pressure in the brake pedal varying with every press. Most of the time, the brakes didn’t do anything until the pedal got nearly to the floor. Yet, the brakes activated through enough pumps that I lost count. I did not do a driving test on the bad brakes, but I suspect that the car would have pulled slightly since the left rear brake was no longer participating as much, if at all. I tried to remove the drum, but found myself unable to get the hardware off due to rust.
I have never driven a car with a leaking wheel cylinder before. The only other time I’ve had a big braking issue was when my 1991 Ford Festiva Go-Kart blew a brake line at a private off-road park. The loss of braking was practically immediate. Here, at least during my home tests, the car tried clinging to the brakes.
Learning how this failure mode works was neat, but also the final straw for me and this car. I was sort of never happy with the fact that the car’s paint was in such bad shape that removing the business decals also removed the paint. I hated the giant rust spot, and Smart body panels are hard to come by nowadays. So, the car was sort of just perpetually broken. I realized that it would cost me about the same to fix everything wrong with the car as it would cost me to just buy one that isn’t a stinking pile.
Another Life
So, I finally made the call to say goodbye to my worst car. I listed it for sale for $500, and I had it sold in about two hours. I made sure to make the car sound extremely awful in my listing, and yet, people were all over it.
As it turns out, there are a lot of Chicago-area Smart owners who just desperately need body parts, even if they’re crappy. The guy who bought my car said that he wrecked the front of his Smart, and has found it impossible to find blue replacement panels. He wasn’t interested in buying a decent Smart just to take its panels. So, my Smart will give its front end to his Smart. It sounds like he’ll then sell what parts are in decent shape. The engine and transmission are great, and there are lots of smaller bits that are good like the door panels, window regulators, and so on.
I love this result. I think my car was beyond economic repair, because, again, working Smarts are cheap. However, this car will now get to live on in who knows how many other Smarts. It also means that I lost only $700 to $900 or so after beating the ever living crap out of this car for years. But really, I’m just stoked to hear that my car will help others stay on the road.
Anyway, if you’re driving and your brake pedal’s behavior suddenly changes, or you hear a loud bang coming from your wheels, don’t just ignore it. Your car is telling you something is wrong. Don’t fly down a highway and learn at the last second that your brakes no longer work.
The good news is that wheel cylinders are cheap and can be replaced by the backyard wrencher. But if you live in the Rust Belt like I do, don’t be surprised if you have to fight ornery iron oxide every step of the way. In the worst case, there’s no shame in hiring a professional.
As for me, that means I’m now down to five Smarts, which is admittedly very silly. I’m not in a rush to replace this car. I think, for now, I’ll just enjoy a crap car exiting my collection and no longer having to worry about it.
Top graphic image: Mercedes Streeter
I had this happen once on my Triumph. The cause was simple, the shoes were near end of life and the adjustment mechanism had not compensated.
Unfortunately this meant the shoes were wedged firmly in the drum and I only noticed when I found smoke pouring from the wheel and saw the drum was glowing red. Thankfully I was only a block from home when that happened so I let the car cool off then drove it home very slowly.
I have a vauge memory that the drum was very difficult to remove. I probably suppressed that trauma but once off I recall being happy to find the hardware had not been wrecked. I replaced the cylinder seals, put new shoes on and fixed the adjuster. After that the brakes worked fine.
I recently had a similar adventure with my Marea. To start, a rear brake shoe delaminated, which resulted in one of the worst noises I’ve ever heard as I pulled out of my driveway. I suspect the battle to get her back up the driveway and free up the e-brake lead to a cylinder giving up the ghost. Because I decided to do Fiat on Hard Mode, I had to get parts from Latvia and Lithuania, which took about a month. Totally survivable as a repair though.
It wouldn’t pull to one side you would just have severely reduced brake performance. Modern cars have them split into two circuits in either an H (front/rear) or X pattern (diagonal). I assume your car is diagonal, so when you press the brake, that circuit would not have any pressure on the LR or FR brakes
Even if it wasn’t diagonal, it wouldn’t pull left/right. Since the rear-left line was open, the entire rear circuit could not build pressure, so the rear-right wouldn’t brake either.
