Well bondle my futtocks...
Discussion
... the Wedg1ewagon is broken! Shock horror, can it be true..? Alas yes, a recurrence of the brake failure issue I had on MOT day has, er, recurred, and despite my initial diagnosis being 'something funny with the master cylinder' I have discovered (by the simple method of leaving most of the flesh from one thumb on a brake disc) that one or both of my rear calipers are sticking on.
This, as far as I can establish, is causing (a) the fluid to boil, (b) the diff oil seals to melt and (c) the grease in the UJs to turn to water and drip all over the place. I found this last bit by simply lying in a pool of molten grease then sitting back in the car
I'd established last time it happened that no fluid loss is involved, so as Nursy and I descended Lythe Bank (
) and the pedal went all the way to the floor, only a moment of panic ensued before liberal pumping (of the pedal, nothing untoward in the rear trouser department) slowed our descent towards an apparent watery end in the North Sea. When I parked at Sandsend there was black smoke billowing from the rear arches. The following touch-test was the one that resulted in said digit damage. Half an hour later the brakes had cooled to the extent that the right disc was merely hot whereas the left one was still hot enough to boil saliva.
Oddly, once the brakes cooled the car would roll quite easily with a hand push. We turned for home. I made it forty miles before the brakes faded out again, slowing from 40 for a roundabout. Bizarrely, five miles earlier I had a solid pedal whilst descending another steep hill. So I presume that was when the piston stuck, the pad heated the disc up and by the time I next needed deceleration, it wasn't happening.
So now I have a large workload pre-'Fest. I can probably get the calipers off, stripped, rebuilt and refitted with new pads. I can even regrease the UJs... but the dripping diff is another matter. I don't have time to be dropping that for attention, nor do I wish to trash an LSD.
In a way I'm glad I found the problem now rather than 100 miles down the M1 with no breakdown cover. Ironically I was feeling rather pleased with myself for having sorted out a niggling water leak - the thermostat housing had warped due to the bolt 'ears' being insubstantial enough and the gasket was weeping water into the valley - it collected as a pool on the valley gasket at rear of engine but only showed up once the car had been stood for days. I assumed it'd be pin-prick holes in the two metal pipes feeding the heater but my fibrescope proved otherwise.
I changed the 'stat whilst I was at it - two local factors tell me that 82 degree 'stats with jiggle pins are no longer available
. The old one was fine but as an experiment I got a standard 'stat and drilled a small hole near the top of the outer disc - so far so good: cooling has been spot-on despite pootling about on the hottest day I've seen this year.
Also changed several of the Jubilee clips on the water hoses: one was so rotten that I knew it wouldn't undo but tried it anyway: it snapped with hardly any effort
Really must crack-on and get that body-off resto that I've been promising, done...
This, as far as I can establish, is causing (a) the fluid to boil, (b) the diff oil seals to melt and (c) the grease in the UJs to turn to water and drip all over the place. I found this last bit by simply lying in a pool of molten grease then sitting back in the car
I'd established last time it happened that no fluid loss is involved, so as Nursy and I descended Lythe Bank (
) and the pedal went all the way to the floor, only a moment of panic ensued before liberal pumping (of the pedal, nothing untoward in the rear trouser department) slowed our descent towards an apparent watery end in the North Sea. When I parked at Sandsend there was black smoke billowing from the rear arches. The following touch-test was the one that resulted in said digit damage. Half an hour later the brakes had cooled to the extent that the right disc was merely hot whereas the left one was still hot enough to boil saliva.Oddly, once the brakes cooled the car would roll quite easily with a hand push. We turned for home. I made it forty miles before the brakes faded out again, slowing from 40 for a roundabout. Bizarrely, five miles earlier I had a solid pedal whilst descending another steep hill. So I presume that was when the piston stuck, the pad heated the disc up and by the time I next needed deceleration, it wasn't happening.
