Re: First start up (disasterous) t500
Posted: Fri Jan 04, 2019 10:39 am
When you apply the brakes, certainly when new, only bits of the shoes will contact the drum. To get more area of shoe in contact with the drum, machine shops can stick the shoes on a lathe and remove the high spots etcSplant wrote:What is the radiusing you do to them ?can't see any make on the shoes I've got on at the moment
This rather chirpy bloke calls it re-arcing (which I think is a better description) and has a mate who has a machine that does it
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T0sdYjuyIYQ" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
It is a bit tedious, but you can do it yourself.
What I did was buy some chalk, and rub it on the brake shoes. Reassemble the wheel and brake (remembering to pull on the brake before tightening the axle as this allegedly centres the shoes in the drum). Release the brake, the wheel and slowly apply the brakes for at least one full revolution of the wheel, preferably several.
Disassemble and you will see the chalk has been removed from some areas of the shoes but not others. The clean areas are the high spots on the shoes, the chalky areas the low spots. The aim is to have most of the chalk removed so maximum contact area.
Using sandpaper (not coarse from memory but not emery either) sand the clean areas a bit to remove the high spots, rechalk, reassemble, retest and repeat. This is tedious but within 6 or so goes you should have 80-90% of the shoes clean after a brake application - shoes radiussed.
I found out this process by googling. I think the old fellas on BSAs and wotnot used to do this all the time and was led to it from the classic motorbike websites.
I would suggest getting some EBC shoes first though - night and day in my case
Best of luck