Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) said:I never thought a brown 60s four door mercury could give me a boner.
Today i learned that I was wrong.
Holy E36 M3 that thing is RIGHT.
Dusterbd13-michael (Forum Supporter) said:I never thought a brown 60s four door mercury could give me a boner.
Today i learned that I was wrong.
Holy E36 M3 that thing is RIGHT.
In reply to 03Panther :
Thank you very much!
I've seen Supremes used as if they were chrome torque thrust knockoffs and they don't look good IMO. Furthermore, they're not cheap! I think a set of cast center torque thrusts would've been cheaper (but not right for the look I'm after).
My last post brings me to a debate I had with myself over these wheels and tires that I will now share should anyone else find it interesting.
I've long been frustrated by the "price of nostalgia" - these wheels are a good example to me. $170 per wheel and they aren't lighter or faster or stronger or anything statistically better than what was on the car previously. Spending the money for new wheels in this instance will not net me any performance gains. However, the car isn't about performance. It's about aesthetics, and furthermore - the aesthetic of the car IS the performance. So, if anyone wants a clever line to justify something pretty for your car, you can tell yourself that one.
It worked for me, it can work for you too!
I hear ya. I've been on the hunt for a set of American Racing 200-s wheels, a.k.a "coke bottles" in 5 x 4.5 bolt pattern, but they seem to be stratospheric in price, even used.
Front brake Saturday! New wheel cylinders and shoes on the front. Once everything came apart 2 things were apparent - I got the wrong shoes and both wheel cylinders were leaking. Luckily I bought 2 wheel cylinders and was able to make a little drive and get the correct (2-1/2" wide vs 3") when I recognized the error.
yeah, all kinds of leaky. I'm surprised they worked as well as they did.
Pile-o-hardware. Everything came apart nicely. Interestingly in order to get the wheel cylinders off to twist the hoses off the bleeder screw had to come off or they wouldn't fit through the backing plate. Also the wheel cylinders were held on to the front side of the backing plate with a single 1-1/4" bolt which was different.
As a "while we're in there" I scrubbed and painted the drums since they show through the new wheels
Before and after
clean and buttoned up
The painted drums look way better behind the wheels.
To be honest this all went really well. The brake hardware was all fairly "logical" and nothing really fought me too much.
After I got the brakes bled I went for a little drive and listened to the rest of the Twins baseball game on AM radio. Lovely. And, after some driving the brakes do feel better and hopefully they'll retain fluid instead of dribble it out.
In reply to Gunchsta :
Extra points for the dice valve caps!
Time to tackle the rear drums
before:
during:
after:
Naturally scope creep rears its head here... with the drums off I can see that the rear wheel cylinders are also starting to weep. No surprise there, parts are on order. This is another instance where for a moment I thought about buttoning it back up and "sending it" as the kids say until they got really bad. I know I'd be thinking about it constantly though so they'll get fixed proper.
Oh and bonus content story time for anyone truly bored.
On my AM radio baseball game drive I heard a faint rattle then zinnngggg! one of my center caps and dust covers blasted off. Again, I had a breif moment of "welp, those are gone forever" - until I looked in the rear view, saw approximately where they both landed, and realized I was only doing 25 and could easily park and walk back and get them.
So I parked, got my hub dust cover and wheel center cap, pounded them back on, and continued my day. To be further long winded- I think what happened is I packed some grease in the hub dust covers (too much) and the grease prevented them from being fully secured to the hubs, which in turn blasted the wheel center cap off as the hub dust cover came off.
While I was out painting the drums I made sure to clean these up and pound them back on too.
TLDR: one time I lost a pair of center caps while driving and picked them up. Everyone lived happily ever after.
And another thing- you ever start doing something one way, realize there's an easier way but stubbornly stick to the way you started?
I wire brushed all of the scaly stuff off those drums by hand. I have an electric drill with a cup brush. On the 3rd drum I realized this but thought "well if I change now that'll be inconsistent with the other 3".
Self-eye-roll
Well today kicked my ass.
Finished the rear brakes, shoes, wheel cylinders, hardware and hard lines from the wheel cylinders to the flex line above the axle. While I'm in there right?
new nicopp hard lines. Pre bent, too long, whatever. They worked out ok and replaced the crappy (probably original) ones that were half crushed on the car. After this I assembled the new brake stuff. This went well with one minor inconvenience that ended up taking me like 4 hours this afternoon to figure out.
so here's the good stuff. New shoes, hardware, and wheel cylinders. Pretty.
what took me forever was that I needed to adjust the e-brake cables to fit the new shoes. This took me MUCH longer to figure out than I'd like to acknowledge. I also had the drivers side apart fully like a dozen times. So, that was dumb.