So now I have a large workload pre-'Fest. I can probably get the calipers off, stripped, rebuilt and refitted with new pads. I can even regrease the UJs... but the dripping diff is another matter. I don't have time to be dropping that for attention, nor do I wish to trash an LSD.
In a way I'm glad I found the problem now rather than 100 miles down the M1 with no breakdown cover. Ironically I was feeling rather pleased with myself for having sorted out a niggling water leak - the thermostat housing had warped due to the bolt 'ears' being insubstantial enough and the gasket was weeping water into the valley - it collected as a pool on the valley gasket at rear of engine but only showed up once the car had been stood for days. I assumed it'd be pin-prick holes in the two metal pipes feeding the heater but my fibrescope proved otherwise.
I changed the 'stat whilst I was at it - two local factors tell me that 82 degree 'stats with jiggle pins are no longer available
. The old one was fine but as an experiment I got a standard 'stat and drilled a small hole near the top of the outer disc - so far so good: cooling has been spot-on despite pootling about on the hottest day I've seen this year.Also changed several of the Jubilee clips on the water hoses: one was so rotten that I knew it wouldn't undo but tried it anyway: it snapped with hardly any effort
Really must crack-on and get that body-off resto that I've been promising, done...
dixiebabes said:
Exact same thing happened to me on the way to the wedge fest a couple of years ago pretty frightening when the pedal goes to the floor at 70 mph.
Dix
I remember it well Dix
I remember another one of our group throwing a fan belt in Ettington's car park, and one of my bonnet bolts falling out!.
york33 said:
Sorry to hear it's broken Ian, but your post did amuse me. Though I really didn't need some of the images in my head 
Hope you get it fixed in time......
You going down as well Dave (er, to the Fest that is...Hope you get it fixed in time......
) ?My dad drove a breadvan for a while in the late 60s, I recall him telling me of the time his brakes failed on Lythe Bank and he had to run the truck along a wall to slow it down
TVRleigh_BBWR said:
It's quite common for the diff's to leak, so depends how bad it is, you could get away with just keeping it topped up.
Aye, mine has always had a bit of a weep but now it's dripping like a granny at a Boyzone concert. I'll see how big the puddle is and how much fluid it takes to get the level back up... might get away with it 
Wedg1e said:
Aye, mine has always had a bit of a weep but now it's dripping like a granny at a Boyzone concert. I'll see how big the puddle is and how much fluid it takes to get the level back up... might get away with it
It's surprising how big a puddle you can get for hardly any fluid lost Wedg1e said:
You going down as well Dave (er, to the Fest that is...) ?
Sadly not Ian, another one on my missed Wedgefests! Wedge in the garage and brother getting married on the same day, terribly inconsiderate! I'm having a project clearout now though, to make time for the Wedge+bike, boat or Midget anyone? ) ?
Finally got round to crawling under the 390 last night to whip the calipers off... well that was my optimistic goal but in the event I realised that the one spanner I didn't have with me was the one I needed.
So I disconnected the handbrake cable and decided to take the handbrake calipers off as a starting point (less to wriggle through the chassis tubes). That was when the fun started. Oh, it's simple enough: you bend back the locking tabs and unscrew the four pivot bolt/pins: the handbrake units then pop merrily off. And indeed it so progressed, right up to the last pivot on the o/s unit. Would it come out? Would it ballcocks. It unscrewed with a fair bit of grunting, but wouldn't pull, push, lever or prise out. I had to really get my mad up to extract it - and once it did come out, an hour later, the caliper halves were stuck to the main castings and wouldn't shift either 
Much
later (and by now it was approaching midnight) I finally got the bu99er off. Then I found one of the handbrake pads is not actually a pad, just a backplate - no wonder the handbrake has always been a bit iffy! Seem to recall the same thing happened to my Tasmin (the friction material detached from its backplate, but I Superglued it back in 
).
