I already suggested that to him. He ignored it, and kept bringing the conversation back around to “it’s impossible, let’s talk about it some more.” Classic internet troll behavior, frankly.
…and frankly, I would have expected better from someone whom we have helped to a great extent over the past couple of years.
BRM is the same guy who posted for a while under the screen name of Indy, and we helped him to nurse his Taurus with a breached head gasket for several months until it finally gave out. Subsequently, under his new screen name, we have given him lots of help with his…troubled…Kia minivan.
As the old Spanish proverb goes, the worst deaf person is the one who doesn’t want to listen. I have hard time believing anything productive could come out of prolonging this discussion.
I have no idea where the leak is coming from outside of the passenger side as I saw fluid lines on the ground leading into my dad’s driveway the other day after he had gone out to get dinner. I have no idea how often he has had to refill the master cylinder, he told me when he went out to go to the VA, Post office and get gas he “checked” the master cylinder each time, but he didn’t say if he needed to refill or what each time.
We don’t have any trade schools in this area, and my dad has, according to him, had it over to a mechanic to have the leak checked, I have no idea if this is true or what he found out. My dad is of sound mind, we have instructed him of the danger, and he believes there is no danger given the limited amount of driving he does.
At this point I have told him that I would take him wherever he needs to go and do and that he should not be driving the car. He refuses, he is stubborn about this and there is nothing I can do. There are those here who say I should take his keys, he won’t give them up and I have no access to “look” for them because he is home every day. There are those who say I should disable the car, again the car is locked, and outside of saying slashing the tires I have no way of disabling the car. My sister who lives with my dad has spoken with him, told him she would take him where ever he wants to go, and he refused. He is an adult, he understands what he is doing is dangerous and stupid, but it’s his choice.
. He is an adult, he understands what he is doing is dangerous and stupid, but it’s his choice.
When his actions become a danger to himself or others then it’s no longer “His Choice”. You father is an adult…Does that mean that you should let me drive drunk because it’s “His Choice”.
Should I? No, but I can’t stop you. I can offer to drive you, but if you refuse and I can’t get your keys, then I can’t stop you. I would call a cop and instruct them where you are. I have spoken with a law officer about this issue, and if I was to call them when my dad leaves, he doubts there is anything he could do once he stops my dad if the car is braking okay. As with the drunk driver, if stopped and passes the test, he can continue to drive; if he doesn’t, he goes to jail. The officer told me directly that he has stopped a number of cars he felt were unsafe to be on the road, but unless he can point to a specific thing he can document, he can’t do anything.
Brm, let’s return to your original questions:
- what’s the best type of tape for your dad to use to fix a leak in a brake line?
- if it cannot be fixed with tape, what’s involved in repairing it?
Allow me to summarize the responses.
- you cannot fix a brake line with tape. Tape will not hold pressurized hydraulic fluid.
- repairing it properly requires replacing the line. This is neither expensive nor difficult for a shop to do.
Our added comments:
- Your dad driving around with a taped up brake line is extremely dangerous and is extremely likely to result in an accident, possibly a fatality.
- It is extremely essential that you take action, aggressive if necessary, to pevent your dad from driving this vehicle.
“Action” can consist of
a) having it repaired yourself.
b) doing something to prevent him from driving at all.
We’ve also suggested that perhaps you print this thread and get him to read it.
You’re clearly not willing to step forward and have this fixed yourself, nor to take any aggressive action to prevent him from being on the road with this car. I can’t believe it’s a money thing, because the fix isn’t expensive. I don’t know either you or yyour dad, so I won’t judge you, but since you’ve no intention of doing anything at all, even showing him this thread, there really seems no reason for continuation of the thread. There’s nothing we can say that will help here. We can only help those that are willing to be helped. There’s nothing more we can say, and nothing we can do…YOU have to do it.
I wish you and your dad nothing but the best.
“My dad is in sound mind,…He is an adult, he understands what he is doing is dangerous and stupid, but it’s his choice.”
No, he’s not. And no, driving a car with dangerously unsafe brakes is not a choice, in any meaningful sense of the word.
brm7675: “Should I (drive drunk)? No, but I can’t stop you.”
Yes you can, and for God’s sake, you better. You can take my keys and refuse to give them to me. In fact, if we were friends, I would thank you for doing so after I sobered up.
You should talk to a lawyer about what can be done to keep your father from putting other people in danger.
Fixing the brakes cost money, which my dad will have once his SS check comes in on the 3rd of Oct. I don’t have the money and my sister says it’s not her job to pay for the brakes to be fixed since she has offered to drive my dad.
Again the only way to stop my dad would be to slash the tires, which is a crime. As for talking to a lawyer, not sure what good that would do. Again it’s not like he has lost it mentally he hasn’t, and this idea that well if he is driving around a car with bad brakes shows he has lost it, doesn’t. It just shows he is stupid, HUGE difference. How many people are out driving cars on the road today that are unsafe and dangerous. I fully understand where everyone here is coming from, but I have done all I can do, at this point I can only hope he gets it fixed.
The point is that a lawyer can advise you about what to do, and might have ideas you haven’t considered. Unless you are a psychologist or a judge, you are not qualified to judge your father’s competency, and maybe a competency hearing is in order. You seem to be hung up on your father’s mental capacity. This isn’t an issue of mental capacity or age. It’s an issue of behavior. He might be the smartest guy in the room, but his behavior is the issue, not his mind.
His behavior? His behavior is being stubborn. I am not sure that being stubborn is against the law or something you can stop someone from being.
