moving on to breaks.

AA Ford Discussion Group relating to the repair and restoration of your AA Ford.
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KimVanOrder
Posts: 753
Joined: August 11th, 2013, 4:25 pm
Body Type: 82-A Platform
Model Year: 1928
Location: Hamilton, Mich.

moving on to breaks.

Post by KimVanOrder »

I got my cooling situation under control. The steering gear leaking I have a direction and plan. What I need now is your input / secrets to getting my breaks to work better. I have floaters in the front, new linings, and have done a bunch of adjusting. But still have a "week" performance. It stops but am unable to slide the frt. wheels on sand. So what have you all done to improve break performance.

Thanks in advance..
KVO
Dec. '28 AA
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1crosscut
Posts: 877
Joined: December 25th, 2010, 7:22 pm
Body Type: 82-A
Model Year: 1929
Location: Lincoln, NE

Re: moving on to breaks.

Post by 1crosscut »

Lots of things to do to get brakes working as they should. This past winter I installed a set of floaters on a Model A pickup. It was the first time I had worked with the floaters and they drove me bonkers for a while for a couple of reasons. The main one was I was asked to step into a brake project that had already been started and the owner had gotten frustrated and had thrown in the towel. The other was that lots of little parts of the system as a whole were not spot on and everything added up and the job would never had been good without my going back and making sure everything was right.
The one thing that I did that had a big impact on the floaters working was to replace the adjusting wedges with new ones. A little wear on the adjusting wedges will cause problems.
Go back through the system and make sure that there is no slop in your clevis's etc... and see that the brake actuating arms are leaning forward when at rest and do not for any reason go past 12:00 when the brakes are applied. If they do go past 12:00 you need to fix things so that doesn't happen.
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Dave
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tiredtruckrestorer
Posts: 338
Joined: April 20th, 2003, 7:09 pm
Model Year: 1931
Location: Orwigsburg, PA

Re: moving on to breaks.

Post by tiredtruckrestorer »

Sir, there are a lot of things that have to be checked when you're working on these trucks with mechanical brakes. I'll start with a few. Check the brake cross-shaft where all the brake rods attach to under the middle of the truck. This shaft should just turn in the bushings, not jump around. Check the clevis pins and yokes for wear too. Some may have to be drilled out and oversize pins used. Make sure the brake rods are straight. Bends in the rods try to striaghten out when pressure is applied. Disconnect the brake rods at the actuating arm of each wheel. Move the actuating arm by hand in the direction as if you were applying the brakes. If the arm moves freely by hand past 90 degrees straight up without pressure, then you have internal brake problems. Once the lever goes over the 90 degree mark you loose the mechanical advantage. If so, it could be the length of the operating shaft that goes down the middle of the kingpin (for front brakes). When you had the front brakes apart, did you check the length of the pins that attach to the brake shoes that ride on the cone shaped brake adjuster? These pins have to be the same length per wheel. Did you fit the shoes to the drums? The pressed steel drums used on most AA's are usually out-of-round too. I have ground some on a brake machine to true them up. Lay the shoes in the drum and make sure the whole lining makes contact. I used a belt sander to dress the shoes to fit. Some car fellows re-arch the shoes instead. I haven't tried that with the AA's shoes. What kind of brake lining did you use? I believe the brass impregnated lining works best with the pressed steel drums. A lot of the car quys switched to more modern lining that seems to work better with the new cast drums made for them. Like I said at the beginning. There are a lot of little things that can add up to bad brakes. Leave me know what you find.

Keith
KimVanOrder
Posts: 753
Joined: August 11th, 2013, 4:25 pm
Body Type: 82-A Platform
Model Year: 1928
Location: Hamilton, Mich.

Re: moving on to breaks.

Post by KimVanOrder »

So !!! Bottom line is to do everything, Perfectly!! I did everything mentioned, BUT.... I know it did not get done Perfectly. This will be a good Winter job when I have a lot of time to tweek everything. Thank you both for your feed back.. I'll keep you posted. For now the steering gear box needs to be finished up..
KVO
Dec. '28 AA
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