I had the ‘74 up on my lift to get it out of the way while I was driving my ‘52 MG more for a bit. While it was up there I noticed fluid under the front passenger side. It was brake fluid. Not good! In digging into it I found that my hard brake line from the caliper to the strut had a hole chewed in it and the fluid was leaking out from there. In checking the drivers side I found similar marks on the driver side brake line.
SOMEONE WAS TRYING TO KILL ME!
Actually, it turns out the at full steering lock and with a little compression of the suspension, the upper bolt on the sway bar tie rod was contacting the brake lines and rubbing on them.
I think this contact could only happen with raised spindles (mine are 30mm higher) and the sway bar set on full soft like I had it (top of the drop link as far forward as it will go and thus closer to the caliper when at full lock) and running 993 calipers (964 calipers might be an issue as well) with strut front suspension (because of the routing of the hard brake line). Thus I think this is a pretty rare issue. To resolve this conflict I moved the sway bar ends as far inwards (towards the centerline of the car) on the shaft that they would go, thus picking up 1/4” clearance on each side, and slightly stiffening up the sway bar by sliding the upper links rearward by 3/4” and thus increasing the distance from the brake lines at full lock.
With all that done, I bent up and flared some new lines and had my 12 yo daughter help me bleed the brakes. Should be good now, but I’ll check these periodically to make sure there is no further interfearance.