See H4llelujah’s post below about clamping the broken line to restore pressure to the rear circuit. (Although that hack might cause a slight pull right; but less because it would be the rear that’s imbalanced.)
Yes I know, I’m a brake engineer. Was trying to spell it out simply
That’s cool. I’d like to learn more!
I should have started with the same caveat I put in a comment below:
“I get the impression you already know this, but just to clarify for others; anyone who doesn’t already know…”
it’s pretty fun, I tune ABS systems
Rust belt pro tip: in a pinch, snip off the line with a pair of side cuts, run a screw or nail into the line, and then take a pair of vice grips and put a good kink in the line ahead of it.
Not safe at all, but you’ll have your brakes back enough to limp home!
As I was reading I figured this was going to be the solution to get home. Another alternative is to just take a rock and smash the line flat and hope for the best then drive with a hand on the emergency brake, been there done that.
Hahahaha YES! The amount of times a freaking rock has managed to help me get home is ridiculous.
Obligatory:
https://www.jalopnik.com/i-fixed-my-yugo-with-two-hose-clamps-and-a-rock-1848131984/
I get the impression you already know this, but just to clarify for others; anyone who doesn’t already know:
No matter what, the car would still have the remaining front brakes (separate hydraulic circuit), but clamping the broken line does stop fluid leaking, and gives the car pressure back into the rear circuit, so that the other side rear will work again.
Also, a car will not drain all break fluid. Any master brake cylinder newer than… (late
’60s?) has a divider in it for separate front/back brake circuits. One circuit may drain and empty, but the other will continue to work just fine. Safety!
(some cars divide diagonally, not front/back, but the point stands.)
That’s actually a super good point, that I never even thought of. I mean arguably that knowledge is better than what I even commented!
Oh, yeah, a tell-tale sign of a leak in a wheel cylinder, the streaks of brake fluid on a wheel radiating outward due to centrifugal forces (never mind https://xkcd.com/123/)
Got in the habit of glancing at the rear wheels of my vehicles that have/had rear drum brakes (and *all* the wheels on my baywindow VW bus which is still rocking all its four drum brakes) every time I drive them because quite a few times the seals had gone bad on wheel cylinders…
Shortly after acquiring my 1985 VW Jetta 1.6D about a decade ago one morning I came out to find a small pool of brake fluid around the rear left wheel and since there were no streaks on the wheel I guessed that the previous night’s precipitious drop in temperature to a few degrees below zero Fahrenheit (an uncommon phenomenon where I live) had resulted in the water contaminating the brake fluid might have frozen and compromised the wheel cylinder. That’s what I get for putting off changing fluids, including brake fluid, lol. I replaced the affected wheel cylinder and, yeah, as soon as it was warm I flushed the entire brake system; the old brake fluid was almost completely black, good grief.
(During the same cold spell, which was what they called a polar vortex, one day the Jetta refused to start and I figured out that the water inside the water separator under the Jetta next to the right rear wheel had actually frozen; I opened the drain valve completely and absolutely nothing came out until I used a hair dryer to warm the separator tank whereupon all the water came pouring out. After that the Jetta started up and ran just fine and I got in the habit of periodically draining the water from the water separator as well as the fuel filter which had a drain valve on its bottom as is typical for diesels.)
You need to drive a first gen Honda Insight and then you’ll realize how silly Smart Cars are in the first place 😛
I’m not going to lie, the first place I went to after selling the car was to Marketplace to find an Insight. Manual, of course! It’s a shame that the citrus ones seem to be nearly unobtanium in my area.
The Citrus Metallic Insights rebounded off the bottom of their depreciation curve over a decade ago, I’m afraid. Same with with the manuals.
I have an extra one for sale. Project car. Transmission is out of the car, but comes with an extra engine (bad) with transmission (good). I’d let it go cheap. Lmk!