I am not talking about how you characterize his behavior.
In psychology, there is a movement to get away from cognition (what people think) and focus on behaviorism (what people do). You should do the same thing. Stop characterizing your father’s behavior and enabling him. Nobody wants to stop your father from being the curmudgeon you love. However, the legal system (in the form of a competency hearing) has the responsibility to make sure he does not harm others. What about the rights of the innocent victims he might kill. Don’t those people have rights too?
Driving is not a right. It’s a privilege, and clearly, your father’s BEHAVIOR is putting others in danger. By putting others in danger, HE IS VIOLATING THEIR RIGHTS.
Like I said, you are not qualified to judge your father’s competency. Find a lawyer who will consult with you for free, or go to a free legal aid clinic. It will cost you nothing.
Being stubborn isn’t a behavior. “Stubborn” is your judgment of your father. Driving an unsafe car is the behavior I am talking about.
Brm, I can’t believe you are afraid to cross a 93 year-old man. There are many ways to disable a car. Many posts on here are about disabled cars. You could cut a wire, take off a wheel, cut the serpentine belt, let the air out of the tires, take out some fuses, just to name a few. AND I don’t think you or your Dad is of sound mind!
brm7675, couple of things.
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Doesn’t anyone in your family have a credit card? I don’t advocate buying things on credit, but this is a safety issue, not a big expense, and is pretty much what credit was made for.
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Everyone here has said that using tape on a hydraulic system is a bad idea, but no one has said why. Here’s why: pushing the brake pedal applies pressure to the fluid in the lines, no amount of tape is going to hold against fluid that is under pressure. Plus, if there is already a leak in one of the flex hoses, it could rip wide open if your dad were forced to apply the brakes suddenly and with force. Any small child should be able to understand that. Your dad’s behavior suggests that he either doesn’t understand, or doesn’t care. Either way, his arrogance about it is exactly the kind of thing that gets people killed. Maybe he doesn’t care, he’s 93, he won’t have to feel guilty for long.
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You, on the other hand, might. You could stop him if you wanted to. My read on this is that you don’t want to, not if it means an uncomfortable conversation or any real inconvenience to you. (And please, there’s no need to recount the steps you’ve already taken. We’ve all read them, and it’s clear a lot of smart people here don’t think you’ve done enough.)
Here’s what you could do if you were serious about your dad’s safety (I’m not holding my breath, but someone else might be facing a similar circumstance.). Get a coffee can and put it on the ground next to the inside of one of the tires. Get a crescent wrench, or the correct size box wrench, and find the brake bleeder screw on that one wheel. Remove the nut. Don’t just loosen it, remove it and keep it. Brake fluid should immediately pour out of the wheel cylinder into the coffee can. It’ll make a mess, but neat isn’t the goal here, so don’t sweat it. Next time your old man gets in the car, the first thing he’ll do is put his foot on the brake pedal. It should go all the way to the floor, forcing even more fluid out of the lines, and no amount of brake fluid will make it go back up again until he has the brakes checked.
At this point, he will have two choices. Either buy a new bleeder screw, some brake fluid, and re-bleed the entire brake system, at which point replacing the leaking line would be a minor issue, or…
…have the damn thing towed to the shop, where they’ll do the exact same thing.
Of course, from what you’ve told us so far, I wouldn’t be surprised if he were to replace the bleeder screw with a cork, and pee into the master cylinder.
It wouldn’t be any more dangerous that what he’s doing now.
Good luck.
To disable the car you have to be able to have access to it. My dad keeps the car locked at all time and I don’t have a key, so that means say letting the air out of the tire won’t work cause dad has AAA and he would just call them and have them inflate the tire like he has in the past when kids were pranking our neighborhood. As for removing the fluid, I struggle to put fluid in my car, I have zero mechanical ability plus couldn’t fit under my dad’s car if I tried.
No one in our family has a credit card, again come Monday my dad will have the monies to get it fixed, if he does great, but since he is driving it now I doubt he will. He didn’t tape it, he just monitors the level of fluid. Since he rarely drives, maybe 100 miles a month he feels it’s safe.
I also called and spoke with an attorney last night and after about 30 minutes of him asking questions about my dad, how he acts, what he does, his view was that it would be near impossible to have a Judge rule that my dad’s affairs and such need to be removed from his care and have someone take over. Outside of this issue, my dad doesn’t show any other issues of poor choice. He pays his bills on time, he maintains himself and the house he lives in. He volunteers and does things with his local VA. The lawyer said Judges hate to remove control of someone’s life to another person without there being a large amount of evidence showing the person is in a position of harming himself or others on a regular basis. He said the judge would probably tell my dad driving a car with bad brakes is very dumb and might consider removing his driving privileges, but even then with no history of tickets or infractions that would be tough.
Basically, he said there was little we could do unless my father begin showing multiple issues of well being.
So I am just hoping he chooses to go get it fixed next week.
Some of you need to get a hobby
you could just get a pair of side cutters, and finish the break
If you can see where brake fluid has streamed onto the driveway the leak is pretty bad and the master cylinder on most cars probably hold less than 8 oz. of brake fluid. (never measured it, but I know it’s not much) If someone CLAIMING to be mechanic has looked at the car and told your dad the car was safe to drive as is (with a leaking brake line), he’s pretty incompetent himself and has no business working on cars. I wouldn’t want to be driving a car he had repaired. If he thinks a leaking brake line is safe he’s not very knowledgeable about automotive mechanics and how automotive systems work.