Steve,
Have the drums been turned? - that is are they round. Second have the shoes
been arced to match the drums? When these steps are done a set of shoes and a
drum are then a matched pair - that is unless they are all the same diameter.
If neither or only one of these have been done you may be "dragging" the ends
of the shoes on the drums making it impossible to do a proper adjustment. Just
a thought.
Bob Kitterer and Dolores
1960 Austin Healey Sprite (Mk IV in disguise) - in storage
1966 Austin Healey Sprite Mk III (Trevor) - still in boxes - in storage
On Sep 12, 2011, at 9:20 AM, Steven Kemple wrote:
> Hi all
>
> I'm a new lister, but not new to LBC's. I acquired a 61 Bugeye recently and
> have been working on brake problems ever since. Seemed O.K. when I did the
> test drive but the brakes seemed weak and the pedal very hard. I chalked it
> up to not being used to 4 wheel drum brakes.
>
> On the first drive after delivery the rear brakes locked up. Changed the rear
> cylinders. Then the front brakes locked up. After extensive review of the
> archives and discussions with the PO it appears that the car had a newly
> rebuilt Master Cylinder and ended up with the wrong push rod resulting in no
> free movement. That has been corrected. Even after a fairly short drive with
> the locked up front brakes, the shoes and cylinders looked pretty much trashed
> so I changed them ( shoes and Lockeed type cylinders from Moss). I have two
> problems that I have been struggling with for days. First, the right front
> wheel drum is very tight with the adjusters completely unadjusted. I can see
> no difference in parts. I even tried changing the shoes and drums from the
> left side with no difference. The other problem is that I can not get a hard
> pedal. I can not detect any leaks and no bubbles when bleeding. I am using
> the wife assist bleed method. I can pump up the pedal a bit but it is not
> close to right. I let it sit for a couple of days and still no change. The
> front flexible lines are new and the rear one looks new. Isolation of the
> flexible lines has not pointed to a specific problem. The only other thing to
> add is that at one front wheel I found a small amount of fluid inside the drum
> back plate but could not detect from where. I thought it may have been a run
> away drip from the bleeding process. Could it be a hair line crack in a new
> wheel cylinder? I have read just about every brake posting on the archives
> looking for an answer. Any thoughts?
>
> Steve Kemple
>
> AN5
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