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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Saturday, April 27, 2019

Unplanned Brake Work on the Red Chev

The Red Chev hasn't seen much love and care for a little while, but I had no choice today and had to spend a couple of hours fixing a brake lock up, as it would no move.

The last few times backed out and reparked in the garage there has been a bit of brake drag, so it was one of those jobs I put on the back burner as she wasn't clocking up many miles lately.

Soon discovered it was the rear brakes, further investigation identified the hand brake on the drivers side.

The problem was the handbrake was not evenly adjusted on both rear wheels, and the last few times I adjusted the hand brake I was bringing the drivers side closer to the drum while the passenger side was only partially engaging, and today it grabbed and would not move.

Luckily for me it was in the garage.

Once into the job it was an easy fix.

Off came the hub cap and then the wheel using a wheel puller, in went the trolley jack and a pair of axles stands.



Made the most of having the wheel off and gave both inner and outer brake bands a clean and rough up and used emery to deglaze the brake drum.

Cleaned up a bit of surface rust from the axle taper and checked the axle key and key way at the same time.

You can see on the bottom right hand side of the picture that the inner brake band has not fully returned to the stop.


After disconnecting the brake rod from the rear axle the brake band easily returned to the stop.



Then it was just a matter of lengthening the brake rod so that the hand brake was working evenly on both sides, with no drag when hand brake released, and both wheels locked up when handbrake fully on


Test drive, all was well, and best handbrake I have had for some time.

Lesson learned is "Make sure the handbrake is adjusted evenly on both wheels.