Pinch off the rear circuit with vice grips and you can still drive it around… and do brake stands. Win win
We owned an 2007 Sf2. Bought it with about 60k miles and never had any issues in the year we owned it. Fun car that always got looks. Especially from the “men” driving the F350 dually’s here in Texas!
Maybe you can get someone to import one of the new Smarts for you to bolster that fleet up!
For $500 would it not be better to keep it as a parts car instead? You seem to have lots of storage space too.
I actually stopped leasing some storage space as a way to prevent me from collecting more cars. So, I technically have no space for a broken parts car. That said, I did rob a few parts from it before sending it away.
The load sensing proportioning valve catastrophically failed on my Tundra and it lost ALL brakes. Pushing the pedal activates a remote brake-fluid squirt gun under the bed; there’s not enough pressure for the front brakes to do anything. Quite scary.
Luckily we were in a parking lot (with a trailer!) when that happened.
I literally had that EXACT same thing happen in my ’01 Tundra two hours into a six our trip this summer. I nursed it home (manual transmission FTW). Luckily, plans for that trip included removing the bed and replacing a bunch of other stuff, so we were able to get right at the proportioning valve and fix it.
The less said about the passenger LBJ breaking in a gas station parking lot five minutes into the return trip, the better.
I know, I know, as a Tundra owner it’s my own damn fault for NOT putting LBJ replacements at the TOP of my list of things to do, life (and six other crapcans) got in the way. I was lucky.
uh oh. This is a thing? I’ll give a look while I am fixing the LSPV…once the C4’s out of my shop.
unrelated note – when I started work in the South Bay of LA a couple folks invited me to LBJ for lunch. I had no idea what I was in for but went along. El Burrito Junior was delicious.
It depends on your generation, but if it is a first gen then yes, it is a really big deal and you have to use OEM.
I was fortunate that it broke while still in my hometown, and I was able to get towed back to my parents house, with my dad’s full shop. Since that time, we’re totally rebuilding the front end (shocks, upper- and lower- control arms, tie rods, bushings, etc). We’re also going to fix the rear axle (stupid integral rear cover), a broke spring and a bunch of other things. I’ve been slowly rebuilding this truck from the ground up – eventually the only things that will be left is about 70% of the cab and the drivetrain.
Mine’s an 05, but I bought it from a dude that used it solely for hauling his camper across country. I think I am at 180k miles or so now. I’ll give it a look and hope it is OK. There’s enough frame scaling to clean and paint without adding in LBJs.
https://www.tundratalk.net/threads/2006-tundra-lower-ball-joint-failure.561146/
Don’t make the same mistake I did, it could be really bad. At least I was only going ~1mph
If you ask me, you more than got your money’s worth in joy and experiences. You didn’t lose a thing.
Brakes have split hydraulic circuits so that a leak in one won’t result in the complete loss of the brakes. So you should not be able to pump ALL the fluid overboard. Modernish cars anyway (mid-60s and up)- older ones, well…
The scariest brake failure I ever had was the plastic vacuum supply nipple for the brake booster snapping off on a -10F day in FAR upstate NY in my ’92 Peugeot 505 SW8. This resulted in a complete lack of brake assist of course, and I went sailing out of a parking lot and into a street, thankfully with no traffic coming. The brake pedal might as well have been a block of wood for all the effect it had, even with my substantial self pushing on it as hard as I could. Also thankfully, 505 wagons had ENORMOUS rear drum brakes with an almighty handbrake lever, so I was able to stop from low speeds effectively with the handbrake alone. This was in my days of installing hardware store POS systems, and the guys at the store helped me jury-rig a repair with a length of brass tube inside the broken nipple and epoxy that got me home to Maine. It was probably stronger than the factory nipple when we were done.
Thankfully it happened exiting a parking lot and not at 70mph on the highway!
