I decided to finally switch to chrome wheels when I saw Ted's Centurion with his redlines mounted on it. So I went to the garage & put the car on jacks and took the tires & wheels to the shop to have them swapped over to the chrome wheels. When I got the wheels off, I looked at the rear drum brakes and they are THIN!!!!!!! SO I look at the fronts, and they look pretty good. But then I look at the rest of the crap around, and I can't believe how much gunk has built up on everything! Plus, I had been having some squeaky brakes for the last few months, so I bit the bullet and bought front rotors, pads and bearings. I also bought rear shoes. I bought a governor mod kit and a dist recurve kit from Jegs, and a trans-go kit from a friend....but that's another thread!:laugh: Since I was up all night last night, I went to bed at 8am this morning....got back up at 4pm and started working on the front brakes. (I was up salting parking lots all night).. Anyway, Here is a shot of the front pass rotor close up. You may or may not be able to tell that there is so much build-up on the upper A-frame that you can't see the Zerk fitting at all....not even the top nub! After a couple hours of cleaning and scraping CAKED grease and dirt off the control arm, spindle, and brake shield, I gave the shield a light coat of slate (silver, looks like galvanized steel) and remounted it. I also shot some black paint on the control arm and around the wheel well to give it some uniformity. Got the new bearings packed and the rotor installed, and cleaned all the grease off the grease cap (I've never seen a clean grease cap before!:laugh: ) I have a nice little pile of crap under the wheel well now....my pants used to be khaki in color, and now they resemble something a coal miner wears. I put the new pads on, and got everything tightened up. I think it turned out nice! It should stop pretty well now! I sure know how to make a 1-hour project turn into a 3 day affair. Oh yeah, I'm only done with the passenger side front. I still have to do this to the drivers side.ou: And also put the shoes on the rear brakes!! ARGH! This thing will never touch the ground again!
Gunk! So, I take it you haven't been greasing your car at every oil change then Adam? :grin: You'll love the secure feeling of fresh brakes come driving season!
eh....the front suspension needs to be rebuilt, but that's not in my 3-month plan. Maybe over the summer....or not. I dunno. I have a bunch of projects I want to get done on this thing. One at a time! That's all my budget is allowing, since i bought the house last July. I just couldn't believe how much gunk came off that control arm!! And also the back of the shield.....holy crap.
That's about where I started with the Riviera. Only I have the engine and the core support out when I started cleaning. Now I'm about done with the wire wheel on the frame and have the entire front suspension off the car to sandblast and replace parts, paint the frame and firewall, etc. Fortunately, the front shoes are good so no need to replace. So yeah, I do know what you mean about turning a job into something more..
Very nice Adam! What is sad is when yours look like that after about 3 years when you even pulled all the suspension components off and scrubbed, wire wheeled and painted them all nice and pretty. I have to get 4 or 5 cans of brake and carb cleaner this spring and clean my steering knuckles and backing plates again! i've debated about using a pressure washer but am afraid I'd accidentally hit the brake hose and cut it in half. A little advice... before attempting the rear brakes but a couple of brake tools. It makes removing and reinstalling the springs and stuff a LOT easier!
Oh, come on, it's SO much more fun using two screwdrivers and some old bent-up needlenose pliers!!! :spank: (get the brake tool...)
hehe... I've never done drums before....so this is called a "brake tool"? or is there some fancy name for it?
Well.....nawwwww, can't do it. There are two basic kinds, one looks like a little prybar with flat notched ends, the other looks like a funky oversized pliers, like in this pic from JC Whitney. Oughta be available locally for a couple of bucks apiece, or in a pawn shop for next to nothing.
i took the front wheels and one of the brakes off completey the other day...i looked like pigpen when i came into the house, with dust and grease trailing off me as i trudged through the snow.....i'll have some pics very similar to yours on my site soon......minus the shiny disc brakes, something that's still a few months away.......i did find that i have those cool 90 fin drums, they look all fancy and whatnot :bglasses: josh
Looking good, I thought your whole car was super tidy, but I guess it's one area at a time. I know what you mean by a one hour project turning into three days. I had my car up and axle out for about five days, my neighbors must have really wondered if it was ever going to drive again. I kind of blocked their paths to their spots, but I just pretended everything was where it was supposed to be. o No: B.T.W. I just got my trunk cleaned out, sanded as much as I felt was necessary, and painted. Now it's going to rain until Tuesday, so I hope everything dried roperly, cause there'll be a steady dripping into it. Got a towel where it lands, that needs to be emptied every few hours. Good luck with the rest of it, you'll love spraying that brake cleaner on the drums, it just runs off, and they look like new again...... nice..
Craftsman makes some different drum brake tools. My buddy just picked up some spring removers and I know there are more tools out there. If your limited on budget, Autozone lets you borrow tools for free. Looks great Adam, i assume you painted it? How come your front rotors dont look like they have a machined groove? o No: Looking Good! :TU: :beer
The new rotors don;t have a groove.. Come to think of it, the old set didn't either. The old set is still good too. I just wanted to have some added insurance.
That's odd, but I guess its another change from 71' to 72' or possibly from E-bodies 4497lbs to a B-body 4550lbs. Wait why would 53lbs make a difference. Goodluck on the rest of your work Adam! :beer :TU: (and get to :sleep: early tonight) :laugh:
I had the grooved rotors on my LeSabre when I bought it, but the replacements didn't have a groove. The auto zone guy thought I had a big problem when he saw the groove in my old rotors. It's a matter of having rotors from the factory or not....it's not a body style thing. Oh, supposed to be getting 2-3" of snow tonight....no sleep for me....again!
I used to work with snow removal to back in Sweden. We'd be like six guys going up and down commuter train lines clearing the platforms and then sanding them. If it snowed alot, you'd start in one end, and then go back to the satrt when you were finished, and start over. Hey what the hell, there'll be another day when the sun shines
Adam, good job. and I loved this type of pictured reports. it tells a lot about the job...and many undiscrete indications such has the brand new tires piled up with stickers still on it :grin: The main difficulty compared to discs is to safely stretch the springs to remove and put back the shoes. I did that on 2 cars in my life (including my WWII jeep Willys), and never had the specific tools. As mentioned earlier in this topic, you still can use old pliers and screw drivers as long as you have good safety glasses :bglasses: strong thick gloves, and nobody around to hear your shouts and bad words :grin: The other important tool is the curved wrench. that helps tightening properly some nuts that are not easily reachable with standards wrenches. Particularly the ones to adjust the shoe. That is the other issue : Unlike the disk pads, the shoe must be adjusted in order to make sure it "bites" the drum equally all around it when the contact is established. Otherwise, you will wear the shoes unequally and it will take hundreds of miles before the natural wearing makes the shoe touching he drum on all its surface (if you don't attack the metal first !). All correct tuning should be indicated in the manual. Also be prepared to find a lot of dirt inside the drum. Should you see anything a bit wet or humid, consider changing the cylinders. That takes 2 min once the shoes are out, and these are quite cheap compared to the burden of reopening all again, and sometimes changing again the new installed shoes where the brake fluis has leaked. I assume that in the US, you can change the full shoe for cheap, while us poor guys, if we are in a hurry and can'yt wait for imports, we have to have a BRAKE SPECIALIST taking the pad out and glue (or rivet like on the jeep) a new one on the metallic shoe. Good luck, and hope to see the car back on the road soon. :TU:
