Greasy Front Brakes

dougklink

Member
I use the bearing buddies as well, turned them down on my lathe. Very simple at any machine shop. They keep the grease in the hub under a little pressure which keeps the water out nicely.
 

jfriese

Active Member
Like I said in an earlier post, after using a spacer to move the double lipped inner seal out a bit, so that both lips make contact with the hub, and using bearing buddies as caps, that system works very well. I grease mine through the bearing buddies, which I think I bought from Snowbird, but I use grease VERY sparingly, perhaps less than one pump each year. Thanks to drought and California regulations I haven't used my cars much in the last few years but the system worked well for several years.

John Friese
67 White
67 Red
 
What I found when taking my hubs off was a variety of failures caused by a variety of issues. Now I am trying to determine what the best method of repair is for each.

I found greasy brake shoes, which I believe was a result of the inner seal failure letting grease in from the back. The repair is to replace the seals with dual lip ones combined with repairing the running surface on the hub with redi sleeves. New shoes from Gord completes this one along with not putting too much grease back in.

I found frozen pistons in rusty wheel cylinders. As water will always be able to get into this area, it is important to grease and seal the rubber dust caps with red & blue product (from another post). My cylinders were not in very good condition and will be replaced.

I found water had gotten into the wheel bearings through the metal caps. The outer wheel bearings had been replaced, but the inners were original. Both will be replaced. Now the alternatives are available that were not previously to put bearing buddies on the hub.
I have never turned the drums either because I did not want to decrease the inner diameter, but they will get resurfaced now as well.

So, my conclusion was that the brakes did not work well because the backing plates had been switched, the brake shoes were contaminated with grease, & some of the wheel cylinders were frozen. The wheel bearings were replaced while there for good measure. Everything cleaned, greased, and put back together should prove to be a very different and safer result. Did I forget anything? Probably.

Not done yet, but this is my summary of what happened & what can be done to repair these things.
Thanks for the advise & comments!
 

jfriese

Active Member
The ultimate front cylinder fix for me included brass sleeved cylinders and very tight boots from White Post, custom machined stainless steel pistons to replace the pot metal ones that always corroded, rubber internal seals from Gordon's, which worked better than the ones from White Post, and of course Red brake grease under the boots.

There was once a time when I thought of selling this package but those stainless pistons cost a fortune and liability concerns killed that idea.

John Friese
67 White
67 Red
 
Hub seal surface sleeved.
Sleeve was too tall so had to have it machined down. Ready to install now!

IMG_20200218_154430087.jpg
 

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