The purpose of this Blog

This blog is to detail my 50 years (1973 - 2023) with a 1928 Chevrolet tourer, affectionately called "The Red Chev".

The acquisition, restoration, improvements and my experiences over the years are covered in as much detail as I can remember.

Some of the later postings include car club outings and other vintage car items that I hope will be of interest to people.

If you have the time, scroll back to where it all began in 1973 and follow the journey so far.

Thanks for dropping by.

Regards Ray Dean


See my new section "The Red Chev - Repairs, Improvements, Maintenance and Technical Details" located on the left hand side of the screen.




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Monday, June 6, 2011

2011 - February - Good Brakes at Last

The brakes on the Chev had been a cause of concern since the car was restored for my daughter's wedding in 2007. As much as I tried to get them working better, and they were still average, and that's an under statement. I was now driving the car further and faster than before, and hit and miss brakes are bad enough around the suburbs at 35mph, but on the open road at a cracking 45 to 50mph, well that's another story.

Fading brakes were becoming the norm.

I made numerous enquiries from commercial brake shops with the majority not able to supply a soft lining to replace the modern hard linings. One brake shop could supply soft linings, but could only bond the linings, and wanted to charge like a wounded bull. All the advice I was given by Chev experts was to rivet the linings to reduce the chance of brake squeal.

After consulting local Chev experts, I rang Kevin Smith in NSW who had assisted me previously, and was the person I thank for introducing me to long reach spark plugs, Auto lite 3077's.
Kevin was excellent, and after discussing what the best solution was, I stripped out the front and rear linings and posted them of to Kevin.

About 3 weeks later I received the new linings and had them installed in about a week.

Even though they are still bedding in, for the first time in many years I had brakes that I was confident with, very fiddly to get set up correctly, but they pull the bloody thing up.

That's a bonus.

Thanks Kevin, as always your help was much appreciated.

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