While we're on the subject of rear brake adjustment -- what's the best way to
adjust the rear brakes?
There's an article on the VTR site where a guy suggests pulling up the hand
break 3 clicks and then tightening the adjuster. How tight do you make the
adjuster? I noticed in the Moss catalog there's a special brake adjustment
wrench available -- they claim it's extra long for "good leverage" -- leads me
to believe you realy want to crank it down.
Bob Lang's advice below is similar to the maintenance manual instructions:
"tighten until the wheel doesn't turn and then back off until the wheel does
turn." My question is what is "doesn't turn" vs. "does turn"? There's
certainly a range that goes from won't budge to spins freely - what are we
looking for here?
Dwayne Cooper
'74
-----Original Message-----
From: Robert M. Lang [mailto:lang@isis.mit.edu]
Sent: Wednesday, April 10, 2002 7:04 AM
To: Sally or Dick Taylor
Cc: Pim Alferink; 6pack@autox.team.net
Subject: Re: Weird brake question # 163
Hi,
I had this pedal droop problem in the race car. I "fixed" it by running
the rear brakes a bit "tighter" than normal - tighten 'till the wheel
doesn't turn and back off two "clicks" on the adjuster.
I finally got annoyed by this situation recurring each time I removed the
brake drums (this is my race car, tear-downs are a pretty common source of
entertainment), so I decided to methodically determine the problem.
What I discovered was that the idiot that installed the brakes put two
"forward shoes" on one side and two "rear shoes" on the other other side.
The idiot, of course, was me. This is a testiment to the fact that
assembling brake systems at 2 AM the night before a race with practically
no sleep for a few days is just a really bad idea!
FWIW, I also get some pedal droop when I take the car through a
particularly fast corner that loads one side or the other a lot - maybe
even to the point of drifting... you learn to "stab" the brakes with your
left foot when you're coming out of the corner so you don't get the "aw
shit" feeling when you get to the next corner...
But that droop is def. related to suspension "flex" even with the front
bearings "socked up".
Zoom Zoom,
rml
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