Brakes, brakes, brakes.
I’ve been picking away at these for a few weeks now. The left side wasn’t too bad, other than the inner shoe being cracked around the 3/4” pin hole. I welded those up and added extra material there to add to the strength of it. Both inside shoes were split like this.
Next came the anchor and actuator pins, which had deep grooves worn in them. (See previous post) That was simply welded up and reground back to original. Side note: I wish I had something better than a 120V flux core welder.
Once that was fixed, I ground the rivets off, removed what was left of the friction material, and then cleaned everything up with the wire wheel.
Another odd thing about the left side was that it appeared to have had the drum replaced at some point. You can see where it looked like the old one was cut off on a lathe and then had a new one welded on. The welds on the right side were much cleaner looking.
Now for the right side. It was largely the same, except the drum looked original—and it was thinner, too. Both actually looked very thin, but I guess they don’t get used much, and certainly not at any real speeds so I guess that works. I don’t like the grooves and rust pitting on them, but I don’t think I’ll go to the trouble of replacing them. I’d probably have to have the drums made from scratch on a lathe anyway.
Anyway, the inner shoe on this side was in bad shape; it had a large crack moving across the face, plus the friction material was gone and the metal face had been worn away, leaving a high ridge on the side. Of course, the 3/4” pin hole was stretched out, causing it to flop around and run crooked.
Once I got into it, I found welds from a previous repair. It looks like this shoe must have blown apart while in use and someone patched it back together with a welder, but the problem is it was twisted up and welded out of line, leaving it with poor fitment.
I decided to cut the welded pieces off and start again, putting it in the vice while the sides were off so it would be easier to bring it back into shape before welding it together.
Here are the old welds, one side cut off:
Here you can see how twisted it was:
Here’s the big crack with the deep groove worn into it:
So here’s the crack welded, the worn section filled in (again, flux core—excuse the ugliness, but the friction material will eventually cover it) and the twist more or less straightened out.
Then the sides were welded back on thusly:
Then I added material to the holes to bring them back to size so they would fit nicely onto the 3/4” pin without a ton of slop.
After lots of grinding to clean it up, I ended up with this:
It looks decent in that picture, but honestly it’s still a dog’s breakfast. Still has a slight twist to it, and is covered in welds and rust pits. Part of the issue too was the actuator lever had a slightly bent pin, compounding the issue. (I was eventually able to straighten that a bit with the vise—not perfect, but close enough. It’s a heavy piece!)
Uneven wear will result from riding crooked like that. Here is an example of the outside shoe having worn a slant in the friction material because of its holes being worn egg-shaped:
Anyway, that was a week or so ago, and after sleeping on it a few times, I decided to just make a new inner shoe. That was done yesterday, took me about four hours.
Much better!
Not much to say about that process, just lots of measuring, cutting, drilling, grinding and welding. But I did take pictures as I progressed so I might as well post them.
I welded the inside too, for strength. I didn’t want to because I liked the clean look without the weld, but I’d rather have to strong and not come apart on me—especially after grinding the outer weld down smooth.
I also left the sides straight so there’d be more material so they hopefully don’t crack around the 3/4” pin hole like the original ones did.
Left and (new) right shoes:
Anyway, that was a whole lot more dicking around than expected. The OCD in me wants to do something with those drums too, but I think if they spin straight I will just leave them because I will need a machinist with a lathe to fix them properly.
With it being cold and my garage unheated I can’t paint these parts, but I want to get the friction material attached so I might take the shoes to work and paint them so I can finish that, and the rest can wait until spring to get some colour put on.
After that I have to remove the covers from the sides of the tractor to clean up and install the new bull pinion seals so gear oil doesn’t leak all over these new brakes. Maybe next weekend, but we’ll see how it goes. I will be busy by then going back to the farm to reinstall the carburetor onto our Oliver 88. It was sputtering and stalling out so I rebuilt it this week since I already had the stuff out to rebuild the carb for the Cockshutt 35 the other week.
