Back in January I went in with a couple of people on the mother of all bad ideas, a 1980 Cadillac Fleetwood Formal limousine that had a three-digit price tag and looked like a five-digit trip to the hospital waiting to happen. The rolling affront to humanity has been sitting in my driveway since, and while the 368ci Cadillac big-block still runs like a dream, the car has basically been parked since early Feburary due to a surprising lack of brakes. Prior to, I was actually daily-driving the Cadillac around…my reasoning was to make sure that the barge was going to last and to see if anything needed to be addressed before the brutal treatment really kicked into effect, but really, it was more for the laughs. You ought to see the reactions I get from people in traffic when they see this monster roaming around, there is no cheaper entertainment. I was enjoying driving the car, too, odd as it sounds. At least, I was, right up until the afternoon when the master cylinder completely packed it in and I found myself sailing through an intersection, laying on the horn. The car had brakes, then it just didn’t. After I made sure that I still had a pulse to measure, I limped the car home and parked it. I’d start the car every once in a while just to make sure the battery was up, but no way in hell am I driving a car without brakes, especially one that weighs in somewhere near two and a half tons and doesn’t have an emergency brake (snapped cable).

Since the weather has finally warmed up to something decent, and since I’m on a pause with the Imperial’s 360, I felt that now would be the perfect time to address the Cadillac’s brakes, if for no other reason than I hate a car that isn’t useful occupying a large section of my driveway. My initial suspicion was correct: the master cylinder was absolutely useless…if you pumped up the brakes you could slow the car down but eventually all braking power bled off and the torque would push through the brakes. Seventeen dollars later (Ok, $28 and a core charge) and the Cadillac was up and moving again, stopping better than ever. I might have to dial out some of the rear brakes…my first test stop on the road in front of my house showed with a modest stab at the brakes, the rear end wants to see what the front end saw. Blame the suspension that has all the stiffness of a jiggly cheesecake and over-eager drum brakes in the rear.

That remanufactured master cylinder looks so out of place under that hood, but what isn’t out of place is the hose that is now taking the blow-by coming from the valve cover and letting it blow into the air cleaner. It’s a tiny detail, but now I don’t smell like a tanker fire when I come home after driving the car. Other details that have been dealt with since we got the Caddy involve adding on some exhaust. As we got the car, the exhaust was cut about a foot past the catalytic converter, and that pipe had been jammed hard enough to be pinched almost cleanly shut. Mark Muffler in Bowling Green trimmed off the bent section, then ran a pipe along the passenger-side of the car into a take-off muffler from a Dodge Charger SRT-8 before dumping the exhaust in front of the passenger rear tire. The car now sounds like every Chevrolet pickup truck I’ve ever heard with dual exhaust…and it’s kind of quiet when the windows are up! A more unfortunate finding was that the roof is a certain percentage Bondo. I’m not sure, but I’m guessing somewhere in the neighborhood of…oh, I don’t know…60 percent? For sure, a section just above the windshield trim, right in line with the driver’s point of view, was surely Bondo, because what had been an unnoticeable crack became a hole that went straight to the headliner when I tapped it. The cure: Gorilla tape. It’s worked through two snowfalls, horrific rainstorms, and it’s done a fantastic job of keeping out wind noise, too.

Finally, with the Caddy drivable, with brakes that will hold the car, it was time to test one thing out that all of the partners on the car were curious about: do we actually have a limited slip unit in the back? The answer, sadly, is no. The Fleetwood Formal is a one-legger. So that leaves us with a couple of options moving forward. We are planning on putting the Cadillac on a lift soon to check out bearings, bushings, and to get a better inspection at the rear axle. I’d like to junkyard a unit from a truck that’ll fit the housing that has deeper gears and a Posi, but if that isn’t an option (or will be more of a pain in the ass than it’s worth) then I’m all about the good old Lincoln locker. The only problem with welding the spiders is that it automatically rules out any long road trip, which might be something to do this year. As it sits, I’m a bearing check and a set of tires away from driving it anywhere in the country, and a Lemons trip could be awesome. If this doesn’t seem like a big deal or that I’m making too much from what’s basically a couple of quick fixes on a twenty-two foot long turd, remember that every project needs a first step and for the limo, this is that first step.

Oh, and we are getting handbrake setups lined up too. That’s no joke and you read that right. See you at the next update!