Automotive American – Classic Vintage & Modern
Tag: Juice Brakes
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.
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
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
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
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:
As always Simon did a great job on everything with a small bit of help from yours truly!
Now the A is at Simon’s we began by removing the front axle to facilitate the replacement of :
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 🙂
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.
I removed the from hubs and drums today to find that I have new front brake shoes and wheel cylinders. What’s not so good is that one of the new cylinders is leaking 🙁 Whilst I was carrying out the inspection I also noticed that the right hand front shocker link was flapping around in the breeze!! So, more things for the ever increasing list…
