CALLIPERS

I had opportunity to spend a few hours back in my garage, so I decided I would refit the newly refurbished callipers back on the car. As often is the case it was not the 'quick job I expected it to be

I remembered that I had to thump the callipers with my rubber mallet to remove them and I realised pretty soon that it was going to be really difficult to get the bolt holes lined up just by thumping my shiny callipers back into place. I clamped the calliper into the vice and gradually filed each side of the top lug that was the cause of the tightness. It was slow going but eventually with a bit of cooper grease on the each side of the lug, I got the bottom bolt located and with a minimum of tapping I thought the top bolt was correctly located. Both bolts tightened, but unfortunately the top one when fully home just kept on turning round. When I removed it the thread was completely buggered.

I found a new correct sized, 7/16 UNF bolt in my bolt box, but not unexpectedly, with the calliper removed, it would only screw in about two turns. I would need to  order a 7/16 tap and tap the thread clean before I could progress, but before I finished for the morning, I applied the angle grinder to the lug until the it would slip snugly into place allowing easy adjustment to ensure the bolt holes lined up.

The same day the following week I was back in the garage armed with my new tap and it only took a few moments to clean the thread and my new bolt firmly screwed fully home. Above photo shows the tap passing through the unthreaded lug and into the damaged thread in the other lug on the far side of the gap. The calliper slipped into place and I thankfully tightened both bolts up nice and tight, I fitted the new stainless flexible hose and turned my attention to the other side.

This calliper was also a tight fit. I didn't waste any time I took the angle grinder to it and very quickly it slipped into place and bolted up with out a problem. Over two hours to fit the first one and only about 30 minutes to do the second, but got there in the end.

MASTER CYLINDER

Callipers all ready to go back on the car, but Stella s in the garage and and I'm in the shed in our friends country residence so servo and master cylinder is next on the job list.

It said in manual to just separate the master cylinder from the servo, but they were a little reluctant to come apart, however reassured by the manual, I pulled a little harder and eventually they did.

I started on the servo which was fine except it looked a bit scruffy, a gentle rubbing didn't produce a genie, but a smooth surface ready for three coats of primer and another three of Rover Platinum Silver and it was looking good.

I had already got a refurb kit for the master cylinder, I have refurbed master cylinders so I wasn't expecting any problems, the first spring coil retainer was removed easily, allowing access to a second circlip, this was also removed without problem apart from breaking it.

I then came up against a solid white nylon ring that would not budge. I consulted the Stag Forum where it recommended drilling through this disc and inserting self tapping screws to help remove it, but even when this disc was removed there was a further circlip deep down inside the barrel that needed special long nose circlip pliers to remove. The concern was that it would be easy to scratch the bore and the general consensus was that it was probably better to fork out for a professionally refurb cylinder that had the barrel bored out and sleeved with a stainless steel liner.

I made the decision and ordered an exchange service, master cylinder, new for old, just like Aladdin's lamp. All I had to do was bolt the original plastic brake fluid reservoir onto the master cylinder and two nuts secured the cylinder to the servo. It is all back in the garage now, waiting to be reattached to the car when the engine bay has been repainted.

BRAKES CALLIPERS

We have been ensconced in our country house for  a week now, we house sit once a year, whilst good friends, the owners, go way down South for a month. The big plus is that there is a very large, heated, brightly lit and well equipped shed in the back garden.

I usually make good use of  this facility and this year it coincided with refurbing the brakes on the Stag. Before we left home I removed the discs from the brake callipers and blew out the two pistons from each calliper by using  the airline from my compressor, I managed to bruise my left thumbnail as the first piston suddenly popped out, after that I was a little more careful.

 I carefully transported all the bits into my temporary work shop and thoroughly cleaned everything using brake cleaner after removing the old rubber seals and thin, very rusty, retaining rings that held the dust seals in place. All was going well, one set of new rubber seals fitted and the thin dust seal metal retaining ring fitted. Beginners luck I guess as when I tried to fit the next retaining ring I just couldn't get it to sit inside the groove in the calliper and I damaged two of the rings beyond use in trying. The photo shows one of the old rusty rings and one of the new ones I damaged along with the new rubber seals and rings. I seriously considered that I would have to buy two new or reconditioned callipers.

The next day I brought back from my garage a few more tools and I was able to gently coax the last bright metal retaining ring from the refurb kits into place, that was a relief.

 I had hoped that the pistons, when cleaned and polished could be reused, but on close inspection, although the actual sealing surfaces looked OK there was two much rust elsewhere, so I decided to order new ones and another refurb kit to replace the metal rings that I had buggered.

All arrived now and using the method previously adopted the last two metal rings were eased into place. I lubed the new pistons with brake fluid and one by one pushed them in by hand as far as I could and then I used a G clamp to push them fully in.

After I carefully masked off all the bits that I didn't want to paint, like the new pistons i started to spray with special high temperature calliper paint.

The paint takes much longer to dry than normal spray paint, so after three coats I will leave it overnight to harden before I turn the callipers over and spray three coats on the underside.

Callipers nice and shiny now and just have the brake pads to fit, then ready to take back to my cold garage to refit to Stella. that will be the start of putting it all back together. I still have lots of rubbing down in the engine bay yet before I can respray, but warmer weather seems along way off at the moment.