In my experience on a split circuit system, a major leak means it won’t lose all of the fluid, but enough of it to still render the vehicle completely unsafe to drive. The only distance I drove my ’98 Chevy C1500 with a blown main rear line was from its parking spot across the street into my garage. It was surprisingly scary.
I agree. Lost a rear line on my car (rust belt) and it was sketchy getting my son home from the dentist. Lots of downshifting and e-brake use. I guess so much fluid left the system that the opposite corners weren’t really effective either.
Sure – the brakes won’t be great (and I don’t disagree that you shouldn’t drive the car in that state). But they will still work, unlike a single circuit system where if you have a leak your brakes are GONE. At least with a properly designed system – I have no idea if crappy old GM junk is properly designed or not. Certainly it’s not up to the standards of something like a dual-diagonal Volvo 240 setup.
I’m really surprised you didn’t keep it as a parts car. It could come in handy down the road
(see article on molding cars)
if it’s a parts car and parked in a warehouse, leave the windows down. Maybe sell the seats first. The mold is usually because the windows are up and trap in the moisture
Living in an apartment means that whatever I park here has to be functional. So parts cars aren’t really applicable. That said, I did rob the car of a few parts that I think I might need in the future.
I get that. I’ve had a few parts cars where I sold the parts I didn’t think I’d need and keep the good parts that I might need down the road, then sell the shell later.
I think this was taken verbatim from the preamble of David Tracy’s marriage vows.
I picture both David and Mercedes’ wives as being absolute saints to put up with their automotive insanity. *I* have my moments when it comes to cars, but these two crank it up to *22*.
My potential someday husband (not holding my breath) had best also be a gearhead.
With this lug nut I thee wed . . .
LOL – I am thinking o-ring wedding bands. Which also satisfies my innate extreme cheapskatedness when it comes to jewelry. I don’t get paying for shiny pebbles, AT ALL.
The older I get the more I realize I will never understand why people spend money on the stuff they spend money on.
Same. I am Yankee to the core in many ways.
And to be fair, I’m sure some of my expenditures make no sense to other people.
Truth. Some might wonder why I, a single person, own five cars.
One for each week day?
You need two more.
Enabling at its best.
There was a time I had seven cars. Honestly, I don’t even want five anymore, but split between two homes it’s manageable. If I sell my place in Maine I will sell two of them, the Mercedes and the Land Rover. May sell the Rover anyway, I really have no reason to have it anymore other than inertia.
I proposed to my wife with 3D-printed quick-connect leak test fitting lock that we make and use at work. They’re ring-sized and have the vague outline of a comically large diamond on top.
She does have a wedding band, but no stupid sparkly stones.
If you can find them in the right size modified air brake line compression sleeves may do the trick too:
https://hi-line.com/1-4-tube-o-d-d-o-t-air-brake-compression-sleeve/
“I don’t get paying for shiny pebbles, AT ALL.”
They can be quite nice. They can also be quite cheap when made in a lab instead of dug out of dirt. Gem quality synthetic sapphire and rubies cost less than $1/carat and are as “real” as anything that came out of the ground despite what some financially motivated salespeople might say.
I don’t see the point of them for “free”, as glittery decoration.
Diamonds are just something that makes better cutting implements, as far as I am concerned.
I totally get what you’re saying. As the character Michael in The Good Place pointed out diamond is just carbon atoms arranged in the most boring way possible. They’re “space garbage” and “meteorite poop”.
Just Veblem goods for the stupid really. Clear diamonds aren’t even pretty, just sparkly. If I had to have gemstones, at least make them them the pretty colored ones.
Sure. As I said gem quality rubies and sapphires can be bought for a buck or less per carat in any shade or color you want. So if you ever find yourself in the mood for pretty pebbles synthetics are a solid option.
But is the feeling the same if people weren’t exploited to get them? I feel like that is part of the appeal.
Oh I’m sure the lab workers are exploited plenty. As are the cutters. At < $1/carat how can they not be?
