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Took the brake drum over to a friends for some investigation
Drum inspected and duly repaired and ready to test on the car
Previous post here
Brake drum activity continues
Tag: Juice Brakes
BRAKES, Ultimate Guide To Fitting ’39-’48 Hydraulic Brakes To Your ‘A’…. Enbloc @HAMB
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This subject seems to come up alot on the HAMB, “How do I fit hydraulics to my Model ‘A’ “. Hopefully this should show how to fit said brakes the CORRECT way.
My Model ‘A’ came already fitted with hydraulic brakes, but the more I studied them the more things I noticed were wrong with the way they were fitted. The true horrors weren’t discovered until they were actually removed from the car.
I decided the best way forward was to start again with a fresh set of backing plates.
ere is your basic ’39-’48 Ford backing plate. In this case they are the later ’46-’48 plate as they have the riveted rather than bolted bottom pivots. You will also need the correct hubs and drums as the original ‘A’ ones will not work with the hydraulic backing plates.
We’ll start with the fitting of the front brakes first.
This is the stripped hub. You’ll need a front fitting kit which consists of 2 bearing spacers and two backing plate spacer rings. You can see how these are mounted to the hub.
Take care with the backing plate spacers as they are cast iron piston rings and will break easily if forced.
Follow up on the Brake Drum Investigation
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As a follow up to the brake drum investigation post (link below)
Gave the drum a good cleaning with the poor mans Dremel rather than the lathe, and yes the crack is too bad to use. Can’t take the risk with brakes.
As can be seen, the crack covers the entire width of the braking area. Should be able to salvage the hub as it appears to be the press in type. So now looking for new drums, update to follow.
Brake Drum Investigation
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The Model A has an early Ford juice brake setup rather than Henry’s original mechanical system. The car is exhibiting a bit of a brake pull under heavy braking and left front brake drum is a little scored.
I was given a drum a while back that is marked “cracked” so decided to investigate condition.
The drum has been stored in the shed for quite a while, so being cast it’s a bit rusty
Had a go at cleaning up and removing the majority of the rust
What seems to be the original wheel bearings seem to be still in place and in good shape.
Part numbers appear to be visible on the drum
Next step will be to run the drum up on a lathe to further clean the braking surface and check for cracks. But so far so good
1929 Model A Ford Sport Coupe Front Brake Maintenance
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Since the juice brakes were updated not long after I got the car, one of the previous owners had changed the standard Model A mechanical brakes to hydraulic (juice) brakes. They had used the earlier brakes and I converted to the later 39-48 version which in my experience are easier to maintain. The reason for taking a look at the front brakes was that the passenger side front was grabbing a little when cold.
All the the shoes were cleaned up with abrasive paper, the shoe touch points and adjusters lubricated. The drivers side front brake drum is showing signs of wear from previous brake shoe wear issues. A new drum will be sourced as well as a set of shoes. After the inspection the drums were refitted, wheel bearings repacked and the brakes adjusted. Wheels were then refitted ensuring that the wheel protection rings were fitted between the wheels and brake drums. These rings stop the wire wheels from cracking. Wheel bearings were adjusted and split pins fitted, then brakes were adjusted.
Whilst working on the front brakes I took the opportunity to adjust the cables on the excellent Cling handbrake system. Details here
The Final Piece!
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As you may know the car came with a very poor quality hydraulic brake conversion, to rectify this I gathered the parts to convert the system to the superior 46-48 single adjuster system. I was however missing two grease boxes for the rear. Luckily I’ve managed to track down a pair on eBay from a nice gentleman called Al for a very reasonable cost. Hopefully these will be winging across the pond shortly!
Grease boxes shown below
Rear Brakes and Handbrake
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Those who know my A will know that it had a pretty bad hydraulic brake conversion.
I’ve been gathering parts to rectify the mess for quite a while, whilst the car is at Simon’s it’s an ideal opportunity to get things sorted:
- Swap rear backing plates for the single adjuster 46-48 units
- Remove all hydraulic brake pipes, rework and replace as required
- Fit Cling Automotive custom handbrake cable set up
As always Simon did a great job on everything with a small bit of help from yours truly!
The Front End!
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Now the A is at Simon’s we began by removing the front axle to facilitate the replacement of :
- Front Spring
- King Pins
- Front Brakes & Backing Plates (From 37 -41 to 46-48)
- Re-engineer front hydraulic brakes (terrible job before I bought the car :))
Those of you that have seen previous posts will know that the front king pins have been somewhat modified in a bad way to say the least! Once we got the spindles off it was even worse than we thought. The king pin bushes had been shimmed to take up excess wear in the spindles. So Simon’s Dad fabricated some custom king pin bushes from scratch as the ones in the kit just dropped through the king pin locating holes! Simon fitted the bushes and modified to allow greasing of the bushes moving forward
The two galleries give a small idea of the amount of work involved.
Whilst we were about it we decided to make things look nice by cleaning and painting as many components as possible 🙂
Update on Brakes !!
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Good news on sorting my braking issues!
The hydraulic brake conversion done previously is a bit of a mess as you will have seen from previous posts. The backing plates had not been reworked for the Model A and are quite corroded. Via an advert in the Ford Barn I’ve managed to track down an unmolested full set of 42 -48 backing plates. These are far more preferable due to the simplified brake adjustment. The combined centre and heel adjustment of the earlier system is a real pain to adjust.
Just need them to arrive from across the pond and we can get cracking, in the meantime I’ll need to track down someone to reline my existing shoes as the rears are badly worn.
