Date:         Wed, 19 Jul 1995 15:21:15 -0600
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@vanagon.com>
From:         jgladu@bcm.tmc.edu (John Gladu)
Subject:      '90 brake probs fixed

Price for new (FAG) master cylinder: $113
Price for remanufactured master cylinder: $115
I went for the less expensive model...

Put new shoes, drums and wheel cylinders in the rear.

Bleeding the front brakes is a chore - I usually use small Vise-Grips to
work the bleeder valve and I just couldn't make this work smoothly on the
front units, especially the left front.

Last, I had a very bad time with the parking brake adjustment.  Not having
a micrometer with a 10" span, I did my best approximation of 9.87" when
pre-adjusting the brakes in the rear. (That's the Bentley-recommended span
across the surfaces of the shoes.)  When I had everything back together I
thought that the parking brake would automatically be wonderful (all new
parts, should be tighter, right? - wrong!).  I was quite grateful for the
drum-may-be-removed-without-removing-the-big-nut design so that I could get
back in there and take a look.  It turned out that the rivet holding the
parking brake arm (on the left) was way too tight and the arm could not
return after actuating.  This affected the initial adjustment as well.
After many iterations of wrenching the arm to and fro to loosen it up and
taking up about an inch on the actuator rod underneath, the parking brake
is working fine.

One other thing - while test driving and test braking I noticed that a
rapid series of hard pumps on the brakes seems to disable the front disks.
Hard stabs at the pedal about a second apart gives seriously degraded
stopping on the third shot.  Lots more pedal pressure required as well.  Is
this fade? (shouldn't have had time to get hot, and if I ran for a few more
seconds and then hit the brakes once hard, the front brakes work fine)
What could be making the front brakes quit working?


bcnu - G (John Gladu)  .Opinions are just that.
Systems Support Center -- Baylor College of Medicine
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