My wife accepted an 86 Vanagon Westy as her engagement ring, bless her. We road tripped it home from SC to MA. She had been married before so what did she need another diamond for? She likes to joke that I’m so cheap, I got a second hand wife 🙂
Sounds like a keeper!
As is Mrs. Torchinsky.
No doubt about that at all. Though at least his insanity doesn’t result in dozens of crapcans scattered around the place. Is that other guy with a zillion cars who writes here married? His name is completely escaping me. Where Torch’s 2CV came from, I think. He may be the most insane one of them all.
The thing I really don’t understand is collecting *junk* that you can’t afford to sort out. I have a BUNCH of cars, but all of them are *nice*. I realized years ago I have neither time nor energy for “projects”. I can about keep up with five nice cars.
I have a lot of nice bikes, project bikes and bike *junk*. In my defense many of the projects were free, fill some niche, and take up very little to no space. The junk might actually be useful someday and also takes up very little space. And present no health hazard.
But as soon as I lose interest it’s off to eBay with the lot of them.
Bikes, assuming you are talking about the pedal variety, are small, light, and require neither registration nor insurance, so the cost of keeping them is negligible. Cars, not-so-much.
Very glad I kept this bit of vintage kit hanging around for 40 years:
https://photos.app.goo.gl/iAyveK2xBUcitCnT7
Need to get my fat ass on it more once the weather cools off some. Was a fun project to get it road-worthy again too.
That is a lovely bi(ke)cycle. You’ve kept it well.
If you find it less comfortable than you did 40 years ago I heartily recommend adding a touring bike and/or an all terrain bike for your stable. I find the more upright posture on those far friendlier to my aging body than sport touring or race bikes. And they’re cheap. I have several fully lugged cromoly 80’s vintage examples, some in near new condition, all purchased within the past few years and none cost me over $120 (before any upgrades, Brooks saddles ain’t cheap!)
As a bonus they have all the mounting points for racks, bottle cages, etc should you decide to use it as a grocery getter as well.
Thanks! She is a lovely old beast. Got the frame in 195 while a junior in high school. Replaced a red Roberts frame I bought used that a buggy had an unfortunate accident on and bent the frame – his parent’s insurance bought me this frame for $800(!). Needed a good going over, tires of course, had to replace the brakes as pads for the original oddball aero Shimano AX brakes are polished unobtanium. Campagnolo is a LOT more affordable today than on a skint high-schooler’s budget back then. New saddle, the original Avocet gel saddle wasn’t gelling anymore. It’s quite the eclectic mix of bits. Modern split saddles seem to work better with aging dangly bits anyway. Mostly a matter of taking her to bits and cleaning, greasing, and adjusting everything. I still had all my bike tools too, thankfully.
I have a 1995-vintage Bianchi Ocelot mountain bike too – which is what I was riding before getting the Roberts back on the road after a long slumber in my garage in Maine. At my age and creeping decrepitude there is no such thing as “comfortable” on a bicycle, LOL. But I need the exercise and I do enjoy it. The Roberts is actually a great tool for the job here in dead flat SW FL – goes like the wind compared to that dump truck of a mountain bike (and the Bianchi itself is a featherweight compared to a modern fat-tire full suspension bike).
Zero chance of my ever transporting anything but myself on a bicycle.
I haven’t tried a Roberts but I imagine its not too far off the ’80s sport tour bikes I own. In my collection though my DD is a 1985 Shogun Prairie Breaker I which is almost identical to (but MUCH cheaper than) a Specialized Stumpjumper of the same era right down to the lugged biplane fork:
https://files.bikeindex.org/uploads/Pu/112788/IMG_6212.JPG
(not mine but nearly identical)
I bought it last year for $80. Unfortunately I didn’t see the rear hub was cracked all the way through. I thought it was just really dirty. Had I known I’m sure I could have talked the seller down a lot more. Oh well. The rest of the bike was fine, especially the frame.
