Project 1974 MGB GT - The Mustard (Mit) Mobility Scooter - After nearly 7yrs, The End (for me)

[SiC]

It's probably not as thick as the picture shows. But I did wonder if it needed more to stop it squealing.

I've left a jack handle pressing on the pedal which hopefully will help with the bleeding. Once it's back down again, I will put a whole lot more brake fluid through to really make sure the system is bled through.

[scdan4]

Brake fluid is killed dead by water, so I always throw buckets and buckets of water everywhere if any escapes. Better than paper towels.

sounds like there is still air. Squeeling I would hope would stop after bed in, but in the absence of shims I can’t help thinking that you’ve chiselled the anti squeal off from the back of the pads.

id try to get everything a bit settled by using them firmly for a short while (yeah yeah) then adjust up (set hubs to just grip /give, then set lever) bleed (you are only just cracking open the bleed nipple? I find that makes a difference). But I have zero mgb experience.

 

[mrbenn]

The only time I've had trouble bleeding brakes is when I used a pressure bleeder on my Morris Minor. Spent ages trying to get a good feel to the pedal and just couldn't. Then I bled it up manually and all was immediately well.

I'm quite happy to accept it was operator error in my case, but worth bearing in mind.

[captain_70s]

Excessive pedal travel certainly sounds like air in the system. My Acclaim was the same after my recent work on the front calipers but has since returned to normal under use.

[Exiled_Tat_Gatherer]

I'm not sure how you did it...…….. but assuming you did the furthest from the bleeder first approach...……

Either way - definitely sounds like air in the system... you HAVE checked for leaks since bleeding - yes?

Not to piss on your chips, but perhaps another seal somewhere has blown?

[SiC]

9 minutes ago, Exiled_Tat_Gatherer said:

I'm not sure how you did it...…….. but assuming you did the furthest from the bleeder first approach...……

Either way - definitely sounds like air in the system... you HAVE checked for leaks since bleeding - yes?

Not to piss on your chips, but perhaps another seal somewhere has blown?

Yeah I did the rears first after I'd change them while doing the furthest first, then replaced the front calipers and bled them. I clamped the hoses in-between changing the calipers and not a lot leaked out.

Not seen any leaks and it's holding pressure when you push on the pedal. Hope it hasn't blown a seal, cylinders are new, calipers are new, flexis are new last year and master is new last year too! I reckon one half of the caliper hasn't bled through properly. Not helped by being tilted upwards as on stands. 

[cort16]

I’d be tempted to gravity bleed it. Leave them all open with the lid off the cap overnight that should get fluid to the callipers at least.

You did put the new callipers on the  right side?

[Mally]

You mentioned a hose clamp.

Fit your hose clamp to the flexy at the back axle and try the pedal.

Then fit the clamp to a front flexy and try the pedal.

Then fit the clamp to the other front flexy and try the pedal.

This may tell you where the air or excess travel is.

[artdjones]

That coating you chipped off the pads is there to stop squeal.

[1970mgb]

FWIW, the proper bleeding order on RHD cars is left rear->right rear->Left front->Right front. Reverse the two front ones on LHD cars, but the rear stays the same.

[SiC]

2 hours ago, artdjones said:

That coating you chipped off the pads is there to stop squeal.

Yeah I was thinking it's possibly of some use as I was chipping it off. However the original pads didn't need it! Also it was extremely badly applied on the back, so the bits where it hadn't fallen off, didn't take much persuading for the rest to come off. The pads didn't extrude confidence that they were of half decent quality. 

They'll stay on there for now as I need to get the brakes working properly again first. Luckily they're cheap enough to replace (under £15), so can get another set easily. Noticed there are Delphi branded ones about for not a lot of difference in price, so I may try something like that next. 

[SiC]

2 hours ago, Mally said:

You mentioned a hose clamp.

Fit your hose clamp to the flexy at the back axle and try the pedal.

Then fit the clamp to a front flexy and try the pedal.

Then fit the clamp to the other front flexy and try the pedal.

This may tell you where the air or excess travel is.

Very good idea! From the other forum, I'm wondering if air may have got into the brake servo after the reservoir emptying incident. That caused me a whole heap of pain after replacing the master before I found out about that. 

Also I ended up bleeding it by foot in the end. Maybe, as mrbenn has said, I can't trust a pressure bleeder to do it properly on these Lockheed systems. 

[cort16]

I've never had luck with those easy bleed systems. If you let it gravity bleed then you just need to get rid of the air in callipers you should pretty much have a hard pedal the next day, I've done this a couple of times it's the lazy mans solution. Are the bleed nipples at the top of the callipers I can't tell from he pictures? Easy to do when your changing both.

[busmansholiday]

As a consolation, I' m having the same problems with mine. At least though it starts and the tyres aren't going down regularly unlike the TF. 

Just jobs on the list, after I find out why the central heating boiler is only giving out hot water, no heating.

[SiC]

The annoying thing is that they were much better before I fiddled with them! Need to go up to the garage and see if leaving the pedal forced down has helped in anyway. I haven't taken the cap off, but I can't imagine that'll make masses of difference. I think they have a tiny breather hole in the caps anyway?