Earlier on I decided to pull the main pads to see how cooked they'd be... one looks normal, one's a bit glazed, one has only about 1mm friction material left and the other... Jesus Iolanthe Christ, it looks like a refugee from a blast furnace. Guess that was the one that was sticking then.
So tonight, with luck, I'll find the correct spanner (5/8", I guesstimate) and get the main calipers out. After all, it's only 4 bolts: what could possibly go wrong?
Then I need to decided whether to strip and rebuild or chop them in for exchange units. I hate spending money and prefer the car to be as original as possible, but time is pressing...
So I disconnected the handbrake cable and decided to take the handbrake calipers off as a starting point (less to wriggle through the chassis tubes). That was when the fun started. Oh, it's simple enough: you bend back the locking tabs and unscrew the four pivot bolt/pins: the handbrake units then pop merrily off. And indeed it so progressed, right up to the last pivot on the o/s unit. Would it come out? Would it ballcocks. It unscrewed with a fair bit of grunting, but wouldn't pull, push, lever or prise out. I had to really get my mad up
to extract it - and once it did come out, an hour later, the caliper halves were stuck to the main castings and wouldn't shift either Much
later (and by now it was approaching midnight) I finally got the bu99er off. Then I found one of the handbrake pads is not actually a pad, just a backplate - no wonder the handbrake has always been a bit iffy! Seem to recall the same thing happened to my Tasmin (the friction material detached from its backplate, but I Superglued it back in ).Earlier on I decided to pull the main pads to see how cooked they'd be... one looks normal, one's a bit glazed, one has only about 1mm friction material left
and the other... Jesus Iolanthe Christ, it looks like a refugee from a blast furnace. Guess that was the one that was sticking then.So tonight, with luck, I'll find the correct spanner (5/8", I guesstimate) and get the main calipers out. After all, it's only 4 bolts: what could possibly go wrong?
Then I need to decided whether to strip and rebuild or chop them in for exchange units. I hate spending money and prefer the car to be as original as possible, but time is pressing...
TVRleigh_BBWR said:
Wedg1e said:
it's dripping like a granny at a Boyzone concert.
It's surprising how big a puddle you can get for hardly any fluid lost Right, I've washed the brake fluid out of my hair and the rusty gunk out of my eyes, time for a progress report.
All I had to do was remove four bolts and disconnect the brake lines. Armed with my trusty Gordon's 5/8" spanner (that I've had for thirty years) I assumed the position 'neath the 390 and prepared to do battle with rusty fasteners (I'd already snipped the lockwires). Sure enough the lower bolt on each caliper cracked off with moderate grunt... but the top bolts proved a little more stubborn. You just know that with the axle on the floor or the bodyshell out of the way it'd be a five minute piece of cake job. Doing it in-situ is a little more time-consuming. Firstly, you can't see the bolts you want. If you feed your limbs through the various chassis tubes, exhausts, suspension bits etc. you can touch the bolts - but then you try to get a spanner on them, and suddenly they're two feet further away and someone has built a scaffold tower out of spare chassis tubing. They've also smeared everything in axle grease and trasnmission oil and tipped a bucket of rust flakes over everything, as you discover when it falls in your eyes. And ears. Oh, and your mouth, nose and up your sleeves. Took me back to when I used to help my old man keep an assortment of old British cars on the road for his motley crew of penniless geriatric customers - there was always some chassis or floor welding to be done on a Marina, Escort, Avenger, Cortina, Mini, Moggie 1000, Austin 1300... but I digress 
So anyway, the top bolts. The left-hand one isn't too bad; you just need to get the spanner at the right angle, put a chunky glove on and push upwards as though Mo from the RolyPolys has nodded off on top of you [shudder] and your ribs are starting to cave in. It might go with a crack so mind your knuckles on her teeth. Er, I mean the chassis.
