I have finished the extensive brake job on my 69 LeBaron Coupe this
weekend.
I replaced all of the metal lines except the one to the PS front and the
two to the master cylinder. I used two 60" lines and a 30" line to the rear
axle with two couplings. All expose lines were wrapped with 20 gage galvanized
steel line. I thought long and hard about how to do this protective step and
this worked great. Wrap on end of the line with a little Duct tape to protect
the double flair fitting. Insert that end into a cordless drill and start
wrapping the wire from the other end of the tubing. Another piece of duct tape
will hold the wire from spinning at the start. With an assistant to control
the drill you can get a very nice looking wire wrap with a little care. A
real bonus is that if you do this well you do not need to use a tubing bender
since the wire wrap will stop any kinking of the tubing.
The new Durabrake rotors and Calipersonline calipers sure look
good. Shame that no one will see them. The rotors were out of true by
0.007" on the DS and 0.003" on the PS. Spec is 0.005"! It is interesting the I
can turn the PS hub by hand without the wheel attached, but I cannot turn
the DS hub. I checked the rotation of the hubs before the calipers were
attached and both were the same and "relatively" easy so it is due to the
calipers. Note that this was the case even before the calipers were attached
to the brake lines.
There are 25 connections in the brake system now from rear wheel
cylinder to front caliper and I have tracked down a couple which were leaking.
The brake pedal is very high and very firm. I used a Valvoline brake fluid
which claims to exceed DOT 3 and 4 and used just under 1 quart.
I did not and have never "bench bled" a master cylinder. I have always read
that you must do this but never have and always have had great brakes. I
just connect everything and bleed away. This time I did use a simple "one man"
bleeder which has a small collection bottle with a fitting which
sticks into the hole in the bleeder valves. The bottle has a magnet on it
so you can attach it to the car. Hook this up and pump away on the brake
pedal. The final bleed was with my son pumping and me opening and closing
the bleeder valves.
A trick for actually installing the calipers is to insert a piece of
flexible foam rubber between the pads after they have been inserted into
the caliper bodies as you get ready to mount the calipers to the steering
knuckles. The foam will hold the pads apart so that you can get them over the
rotor and then can easily be removed from the top. The calipersonline calipers
use two such pieces of foam to hold the pistons in their
bores.
This has been a long and
expensive experience, but my car now has brakes which are probably
better than they have ever been.
Fred Joslin
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