The other frustrating part is that the brakes still feel mushy despite bleeding them 4 or 5 times. They work pretty good but they just don't feel as good as I think they should. Long day and the end result unfortunately wasn't as satisfying as I hoped. But, everything is back together and my wife and I took it for a nice little cruise tonight then I gave it a wash.
which reminds me- washing this car by hand is pretty insane. There's so much trim, and angles, and berkeleying just stuff everywhere. It's a crazy car and washing it by hand really makes you appreciate every square foot of it. Which there is a lot to appreciate
More fun today! Brakes are still ho-hum. I went for a drive this morning and they work but they're pretty low and just don't seem "right". I turned the adjusters out on the rears which helped some, they had absolutely no contact whatsoever before, now they just have the slightest bit of contact but the wheel still spins nice.
Im wondering if now that the adjusters are out I need to bleed the rears again? It's like I have some small air pocket somewhere that I just can't get out.
in other news, my surge tank decided to spring a pinhole leak, so that's unfortunate. It's brass so I could potentially solder it, otherwise I'm thinking some JB weld might do the trick for how small the hole is.
sometimes you don't win. I was getting frustrated then I reminded myself that this is all a part of old car ownership. It doesn't mean the thing is junk it just means various parts fail at different times, likely just from age. Though this is a nice driving car, it's not something I need to drive every day so there's no sense in getting stressed about fixing it fast. I'll get it figured out
Sunday night I went out for a little motorcycle cruise to switch gears mentally and take a break. Ended up stopping by a buddies house who was having some similar "project frustrations" we'll call them... he's got a beautiful XS650 he's been building for a while now and it just up and didn't want to run. We shared stories of our tribulations and checked spark on his bike. We determined it was a faulty spark plug. He was grateful to have some "help" (my part was basically emotional support, another mind, etc.) and I was on my way home to mow the lawn.
About an hour later he showed up at my house with the bike! It was nice to see the fruits of his labor and some project success.
Gunchsta said:
so here's the good stuff. New shoes, hardware, and wheel cylinders. Pretty.
The lining arcs in that pic are the same length. Usually, the primary (forward) arc is shorter than the secondary (rearward). It is possible that you put both secondaries on this side and both primaries on the other side. Any pix of the other side? It's a common error, and it can make the car feel unsettled in braking because the side with 2 secondary arcs will make more brake torque than the side with 2 primaries.
Gotta love Astro Supremes, one of the many reasons I sold my old El Camino was that I felt Supremes to be the only suitable wheel for the car, and I found out what they cost new.. yikes
In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
I was hoping you'd chime in :)
I'll have to check. To the best of my recollection all of the shoes were the same size, but I could have missed it. Frankly it stops pretty good overall, my biggest complaint is that the pedal is low despite bleeding them multiple times. Once I adjusted the rear shoes yesterday they seemed improved, but still a mushy/low pedal. It feels like there is air in the system somewhere but I can't fathom where it would be.
Edit- quick googling tells me that you might be right. The pictures on Rock Auto show different size shoes and this would explain why the drivers side drum wouldn't go on but the passenger side drum went on easily. Mr. Angry I think you might be onto something. I'm not entirely sure if this would result in a low pedal, but it certainly wouldn't be correct.
One piece at a time.
i hate to say this, but if you scroll back up to your "before" pic of the left front, you'll see the forward arc is shorter than the rearward arc. and if you compare that to your "after" pic of the left front, you'll see that the arcs are now the same length. pretty good chance you're going to have to pull all four corners apart. sorry bro. :-( i wish i had paid attention to that sooner.
In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
Good call, missed that, too. Drum brakes are what's called "self energizing" , which is basically how they got away with manual drum brakes on full sized cars for so long.
Oh man, good call guys. You might be onto something here.
Stay tuned!
Edit- you guys rule. I suck.
Angry and VCH took a look at my pictures and said ah yes, you done berkeleyed up AAron. Somehow managed to get all the shoes mixed up. Two leading shoes on one wheel per axle. RF and LR both got al 4 longer shoes. Easily solved though! Tune in next time when I do the same work yet again!
heres pictures to prove my failures.
pay attention in school
Also, thank you very much to Angry and VCH for following along and helping. Pretty cool to have random internet people assisting in garage shenanigans
In reply to Gunchsta :
I'd be lying if I told you I'd never done the same thing. :-/
In reply to AngryCorvair (Forum Supporter) :
I'm sure it won't be the last time I do it. I feel like I should know better, but I also know that I haven't been giving tasks my full attention. I got cocky and paid the price.
at this point I'm just glad something specific is amiss and I have corrective action to take. Doing things multiple times really doesn't bother me that much
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