Friday, August 3, 2012

I didn't do anything ...

... on the wall today. At about 09:30 while I was working on my website Liz rang to say that the brake parts had come for her car. So after working on the website until lunchtime I made myself a few butties and then had lunch in Caliburn on the way down the road.

Of course, when there is a choice of 4 or 5 types of rear brake shoe it's easy to choose the wrong one, isn't it? That's what we found out after we had dismantled one side of the car. But at least it gave us an opportunity to look at how it all worked and to give it all a really good clean.

The front brakes were another matter. We had the right disc pads and after the retaining pins had been freed off, we set to work. Or at least, we tried to. The outer right-hand pad was seized in the caliper and looked for all the world as if it had never been used. That took quite some freeing off but eventually I managed. Then after spending a while freeing off the piston and cleaning everything off, a little copper grease lubricated everything and it reassembled quite nicely.

As for the left-hand side, I removed the retaining pins and the friction lining off the outer pad fell off the car, leaving the backing plate behind. That all needed a really good clean and the piston in the caliper freeing off, and then that went together quite well too.

No wonder the car was making strange noises and so on. Anyway, now it all works fine, stops like it's supposed to, and all the strange noises have gone. I'm glad I did all that.

Liz cooked a nice tea and made me some spicy tomato chutney to bring home as a reward. That was really nice.

But seeing what passes for garage mechanics around here, I can see me turning the clock back to where I was in the late 1980s. What I need first of all is a little workshop. I shall have to do something about that. I may well be on to something here. 

2 comments:

  1. So were you sent the wrong ones or was it the ones on the car that were wrong? Wouldn't surprise me, some mechanics shouldn't be trusted with a toy car!

    ReplyDelete
  2. We ordered the wrong ones. The ones in the photo were shown as having no automatic adjusters and so I assumed that, like Fords, you would take the automatic adjusters off the old shoes and put them on the new ones. But when the new shoes arrived, there were no studs and holes to fit them, and on closer inspection we saw that the adjustment fittings were cast onto the old shoes.

    A further look at a photo on-line showed that there was an option of one set of shoes shown on the list that did have auto adjusters already fitted, and so we've ordered those.

    ReplyDelete