Both hubs were replaced with period correct Sunshine hubs. In doing so I swapped the nasty looking crusty zinc plated spokes with Sapim DBSS spokes (a cheap, somewhat easy upgrade) and replaced the original bearings with cromoly G10 ones. From what I’ve read this is way overkill, standard hubs use G100 and high end ones use G25 so G10 are kind of silly but it turns out G10 bearings don’t cost much more than G100 so why not? Those wheels now roll probably the smoothest of any I own.
I also own a Shogun Alpine GT, their top of the line touring bike. Even kitted out to my preferences I prefer riding the Prairie Breaker. The wide handlebars of the PB are a lot more comfortable than touring drop bars which themselves are a bit more comfortable than regular drop bars.
“that dump truck of a mountain bike”
You might try modifying the Bianchi to be more like a road bike, narrower tires, etc. Tires can make quite a difference. Those early mountain bikes have the advantage of far stronger frames which from what have I read in the bike forums is safer for heavier riders than race frames.
(and the Bianchi itself is a featherweight compared to a modern fat-tire full suspension bike).”
A few years ago I found a full suspension Mongoose parked out in front of a house with a big “FREE!!” sign on it. As you might guess “FREE!!” is my kryptonite. I spoke with the wife of the owner. The bike had been the husband’s Covid toy but he lost interest and the wife wanted it gone ASAP. After I rode it a few times I wanted it gone too. I hated how the suspension made the tires feel flat while also draining my meager power inputs. And the weight! Ugh! I sold it on CL and put that money to getting the lighter fully rigid bikes I actually like.
I did that – it’s got the narrowest road tires that will fit the rims on it. I have no interest in riding in the dirt. I bought it originally because I lived downtown, and it was more suitable for that environment than the delicate Roberts – but I never really rode it until two years ago. Good intentions with no follow-through back then.
Wow – Shogun! That’s a brand I haven’t thought about in decades. My Jr high science teacher, who is the guy who got me into bike racing, owned a shop that sold those and Lotus bikes. But I couldn’t afford a new bike, so I had a succession of used Peugeots (a premonition of my eventual car habits) before I bought the first used Roberts frame and scrounged up the componentry to outfit it. The blue one is actually a rarity – a “production” Chas Roberts Road frame. Most of his output was built to measure, he only made a few as stock frames. Sadly, Chas Roberts passed decades ago, his son took over the business, and when he retired some years ago, closed it down.
It’s a neat frame – hand braised, hand cut lugs, and a mix of Columbus SLX and SPX tubing – which is also quite rare, most of his frames were Reynolds tubing. The angles are actually pretty relaxed for a road racing bike, so it’s pretty comfortable and not at all twitchy. My previous Roberts was a Reynolds 531 frame. That one WAS a built to measure frame, just not for me, LOL. But I was close enough to the size and shape of the original owner. That one was twitchier. And a bit lighter.
Bikes of today just seem weird to me – lots of unnecessary gadgetry that I don’t see the point of. I guess like my taste in cars, I am stuck in the ’80s and ’90s.
“I guess like my taste in cars, I am stuck in the ’80s and ’90s.”
When it comes to bicycles you and me both. My cutoff is about 1987 for dirt, 1991 for road bikes. because that is about when bike manufacturers started moving from fully lugged, slack geometry ATB frames and forks to more aggressive mountain bike geometry, unicrown forks and welded frames. Road bikes followed a few years later. The later bikes are well loved by a lot of folks and I respect that, they’re just not to my current tastes. I like my chain stays as long as I can get them, preferably 18″+ for stability and to avoid heal strikes on my paineers and everything lugged. Lugs and lengthy chain stays are for *reasons* unfashionable except to weirdos like me so those bikes are cheap.
That’s not to day newer bikes don’t have anything to offer. I certainly wouldn’t kick a modern Rivendell or Surly out of my collection. But why get those for $$$$ when I can get an almost as nice 80’s bike for $$?
Cars are a different matter. Given my choice I’d probably lean towards something from 10-20 years ago as a practical daily but I wouldn’t turn up my nose at a nice Mk2 Supra, CRX Si, MX5, MR2, E30, etc as a weekend toy.
