OK, in between other things my time hasn't been wasted, I've been trying to get the back brakes on my campervan into a state where the MOT man won't laugh at them.
Last time I mentioned them, the brakes were a soggy mass of crud and shoe and badness. They were cleaned up and I fitted a new cylinder after a bit of a session hitting it with a hammer to shock the fixing bolt free and not in any way to relive my tension caused by the stupid rusted thing I wanted to remove.
Then I tried to fit the new shoes - which didn't.
It seems my 1971 van uses 1973 onwards brake shoes. And I had the up-to-71 ones. German& Swedish couldn't do me a set of the ones I needed. Just Kampers could, but that meant another delay while I waited for them to arrive. Last night a van pulled up and I got a box of goodies.
9am this morning I'm sat in front of the brake hub.
The new shoes go in fine and after taking a photo (I was proud of my work. I know how sad this is but that's what people with classic cars do) the hubs went back on and we bled the system. Messy but not difficult. Mind you, this is the third or fourth time I've done this - the first go was approached with a lot more trepidation !
The adjusters still didn't want to play ball but the wheel seemed to have some resistance so lowered the jack and cleaned up.
Once clean I tried the van. No brakes. The handbrake came all the way out of it's hole and refused to go back without a lot of jiggling. This made me sad.
You should never work on a van when sad so I left it for a while and had some lunch. This made me feel better (probably something in the chutney) and I attacked the adjusters with a vengeance (and a screwdriver). If you crawl under the vehicle you can actually see the stars rotating so at least you feel something is happening. Each adjuster was initially moved out about half a centimetre.
The brakes seemed a bit better after this so I had another go. Nothing moved much but when I got back in the cab I realised why - the handbrake was still on !
With bricks under the wheels (you don't think I'm that stupid do you ?) another tweak and I think I found the limit of adjustment so I backed off half a turn.
This time the brakes were great. The handbrake moves about 4 clicks and even on a short run on the drive (about 5ft) the brakes can grab and shake the driver up enough to make him wish he'd worn a seat belt.
Anyway, the van is off to Bugshak next week for a bit of welding and hopefully a return to fully legal and roadworthy.
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