[Spridgets] Emergency Brake Cable Mystery

Michael MacLean rrengineer.mike at att.net
Thu Jun 7 11:49:35 MDT 2018


I have been freshening up bother the front and rear suspension of my Bugeye the last couple months.  In most cases the job I am working on turns out to be more work and parts than anticipated.  One such job is the emergency brake.  Just before parking the car for all this suspension work the emergency brake just gave out.  The brake handle would just come up with no resistance and therefore the pressure was not applied to the rear brake shoes.  At first I thought after 60 years the cable finally broke.  Not so.  My next theory was the clevis pin fell out at the handle end because everything was OK at the rear axle.  So, out comes the driver's seat and the brake lever and mounting bracket are unscrewed from the tunnel.  The brake lever was still connected to the cable.  What the heck?  Yesterday I spent four hours in and under the car replacing the emergency brake cable with a new one.  The old one once removed revealed that the chassis grease inside the cable housing had congealed to a thickness that effectively glued the cable stationary in it's sheath.  The new cable is installed and the emergency brake works perfectly with resistance starting in the first 4 or 5 clicks.  Before it broke the handle would have to come almost all the way up, but I attribute that to needing adjustment.  Before installing the new cable I compared them side by side and they were identical in length.  So, thus the mystery.  Why did the handle come all the way up off the ratchet with no resistance with a stuck cable?  At first I thought the cable got stuck at one end of it's movement, but under the car, the brakes were not applied.  What the heck?Mike MacLean

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