Its Father's day, and I feel appreciated.
I've just completed a 4 month project at work (long days and weekends
kind of stuff) on Friday. I've been too busy to start anything lately
with the car, until this weekend...
Starting yesterday, I rebuilt my front calipers with new stainless
pitons, seals, bellows, stainless hoses, new bleed valves, new pads
and pad pins and then adjusted the rears. If 44 year-old calipers can
look sexy in red, mine are those red, shiny calipers.
I now estimate that I have 30-50% more breaking power (one piston in
each front caliper was seized, and only one pad on each side was
worn). I still have work to do, because I stomped on the brakes at
one safe point (squealing tires) and the car pulled quite sharply to
the right. I need to take the rear drums off, see how they look, and
then bleed the whole system, back and then front. If it still pulls
to the right, I'll have to dig deeper.
I also addressed a front end 'bounce' that I had (vertical bumping at
50 to 60 mph). I suspected eccentric wheel(s). I rotated all four
wheels on the front hubs to find the minimum runout and therefore the
best location for the wheel. That's a lot of wheel on/wheel off as
you rotate to through the three other positions, next wheel..... None
were perfect, but I put on the two with the least runout, marked for
future need, and am happy to report that the bounce is eliminated,
and I took her up to 85 in a test run just now.
Hope all Dads on the list had a great weekend and feel appreciated
today, too.
Brian in Valley Forge
1963 TR4
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