[busmansholiday]

Mine haven't been right since I put new calipers on the front last year.  Bled them, bled them, rebuilt master cylinder, bled them, new rear adjusters, trip to A&E, bled them etc. Mine are dual cylinder do just that little bit more to annoy you.

Think I need a holiday from it all.

[SiC]

Just done the swapsy thing tonight at the garage on this and the Boxster. I've left the cap off and a jack handle pressing on the brake pedal in an attempt to help get any air out of the brakes. Unfortunately the pedal was just as crap as before. It will stop the car and it'll dive under heavy braking, but full brake travel won't lock the wheels. This is clearly unacceptable and needs sorting.

This evening I jacked the backend up and had another go on the adjustors. To tighten the shoes to the point the wheel was locked took more than 6 clicks on the adjustor. It was more but I lost track - hard to judge when it has exactly clicked when on your back and arm stretched out + contorted.

Once I'd tightened it up solid, I backed off till the wheel spun relatively freely. This was around 3 or 4 clicks ish on each side. Giving the foot brake a go, it immediately felt hard near the top of the travel. Massive improvement from before! Will need a drive to fully check this though and maybe a bit deceptive in use.

Handbrake then needed a bit of adjustment as it was causing a bit of drag. A good few turns loosened that off. Now 3 clicks on the handbrake will lock both the wheels solid. Releasing it will allow both sides to spin. This is a massive improvement on before! I do think I'll need to take the pivot point off and have a cleanup on that.

So hopefully tomorrow I'll be able to see if this fiddling has resolved the brakes. At least getting them to the point to where they were similar before I did all this fiddling!

The car is still booked into my local garage on Thursday for them to have a good check over on my work. Triple check I haven't made any mistakes. Of course brakes are one of the most important things on a car!

I bought a mix set of shims too, so I need to get the hubnuts back off on the front and get them set up properly. Hopefully this won't be too much of an irritating job.

Finally after the pad shambles, while I was in Moss I asked to see their pads. Currently ones on the car are from Midland Sports Classic. I have found much of their stuff is identical to what is sold at Moss + others, but just cost less. However the pads are noticeably different. The MSC pads had that crappy rubber coating. These Moss pads have a proper shim with a rubber pad on.



You know how even seemly simples parts sometimes feels crap quality and other parts feel to be of much better quality? These pads are like that. Despite a similar retail price, they feel much better made than the pads on there at the moment. I'll give the car another spin tomorrow. If the squeal is gone, I'll leave the existing ones on there for now. If there is even a hint of squeal, they will be replaced with these. The current ones of course are pretty much brand new, but these parts are cheap enough to swap over and just chalk it up to experience.

I was hoping to go down to the Haynes Breakfast Meet in this tomorrow morning, but I need to have a proper check through on these brakes again before I go on any real journey. My number one priority with this car right now is to have it safe and ready for Shitefest.

[Zelandeth]

That spotty residue on the paint of the Boxster looks to be spider droppings.

Is the reason that our garage door opener gets de-spidered quite regularly or I wind up with the same right in the middle of the windscreen of the Invacar.

 

[SiC]

Rain, rain, go away and come back another day. Please.

Thought I'd have a look at the pivot point today.



Became a fight to remove. Tried pulling it apart on the car but ended up having to unbolt the mechanism entirely from the diff.


Turns out the middle pivot shaft is siezed on and in. The only reason the handbrake worked is because someone else undid the mounting bolt and let that act as the rotatory pivot section.

Used a succession of spanners as a spacer to help pull the shaft out.


Unfortunately it buggered up the thread on the other side. I did try removing the mounting point part but that was refusing to pull off. So the force of pulling it though stripped the thread entirely.


Found my dad's old tap and die set that he gave me (instead of throwing it away). Not sure if it's the right size or coarseness but it seems to be doing the job. Worse case I'll just have to buy another.


Back off outside in a moment to sand the shaft down, plenty of grease and put it all back together again. Annoyingly I was hoping to be sorting the front end out but this took a lot longer than I expected, due to these unforseen issues.

[busmansholiday]

12 minutes ago, SiC said:

 but this took a lot longer than I expected, due to these unforseen issues.

Surely by now, with this and the ADO, you're realised that any half hour job always turns into a three hour episode if things go slightly well.

[captain_70s]

13 minutes ago, busmansholiday said:

Surely by now, with this and the ADO, you're realised that any half hour job always turns into a three hour episode if things go slightly well.

I've taken to assuming any job on a shite old car will render it unusable and requiring several weeks of work. This includes cleaning, polishing and topping up the screenwash. 

[SiC]

All back together and just gone for a spin. Can now lock the wheels - in the wet at least. That's probably about three quarters down on the pedal travel.

Will try popping on the pressure bleeder in a bit and just cracking open those brake servo fittings to make sure no air is trapped in there. I suspect not though and the problems were just the back brakes backed off far too far. 

Next up today, the clutch master! Hopefully this won't be too much of a disaster job... At least the clutch slave and flexi are new. 
 

1 hour ago, captain_70s said:

I've taken to assuming any job on a shite old car will render it unusable and requiring several weeks of work. This includes cleaning, polishing and topping up the screenwash. 