The complete lack of surprise when strangers showed up at her door and explained “we’re here for a car” suggests this very strongly.
Didn’t get a good read on the Torchinscat though. I think the cat might be over Torch’s shit.
Cats are masters at hiding emotions.
I was thinking piston rings.
Wedding bracelets.. Dig it!
Wait a minute. Didn’t Thomas have a stupid failure last week?
Is this going to be a new standing franchise on this site?
David has seemed to have many.
Who is next? Jason or Matt?
Adrian has had plenty of punishment in the last couple of months, so please spare him.
And Silvestro has published so many articles since his hiring, I’m not sure he’s had time to try to start a car.
First, this would only effect the rear drums which only do the smaller portion of the braking job on all cars with 2 pot master cylinders.
the second part of this is perhaps a little surprising, but even on those sort of hard to find parts for cars, the wheel cylinder that failed is all of 16 bucks to replace. maybe an hour of work for someone new to drum brakes.
If it were only the wheel cylinder that needed replacing, I would have done it. But a wheel cylinder plus everything else? Nah, it was time to move on from this junk. I can find a better one, anyway. 🙂
I’ve fought this battle before. Removing the drum would have destroyed all the hardware underneath when it’s that crusty. Then it’s a rebuild from the backing plate on out. Maybe the backing plate itself. A new hub will be mandatory. Then figure on having to do the other side because brakes. $600 in parts on a problem child car doesn’t make sense.
Sounds like getting rid of it was a Smart thing to do.
That’s not a weird failure at all. I’m surprised you’ve never experienced it before, with all the shitboxes you’ve owned. I had one blow on my Sierra a few years ago.
But, you did good on that car. Had tons of fun for very little money, and now it can help make other Smarts live to fight another day. Good result!
I feel like wheel cylinders are one of the most annoying fixes on a car, as they are both a simple and complex fix. They are easy to replace once you get them out, but getting them out is always a pain in the butt.
Glad to hear the car will be useful in some other way. I have sent many cars to the scrap yard in my time, as is par for the course in buying exclusively junkers for many, many years, but it was always nice when I could offload one to someone who could use the vehicle for something other than scrap value.
A note on failed wheel cylinders… When they fail, they spray brake fluid on the brake shoes. Once the shoes get soaked with brake fluid, they will crumble in a few months.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aegwK7IwWag
So if any of the readers here have had this same problem, don’t just rebuild or replace the failed wheel cylinder, replace the shoes as well.
You have five Smarts?! For some reason I thought it was just The Good One and The Other One.
If they’re all different colors maybe the Autopian staff can each pilot one and make a Voltron. Torch would call dibs on forming the butt.
Five Smarts . . . she called her fleet of wee cars, “MENSA”
5 Smarts? Does that make you brilliant? Weirdly I visualized you putting them all together to make a very curious limo.
I am getting human centipede vibes from this suggestion.
This is how every car should go out, as an organ donor giving life to its brethren.
I am slightly sad that you didn’t give it a Viking-style funeral. That being said, setting cars on fire and rolling them into rivers is generally frowned upon, so I suppose this was a more responsible route to take…
I did consider sending it out in OppoX 2026, but I know how hard some Smart parts are to find, and rallycrossing the thing would ruin parts that other folks could use.
At least once a month I read about some person who cooked their engine because they didn’t realize they were driving without coolant. The engine was the best part of this car, so maybe it could help one of those people!
It really baffles me when cars don’t have low coolant sensors and a big red warning light.
Your car died so others could live. I have done the same with a few that were just past the point of saving. Very noble!
We can always rely on you to make the Smart decision.
Aside . . . Years ago, I posted on Craigslist a curb alert that I was putting my sofa out. A guy pinged me and begged me for dibs on it . . . wanted to haul it off to Burning Man. I could think of no better way for the sofa to go out.
That’s only done for insurance.