Somehow the car ended up on the back burner and then the heat got turned off.
This is actually a rather cool little car with a hot V6 Essex with Interceptor carbs, and all. What is nice is that it is properly registered and on the road.
My friend asked me to "just have a look at the brakes"; so some weeks ago we dragged the car off the trailer where it has lived for nobody knows how long.
The brakes were seized solid.
I got the car up on trestles in the shop and after evicting some seriously cheesed off spiders, started to try and convince the drums of the rear wheels to part company with the locked brakes.
Long story short - it took two hours of dedicated application of the knockometer and some juicy vocabulary to get the two brake drums off.
The front brakes were a similar story as the once brand new discs were so rusted that they looked like scrap iron.
I decided to remove the whole brake system; master cylinder, calipers, discs, shoes, wheel cylinders, drums, flexible pipes and took it in to the local brake specialist.
They managed to salvage the discs by skimming it and we ended up replacing the master cylinder and rear wheel cylinders with new units, the drums were skimmed and the shoes were rebonded and matched to the drums.
However they told me that the calipers were beyond repair, as they could not manage to free the pistons, even after soaking them in release agent for a week.
A further dilemma was that I could not find replacements, as nobody were able to identify what car the calipers originally came from. ( Oh, the fun of dealing with old cars)
I decided to go to the source and contacted the Girlock factory, in Isando.
It was agreed that I could bring the calipers in and that they would see what they could do. This happened on Saturday, a week ago.
Today I went to collect the calipers and was amazed at what they had achieved.
Both calipers were stripped, cleaned properly, inspected, new pistons and seals fitted.
After cleaning, it was determined that the calipers are ATE units, originally from a Type 3 aircooled Kombi (Caravelle shape) - not even stuff that they manufacture.
To say that I was massively impressed with the result is an understatement and I would like to give a BIG shoutout to the Girlock factory and especially to Chris, whom I feel went out of his way to make my problem disappear.
I now need to replace the front wheel bearings and then I can start re-assembling the brakes.
The car will however still be some way from returning to the road, as when I connected the new battery this morning, smoke came from the engine wiring where the rats had their christmas party. But that is a story for another time.