The right-hand one is a bit of a bu99er, as Fred Dibnah might have said. The diff is offset to the right so there's less room to get your arm in, for a start. The only angle you can approach the bolt from means you can only get about a sixteenth of a turn on it before the spanner clouts the diff. You can't go any higher 'cos the brake pipes are in the way (OK, you could remove them but then there's the fluid dripping into your rust-encrusted eyes) so you're left having to alternate the open-ender to ever-so-slowly wind the bolt out. That's after you've actually managed to crack it loose to start with: I did it by putting a ring-spanner over the open end of the combination spanner I had on the bolt to give me more leverage. The axle stands creaked ominously when I hauled downwards like Quasimodo in the All-Europe Campanology Challenge.
Now here's my top tip: under no circumstances knock off for a coffee at this point. If you do, when you resume bolt removal your brain switches off and it's only as the spanner starts to get stiffer that you realise you've wound the bastid bolt back in again
Eventually I had all four bolts loose. Great. Now for the brake lines. I'll just undo this pipe union with my trusty brake pipe spanner. Oh OK, I won't: one end's too big and the other too small. Not to worry, try the other end of the pipe: yep, that fits. Heave... union cracks off ans strts to unscrew. Er... taking the copper line with it. Oh FFS. Ah well never mind, I can soon make another link pipe. Snip the damn thing and have done with it. Wiggle the lefthand caliper past that frame tube... and this exhaust.... and that tube... christ they should have had this on the Krypton Factor. One down, one to go.
No chance of getting a spanner on the right-hand caliper union so let's get a couple of spanners riiiiight up there and disconnect the union at the flexi instead. Crack, screw, drip drip drip. OK, wiggle the caliper this way...er, no, that way... ah. This way and that... that way and this. Oh, that's got it. Pass it across the diff and extract it through the glovebox. Alright that's silly, but you get the gist.
I finally had a pile of caliper bits:
Here are the pads - top pair are the right-hand, bottom the left-hand pairs:
The top left pad isn't too bad (apart from the fluid that dripped on it); top right is worn to a bloody stump, bottom right isn't much better and bottom left is the crispy critter that was causing all the problems - seen closer here:
It's handy having your own sandblaster :
The black grot left on the caliper at right is stray grease that's attracted muck: the blaster won't shift it. I wire-brushed it off and gave it another puff of AlOx. You can see how the friction material is missing from one of the pads - and in fact the same pad on the other caliper didn't survive the blaster, must have been cracked already:
This is one of the springs that pushes the handbrake arms apart (just in case you need the part number )...
One of the intact handbrake pads...
...and the well-siezed union with crimped-off pipe. I got it free eventually with a deep socket:
Needless to say, the bleed nipple was having none of it and snapped-off
I started by wire-brushing the area clean...
..then it was a case of carefully drilling-out with successively bigger drills:
Had to stop at this point, I couldn't see properly! The plan is to collapse the remains of the nipple in on itself, leaving the caliper thread intact. I did manage to push the stuck piston back in: it went with a bit of a thud, ejecting the remaining brake fluid so hard it hit the ceiling!
The semicircular mark to the left is from a wheel bearing that refused to leave its housing - glad my face wasn't in the way when it did!
All I had to do was remove four bolts and disconnect the brake lines. Armed with my trusty Gordon's 5/8" spanner (that I've had for thirty years
) I assumed the position 'neath the 390 and prepared to do battle with rusty fasteners (I'd already snipped the lockwires). Sure enough the lower bolt on each caliper cracked off with moderate grunt... but the top bolts proved a little more stubborn. You just know that with the axle on the floor or the bodyshell out of the way it'd be a five minute piece of cake job. Doing it in-situ is a little more time-consuming. Firstly, you can't see the bolts you want. If you feed your limbs through the various chassis tubes, exhausts, suspension bits etc. you can touch the bolts - but then you try to get a spanner on them, and suddenly they're two feet further away and someone has built a scaffold tower out of spare chassis tubing. They've also smeared everything in axle grease and trasnmission oil and tipped a bucket of rust flakes over everything, as you discover when it falls in your eyes. And ears. Oh, and your mouth, nose and up your sleeves. Took me back to when I used to help my old man keep an assortment of old British cars on the road for his motley crew of penniless geriatric customers - there was always some chassis or floor welding to be done on a Marina, Escort, Avenger, Cortina, Mini, Moggie 1000, Austin 1300... but I digress So anyway, the top bolts. The left-hand one isn't too bad; you just need to get the spanner at the right angle, put a chunky glove on and push upwards as though Mo from the RolyPolys has nodded off on top of you [shudder] and your ribs are starting to cave in. It might go with a crack so mind your knuckles on her teeth. Er, I mean the chassis.
