August 2nd, 2008

Today was the first real day of progress in a long time. The day started with a dismantled front left brake and an untouched front right brake. First thing I did was reassemble the one. I pulled the other drum off, of course, as a reference. The reassembly went rather smoothly once I got rolling with it. I had to clean and re-use some old components, mainly levers and arms and such.



At the flip of a coin, Mike and I decided to work on the wheel hubs. The front left had already been separated from the drum with the proper application of brute force some weeks previous. The inner bearing seemed fine, but the outer bearing race had some pitting. I really have no idea how this happened. I had already purchased a new bearing/race assembly, so it was a simple matter to install that. Or so I thought. I was able to drive in the new race flush with the outer rim of the hub, but tapping around the edges with a hammer on a screwdriver was a bit to subtle to drive it all the way in. I muddled around the garage a bit, looking for some other solution. I needed something about the same size as the old bearing to drive in, to apply somewhat equal pressure all the way around. After a few laps around, I came upon the solution, right there on my workbench! I simply used the old race to drive in the new, and then drove the old back out. Then it was a simple matter to drop the hub back in the wheel and call it done.


Moving on to the second hub, it was still rather firmly attached to the brake drum. I figured it was simply a matter of applying the proper brute force, as mentioned in the previous example. Not so, says the truck. This drum/hub assembly differed from the other. There were three pins driven through to hold it together that the other side lacked. We only noticed this after pounding repeatedly on the hub, trying to drive it free, and the drum showed signs of deformation. We ground, we chiseled, we ground some more, we beat it some more, and we were successful! The remains of th pins were simply ground flush with the hub flange, rather than us attempting to drive them all the way out. Came out rather well.

The bearings in this second hub checked out fine, so I reassembled it and moved onto the last remaining old brake. The shoes and hardware came off without a hitch. The anchor pin (the nut in the middle of the top in the picture) was removed from the other wheel by, again, brute force. The same approach was also taken to this bolt, which was undoubtedly last tightened over 40 years ago by someone at GM. Unfortunately, perhaps due to a lack of application of penetrating oil beforehand, or chaos theory, or just plain dumb luck, this one would not come loose. I broke my ½" breaker bar (using a cheater) where the head joins the shaft. I then proceeded to break Erik's ½" Craftsman breaker bar by twisting the square end off. I need to get this bolt off, as it holds the (leaking) cylinder on. The cylinder can't be rebuilt in place, as there are raised portions of the backer plate on either end of the cylinder which would prevent me from removing the internals.

The next step, once this final brake is rebuilt, is to replace all the old steel and rubber lines.




This image has been reproduced without permission from the Haynes Repair Manual for the Chevrolet Camaro, 1982-1992 models. The parts are nearly identical.