Tag Archives: rear brakes

Wednesday 4th June 2014 – I WENT BACK …

… to Terry’s this morning.

Although I nearly didn’t. When I woke up this morning it was pouring down and wasn’t fit for anything. I had breakfast and wondered whether to carry on with the web pages but by then it had stopped raining so I headed off to Terry’s.

I checked the handbrake mechanism and the nearside seemed to be working fine but the offside not so, so I stripped down the brakes on that side and, as I suspected, the brake operators had seized.

Taking out the operators was not easy at all, but I dismantled them, cleaned them and greased them. A cut-out in the ear halfshaft and this would have been a two-minute job. And if taking them out was difficult, putting them back was even more difficult. And when they were back the pieces wouldn’t hold together and so I had to end up wiring them in.

And as you might have expected, having done all of that and making sure that all of the brake mechanism was working fine, it made not a ha’porth of difference.

We spent the afternoon working on the nearside brake. I made a few adjustments to that side and that did nothing either, which is a total surprise.

These rear brakes on this Jeep Cherokee are totally bewildering me. All that I can think of is that with the brake drums being brand-new, there’s a surface coating that needs to be broken down before the brakes will grip. So we’ll leave it for a week or two in order to see what happens.

If that doesn’t change anything, we’ll have to strip them right down.

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Tuesday 3rd June 2014 – TERRY RANG ME UP …

… this morning. Apparently his car parts are coming at lunchtime and was I free?

I certainly was and so after the usual couple of hours on the website, I loaded up Caliburn and repaired my big monster trolley jack and then I was off.

I went via Cecile’s and picked up a couple more letters that were in her letter box, and as I arrived at Liz and Terry’s, a white Mercedes van pulled up behind me. It seems that the parts and I had arrived at the same time.

We did the wheel cylinder on the Transit first and then changed the rear shoes and adjusted the handbrake. It took a while to bleed the cylinder and, not being quick enough with my bleed tube, I ended up with a jet of brake fluid up my sleeve when Terry pressed the brake pedal too quickly, but eventually we had the van on the road with all of the brakes working fine.

The Jeep however was another matter.

Changing the shoes wasn’t as easy as it might have been – a cutaway in the face of the halfshaft would have had the job done in 5 minutes and I don’t understand why it is that Jeep has made the job so difficult when it could be so easy because there really isn’t too much to it at all.

We put the new brake drums and discs on and then fitted the new pads (and that wasn’t easy either thanks to Jeep’s overcomplicating what might otherwise be a simple, straightforward job). Terry then took the Jeep for a run and while the footbrake was perfect, the handbrake was useless.

I adjusted it a couple more times and while I could get the shoes to lock up on the inside of the brake drums simply by tightening the adjusters, the handbrake still wasn’t working. It’s a case of of seized cable or seized operating mechanism, so it all needs to be dismantled, cleaned and greased.

By now though it was 21:10 and going dark so I’ll be back here tomorrow. I was covered in oil and so Terry let me have a shower for which I was grateful, and I came back to find that the phone here is down.

It’s not my lucky day, is it?

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Tuesday 27th May 2014 – 43.5 MILLIMETRES …

… of rain – that’s what we had yesterday. It’s totally unbelievable and must be a new record for here. I’ve never seen anything like it.

Anyway, this morning it stopped for a while and we even had some blue sky. And so Terry rang me up. His Jeep needs to go for a Controle Technique sometime soon but the rear brakes weren’t up to much – could I go for a look at it.

That reminded me. Caliburn’s Controle Technique is up too and so I passed by the place at St Gervais to book an appointment. As it happened, he was in the middle of two retests and so that gave him 5 minutes free and as Caliburn’s check was the “odd year” emissions only check, he did it then and there. Of course, Cailburn passed and so he is all nice and legal again.

Round at Terry’s, I stripped down the rear of the Jeep and it didn’t take long to find the problem. The handbrake shoes were worn down to the rivets and a disc pad had disintegrated. All of that meant that the rear drums and discs were totally shot and so we needed to order all of it.

It was interesting to note that the brake shoe retaining clips were missing in the rear offside drum, and that the brake pads on the front were almost new. What I reckoned is that the previous owner had noticed the brake issues, fixed the front and then taken one look at the rear and given up in disgust, thrown it back together any old how and then sold it quickly.

Jeep spare parts are shockingly expensive if you don’t know where to go for the parts. To give you some idea (and I can’t remember the exact prices but it’ll give you a clue) we needed left-hand headlights for it. In the UK a set was £300. In France, they were about €350. In the USA they were 70 – not Pounds or Euros, but dollars, plus £30 postage.

Terry was also having problems with the handbrake of his van. I had a look at that too and that didn’t take 30 seconds to see the problem either. A weeping rear cylinder has soaked the nearside brake shoes. We ordered a pair of new cylinders and a pair of brake shoes for that.

That means that in another week or 10 days I’ll be round there again dealing with all of that.

So let’s see what tomorrow’s weather brings. Because if it clears up any and stays fine, Terry will be round here repaying the favour. I have a cunning plan.

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