After your experiences, this is why I resist all urge to poke anything slightly suspect looking when cleaning the car. It's not so bad when I do on the 1100 as, at least when I'm working on that car, I have a welding torch to hand...

Still doesn't stop the paint from just falling off when shutting the door though!

[Mally]

Patina.

It adds value apparently

[SiC]

Fitted the clutch master cylinder this afternoon. Massively pissed off about it as I will explain later.

Front end up.


This is why it needs changing. Fluid is not that old.


Remove old fluid


Unbolt cylinder. This is such a massive polava to get to the bottom bolt. Pretty much spent an hour trying to get it out. Ended up removing the pushrod entirely.


Underneath looked grim. I hoovered this dirt and rust out. It's from leaking masters and split brake fluid that sits here.


Couldn't leave it unprotected, so literally poured some enamel paint down there and rubbed it around with a brush.


Looks flipping terrible. Standard SiC painting basically.


Master in


Then bleeding. This is where the pain really began. I know these can be a pain to bleed but this wasn't the problem.

Sodding shitty crappy fucking sodding poor quality aftermarket parts. Pissing all out.


Couldn't quite figure out where its leaking from as it was dripping from the middle at the bottom. I think the reservoir given the car is at an angle and the coupling is at the back. Tightening the coupling as tight as I could made no difference either.

The reservoir has this crappy design clamp around it that is supposed to hold it to the body. Looks a poor design to me. Tightening that clamp just stripped the thread on the bolt of the clamp.

I did actually figure out that the master on there is actually for a MGB V8. Apparently slightly smaller bore and so lighter on the pedal. But the bite point is much further down. That and the fact it's breaking up its seals internally, means I had to replace this. It did change gear (certainly better than it does now!) but I had noticed that it was progressively getting more difficult to select gears.

So I'll have to take this one back to Moss and get a new one. I might just buy one of the genuine AP ones that come in the tin case. Flipping expensive (£70) but look a better design. I don't like the tin ones as you can't monitor fluid levels. However that's more of a critical concern on the brake master rather than the clutch.

[captain_70s]

Grim.

The general consensus of the Dolly owners club is that you should always try and rebuild your old cylinders, as even if they are fairly pitted/fucked they probably won't be any less reliable than a brand new one. I replaced the seals on the one on my 1300 as it used to piss clutch fluid into the driver's side footwell and it was fairly painless if a bit fiddly. 

[SiC]

9 hours ago, captain_70s said:

Grim.

The general consensus of the Dolly owners club is that you should always try and rebuild your old cylinders, as even if they are fairly pitted/fucked they probably won't be any less reliable than a brand new one. I replaced the seals on the one on my 1300 as it used to piss clutch fluid into the driver's side footwell and it was fairly painless if a bit fiddly. 

I could get rebuild seals for the V8 master cylinder in there for £8 or so. Problem is, it'd still be the wrong spec master and also the hassle of having to rebuild it. But then it did do the job as master. Quite tempting as I've spent enough on this car already. Just really don't want to have to fuck around with this master again if seals make it leak. 

I wonder why it's got a V8 one on there? Maybe a previous owner (first probably) found it easier to actuate as they got older?

[captain_70s]

1 hour ago, SiC said:

I wonder why it's got a V8 one on there? Maybe a previous owner (first probably) found it easier to actuate as they got older?

May have been bought in error and simply fitted as, hey, it works!

The biting point in the Dolly was practically on the floor as the clutch is a nightmare to bleed and I never found it an inconvenience aside from having to re-familiarising myself with it after driving the Acclaim, which has a cable clutch and a biting point riiiiight at the top of the pedal travel.

[SiC]

Re-adjusting my driving style to get used to another car is fine as I do it all the time. Especially after owning quite a few cars over the years.

It's more that the MGB is a pain to get into gear as is. Reverse is a two handed affair - even after preselecting 2nd before hand. So anything that can help give more travel on the clutch and better disengagement is welcome.

Still debating to fix the V8 master or just buy an expensive (but pretty) tin can one and be done with it. When I bought the other master, at the time I didn't realise that the existing one is a V8 master. I assumed it was a modern but older design that had been subsequently been proceeded by a newer (cheaper) design.

The decision also depends what they have in stock on the shelf at Moss today too. I'm determined to get it to shitefest this weekend and it is due to go in to the garage on Thursday for brake check over, so needs to be at least drivable by then.

[purplebargeken]

No issues with tin ones. just means you have to physically check it a bit often. No great hardship unless it's dark, raining/snowing or other weather extreme.

[SiC]

There is an issue with them ... 73 bloody quid!

They do look pretty though. Fit and finish is way better than the cheapy one. Made by AP, so at least it has some brand which doesn't mind putting their name against it.


They're not actually gold unfortunately, their pictures lie. Just standard metal colour.

Bought one of those tin ones and seals to replace the original V8 version. I'll have a look at the bores first, if they're clean I'll replace the seals. Otherwise I'll fit the tin one.

Which in reality means as soon as I get my tools out and I'm trying to fit one back in, I'll just go sod it, I will fit the ready built version I have in my hand in.