Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

Shame, there's always enough to go around.

Oops!

My Bad?

This is the kind of thing that only a ham handed kid is supposed to do. It all started out so innocently. I thought that I had a really clever idea.

The clutch master is bolted to a piece of steel.

There was no effective way to hold a cylindrical piece of iron securely in the vice without possibly damaging it. So I bolted it to a piece of steel, then held that in the vice. The idea worked out quite well. Unfortunately that Harbor Freight  electrical impact wrench couldn't loosen that end cap. All it did was clatter away. I guess it was going to take more than 230 lbs/ft. of torque to do the job.

Then I clamped the the assembly in my vice.

I guess that I should have thought this through a bit.
This isn't the breaker bar, it's just a big crescent wrench.

I thought that I could skip the step of bolting the brake master to the steel. Instead I just ran two long bolts through the mounting holes and clamped them in the vise directly.

Again the HF impact wrench was unable to loosen the end cap. So out came the breaker bar. I should have realized that there is a reason that it is called that!

The torque of the three foot breaker bar bent the bolts, which allowed the cylinder to twist in the vise and damage the mounting lugs. Rats!

The master cylinder can be saved. I'll have to grind down the broken surface and make some metal spacers to make up the difference.  Still it's very disheartening to me.

I'm not sure where to go at this point. There's a Jaguar salvage yard in Stockton that might have some rebuildable masters. I've looked online and found some new universal masters. Or I could be a sensible person and send them off to White Post Restorations, a shop that advertises that it specializes in rebuilding old brake cylinders.

But I think it's time to put the Mark aside, literally! I'm going to move it into the sideyard next to garage while I look for some solutions. I'm also going to direct my efforts towards the cars that will provide me with the best results, my XJS and especially my XJ6.

But first, I wanted to reassemble the rear brake drums and see if the hand brake will now be functional. I'm always very careful when I jack up the car, pull the wheels and work underneath the chassis. Safety has to be the number one priority.

Why do British cars run their exhaust pipes so low/

It all went together pretty easily. I did the right side first, and it of course it took the most time. Lessons learned were applied to the left side and the process went much more quickly. The handbrake system is now operational.

Which is good news since I plan on rolling the Mark down into the sideyard. I don't want it rolling away out of control! That had actually happened to me once!

I had taken the old '22 Dodge hot rod to the Good Guys swap meet in Pleasanton in an effort to sell it. This was before I had a truck of my own. The plan was to rent a moving van and car trailer from         U haul to tow the car to the show. Unfortunately none of the local U hauls had either in stock. In desperation I ended at at the Penske truck rental yard. They had a car/equipment trailer, but not a quarter ton pick up. Sooo they said, we'll give you this two axle dump truck for the same price. We're talking about a big, diesel dump truck!

My Son and I managed to push the Dodge up onto the trailer and chain it down. Which wasn't easy since the trailer didn't have a winch. By the time we reached the fairgrounds it was too late and they wouldn't let us in. We drove back home, and since I was so bad at backing up the rig I found an easy parking spot a couple of blocks away.

The next morning we arrived at the fairground gates nice and early. We got plenty of comments about the dump truck but found a spot to spend the day at the  car corral. Can you believe it?  Nobody wanted the damn thing! I cut my asking price below what I paid for it. One guy came back several times but finally told me that could only pay me an embarrassingly low price, and he didn't want to insult me with the offer. Insult me I told him! He just couldn't bring himself to make the offer.

We returned home and since I was still terrible at backing up the rig I parked it on the street around the corner, facing uphill! That would make it easy to unload it, just let it roll down the ramps. Just to be safe I figured I should tie a length of regular jute rope to stop it as it reached the bottom of the ramps. My junior high school Son told me that it wasn't such a good idea. That old hot rod was heavier than it looked. I told him not to worry about it.  It would be fine. He insisted on stringing all the tie down chains together and hooking it to the front axle. Kids, what do they know? I just decided to humor him.

We rolled the car down the ramps and as the rope uncoiled and reached it's limit it just snapped, without even slowing the car down one bit! Holy Cow! As it reached the limits of the chain it stopped abruptly as it crashed up against the curb, thankfully coming to a stop. Did I mention that while the car had a crude steering set up, it didn't have any brakes? The downhill slope extends for at least three blocks. I had visions of that Dodge crashing through somebody's living room. How would I explain that?

Like I said, there's always enough shame to go around!