handbrake work

The new homemade guide next to the old one. This is a temporary fix, just need to tac weld in place for now.

Mk3 handbrake

Need to get the handbrake working perfect as this will be the only safety if the single line hydraulic brakes come to fail.

In the center of the photo the cable is supposed to slide through a metal guide. On mine it is completely smashed on one side so I ll have to make a temporary one until the frame is off the car and I have easier access.

I must be must be due to a UJ failure in the past as there are half shaft rubbing marks on the chassis ! Glad I wasn't in the car at that time :)

Spitfire rear brakes installation

New rear brakes are installed and ready to be adjusted.

 Of course the adjuster was seized but it is now moving freely after a good cleanup

 

Now I highly recommend the tools below. They can be found cheap and they'll avoid you a nervous breakdown trying to place parts and compress springs at the same time.

Starting on the rear brakes

A well placed blow with my preferred mallet, the cover is off. The impact gun to undo the brake hose from the bracket.

Ah ! Don't you love it when you get to use your preferred tools ?

Driver side caliper ready !

Rebuilt Caliper

Finally finished rebuilding one complete caliper. Second one will be much faster now that I just have to replicate.

I was getting rather aggravated while trying to put the metal clio around the rubber piston boot especially as I had to be extremely careful not to damage it so I modified an old pair of pliers I had to install, welded one small washer on each side and that worked really nice.

First attempt at powder coating today. That's the part at the bottom of the photo, I still have a lot to learn about covering with just the right amount of powder. Not enough powder then I changed the settings and a big cloud came out...

Darling what did you put in our oven !??!!!

Luckily for my life I now have my own oven in the garage :-) Pretty happy with my $20 find.

Caliper is curing and oven will be perfect to powder coat I hope. Tomorrow I ll try my first part.

Caliper paint

Finally went down the easy route of caliper special paint.
As usual the most annoying part was the cleaning and prep.
Next : Install the new shiny pistons and rebuild kit !

As well I was worried that with powder coating the paint might sneak into places I dont want it to be and I didn't want this caliper to be my first attempt at powder coating