Okay, first task for today was to reassemble the one remaining wheel as I now had the full compliment of clips etc.
Jack it up, wheel off, drum off...
...This one hasn't been dismantled.
Cue much swearing as I'd been sitting around waiting for a week to get bits that it turned out I didn't need. Have also confirmed that the handbrake is working on this one too. It will happily hold the car sufficiently well that I can't push it, the cable is still binding quite a bit though - will give it a thorough greasing as soon as my grease gun appears (there's a grease nipple on the cable at the mid-point).
Fine...Stuffed that wheel back on (with a full compliment of four wheel nuts rather than the two it came with) and turned my attention to the rest of the brakes. I knew I had quite a few bits of NOS braking kit floating around, so decided to do a bit of a stock take.
First up was a new full front-rear section, still in its massive cardboard sleeve. That was immediately dug out and I set about installing it. I was definitely right to do this before putting the floor in, as threading it through the cutouts in the chassis would have been quite fiddly from underneath.
I needed a bit more height to get at the union between the two sections at the front (which is helpfully under the bit where the floor and body overlap, so there's no access from above!)...however was able to do something you just can't do with normal cars.
Now this doesn't look too unusual...what's unusual is that I was able to simply pick up the front wheel by hand and plonk it down on that wheel rim. I should have used a couple really, but one actually gave me ample space to work. Rear wheels were of course chocked so it couldn't fall off.
You can't really see much difference here - but there's now a nice new brake hydraulic line running from the front distribution T right back to the identical one which splits the feed to the rear wheels just ahead of the rear axle.
Even successfully managed to get it back into all the original clips. I'll probably cut a bit of rubber pipe and put it in where the pipe goes past the upright and vanishes under the body - I don't like the idea of the pipe rubbing on that unfinished metal edge.
I've also swapped out the front flexi for a NOS one. The rubber on the one that was there actually looked fine externally (no visible perishing, and it was definitely still flexible, not having turned to plastic like a lot do), but the ferrules were quite badly rusted. The new one aside from being a bit dusty looks and feels like it just came off the production line.
There are a few other bits of rigid line that I just need to figure out the correct location of. Think I should have everything I need save for maybe the line from the front union to the flexi for the front and the offside rear...So that's definitely saved me some work!
I'm a specialist on them...
