Tag Archives: brakes

7/12/2025

Started the week by cleaning and painting the brake rods with silver Hammerite and silvering the oil filler pot off the main servo.  The  parts and Neatsfoot oil I was waiting on arrived, so I assembled the servo piston, incorrectly, as it turned out, which wasted a day’s work but was quickly corrected and I finished assembly of the servo vacuum cylinder.  I’m awaiting a spanner of the correct size so I can dismantle and clean the distributor valve on the top of the servo, so I will make the gaiters next week.

9/11/2025

Activity has been zero of late, due to other pressures, but I did manage to clean the rear brake servo and  its oil dashpot at the start of the week.  As time allowed, I continued work on the servo, removing the two air intake covers which were choked with oily filth.

28/9/2025

A slow start to the week again, with just time to remove the brake pedal spring on Monday – this took 45 minutes of wrestling before I could see a way to unhook it, by twisting it through 90 degrees with mole grips. The next day I was able to remove the pin from the fork on the rod from the pedal to the rear brakes servo,  but this took several rounds of heating and cooling to achieve.  The next job was to remove the vacuum pipes from the servo,  but access is tricky and involves removing the handbrake rod lever bracket from the firewall bulkhead.  This hit a stumbling block when I found the final nut was turning but not undoing.  Access to the bolt itself was obscured by the upper pipe feeding the O/S front brakes and the vacuum gauge.  Removing this included removing the pipe to the vacuum pump that also joins the pipe to the reservoir tank.  The two pipes were  fairly easily removed, although I didn’t realise this soon enough so this incurred considerable delay.  The problem with the third fixing for the handbrake bracket was then revealed, it is a countersunk screw, half-hidden by the servo itself, and it is rotating.   So I will attempt to stake or drill and pin it in place; if these options fail, a dab of weld may be the only option.  To enable access for this, I unscrewed the brake pedal rod from the servo.  This also gives access to the nut on the bolt that supports the front of the servo.