Greetings from Sandcroft Acre,
Hope everybody is having a fine version of winter where ever they are in the world. We here in central Ontario have had a very white one for sure, more snow than I have seen in years so lots of clean up but, hey it’s the winter, in Canada….what did you expect?
So more a bit more about brakes, my situation is unique and for all my wants to keep things as original as possible, I am making changes based on my budget and other factors.
I will put my solutions forward as simply one way to do things in hopes it might help someone else figure something out on their project. As I said before I have learned so much from many others here and just want to give back to the community.
So then, my rear suspension is not stock and yet I am trying to keep it within the confines of the original suspension with fairly good success, it is fairly tight in there but so far so good.
As I stated last time I am going with off the shelf Ford parts in the rear. The original Tbird/Cougar calipers are fairly compact and like a lot of newer stuff have the parking brake built in.
Good and bad really. I did think about adding a disk to the input yoke of the diff and a spot caliper but again its fairly tight in there so…..
The original ( girling? ) rear calipers had the parking brake assembly mounted off the bottom of the caliper, the cable pulled 90 degrees to the side and mostly kept everything out of the way.
The Ford calipers cables pull more towards the rear and rely on longer looping cables that need space to make to turn that I really don’t have.
After much head scratching and test fitting
I came up with the idea to flip the caliper to put the cable pull at the top then create a curved cable guide that brings the cable out at almost 90 degrees to the caliper. It is made from a piece of curved ½” tubing with a nylon sleeve inside to reduce friction, a washer stopper and a larger sleeve to hold the original cable end.
This looked good and keeps the cable out of the way of most everything. Ok for now….
Then onto my other hurdle……. the lever assembly.
The 2 issues here are I am not using a perfect replica of the original handle it is actually intended for a big Healey but very similar. Much easier to get and with my slight tunnel modifications it might fit better? Also it was well priced so if I did need to modify it I wouldn’t feel so bad.
The other main issue is that I moved the transmission cross member ahead by 1.75” but need/want to keep the brake handle in the same location.
As you can see there is not much room for the cable attaching parts……hmmmm
My initial though was that I could notch the cross member for clearance and create a different cable attachment and adjustment.
It was going to be too ugly and too complicated so after much more head scratching and some mock ups I decided that a good old fashioned bell crank was the answer.
With this I can move the cable attaching point back to its original location and through the magic of ratios get the correct cable pull length too. After working it out with a full size drawing showing the relationship between all the relevant parts I made the mounting plate and bell crank pivot. Then the bell crank, the new lever arm and the link.
The rest of the parts are basically the stock parts from the drawings. I had only tacked the main mounting piece to the frame because I did not know what I was going to do, that allowed me to remove it and fit / weld the pieces and check and adjust things till I was happy.
Then I decided to get a bit fancy and shorten the cables, they are the longer of the 2 Cougar/ T-bird stock cables. I carefully removed the original end then trimmed the outer sleeve to the correct length and reused the nice sealed factory end fitting.
Then time for the inner. I went back to my old lathe and turned up some new ends, threaded them ¼-28 for original type adjuster nuts and filed some little wrench flats.
I then reinstalled all the pieces, slid the cables in and figured out the correct length.
Then just pull out the cable assemblies and swage on the ends. As always easier said than done…..
Reassemble and test…
Everything seems to work correctly and I really like the fact the cables are still plastic coated and mostly sealed from dirt and water so should last a long time
So with that behind me, I hope, I though now would also be a good time to install a hard fuel line. I really could not find much info on what the original cars had so I just went with I did what I though was best, bent to fit up tight and out of sight and properly supported from where the tank outlet will be and ending somewhere ahead of the engine mount, to be trimmed off later.
And like the main brake line it will need to be installed before anything else around it
So that’s it for now, There will be more soon as I am trying to keep my nose to the grind stone and work on the car and post updates when I can.
Be happy and stay warm my friends, spring is just around the corner
Cheers,
Hudson
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