Marshal reports bad brakes and noises from the rear
brake on his TR3
There can be a few different possibilities for your problem...
I have a few possible answers, none of which may be correct,
but are things I have found to work for me.
1- Jack the car up and see if there is any top to botom or front
to back play in the wheel. Yes=bad wheel brg or loose hub on axle
No=ok so far
2- Pull the rear drum and check to see if any of the hold down
springs are broken off/loose as this will allow the shoe to cock
a little and bind on the drum and of coarse the spring/clip will sound
metallic, also check all the obvious stuff like leaky cyls, sticking
emergency brake etc as all these will cause the brake to "grab".
3-This will be a little hard for me to describe from a keyboard, but
here goes. With the drum off, stick your head in the fender
opening and look straight down at the backing plate. Is it perfectly
straight, and flat, fore and aft ? Now go to the rear of the car and
again look at the backing plate. If you have the nine inch brakes
you may need to put some sort of straight edge against the
backing plate as it is harder to see than on the 10 inch brakes, but what you
are looking for is a slight "S" bend to the plate itself.
When this happens, everything will look normal but the brakes drag,
especially with new shoes. Often you can see that the edge
of the shoe will be worn more than the rest of the shoe at either the outer
(top shoe) or inner (lower shoe) edge. Also some times when it gets extremely
bent, you can see that the shoe is rubbing in the very innermost corner of
the drum (where the thick part where it should rub and the face of the drum
meet). Did I lose you on
this ?
4-There has been some discussion lately about proportioning valves, and yes
your TR3 has one. If this little puppy sticks, it won't make any metallic
sounds, and it usually will affect both rear wheels, but may still be your
problem. I don't know of any way to check it other than to make an elaborate
setup to tap into the
hydraulic system on both sides of the valve to measure residual
pressure, so probably just changing it is the easy way. If you follow your
brake line down to where it makes a connection into
a brass "t" fitting just in front of the firewall, on the frame, you will
find it screwed into the "t" itself and the brake line screwed into it. It is
fairly small and easily missed if your car has decades of accumulated crud
built up on this fitting as is often the case.
I hopes this helps, but if it didn't, consider the price <g>.
Did I mention, I'm cheap
?
Nick
And I'm still lookin for that motor
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