The right-hand one is a bit of a bu99er, as Fred Dibnah might have said. The diff is offset to the right so there's less room to get your arm in, for a start. The only angle you can approach the bolt from means you can only get about a sixteenth of a turn on it before the spanner clouts the diff. You can't go any higher 'cos the brake pipes are in the way (OK, you could remove them but then there's the fluid dripping into your rust-encrusted eyes) so you're left having to alternate the open-ender to ever-so-slowly wind the bolt out. That's after you've actually managed to crack it loose to start with: I did it by putting a ring-spanner over the open end of the combination spanner I had on the bolt to give me more leverage. The axle stands creaked ominously when I hauled downwards like Quasimodo in the All-Europe Campanology Challenge.
Now here's my top tip: under no circumstances knock off for a coffee at this point. If you do, when you resume bolt removal your brain switches off and it's only as the spanner starts to get stiffer that you realise you've wound the bastid bolt back in again
Eventually I had all four bolts loose. Great. Now for the brake lines. I'll just undo this pipe union with my trusty brake pipe spanner. Oh OK, I won't: one end's too big and the other too small. Not to worry, try the other end of the pipe: yep, that fits. Heave... union cracks off ans strts to unscrew. Er... taking the copper line with it. Oh FFS. Ah well never mind, I can soon make another link pipe. Snip the damn thing and have done with it. Wiggle the lefthand caliper past that frame tube... and this exhaust.... and that tube... christ they should have had this on the Krypton Factor. One down, one to go.
No chance of getting a spanner on the right-hand caliper union so let's get a couple of spanners riiiiight up there and disconnect the union at the flexi instead. Crack, screw, drip drip drip. OK, wiggle the caliper this way...er, no, that way... ah. This way and that... that way and this. Oh, that's got it. Pass it across the diff and extract it through the glovebox. Alright that's silly, but you get the gist.
I finally had a pile of caliper bits:
Here are the pads - top pair are the right-hand, bottom the left-hand pairs:
The top left pad isn't too bad (apart from the fluid that dripped on it); top right is worn to a bloody stump, bottom right isn't much better and bottom left is the crispy critter that was causing all the problems - seen closer here:
It's handy having your own sandblaster
:The black grot left on the caliper at right is stray grease that's attracted muck: the blaster won't shift it. I wire-brushed it off and gave it another puff of AlOx. You can see how the friction material is missing from one of the pads - and in fact the same pad on the other caliper didn't survive the blaster, must have been cracked already:
This is one of the springs that pushes the handbrake arms apart (just in case you need the part number
)...One of the intact handbrake pads...
...and the well-siezed union with crimped-off pipe. I got it free eventually with a deep socket:
Needless to say, the bleed nipple was having none of it and snapped-off
I started by wire-brushing the area clean...
..then it was a case of carefully drilling-out with successively bigger drills:
Had to stop at this point, I couldn't see properly! The plan is to collapse the remains of the nipple in on itself, leaving the caliper thread intact. I did manage to push the stuck piston back in: it went with a bit of a thud, ejecting the remaining brake fluid so hard it hit the ceiling!
The semicircular mark to the left is from a wheel bearing that refused to leave its housing - glad my face wasn't in the way when it did!
Edited by Wedg1e on Friday 8th July 02:58
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