Better Beaters - Building Cars and Daily Drivers

 Still working on the Plymouth. Part Three

This photo lays out the position of the spring and pawl assembly.
photo source: AACA forums.

Fixing the hand brake release spoon. 

The handbrake wasn't working when I test drove the car. The seller told me that it had quit working sometime in the past, and that he just left it in gear when he parked. That works of course, but if you want to leave the car running in neutral for whatever reason, you have to scrounge up a piece of 2x4 to use as a wheel chock. 

I imagine that the handbrake got stuck in the applied position and some mechanic backed off of the adjustment to get slack in the cable. Then the ratchet was fiddled with until the handle was freed, This probably caused the spring to be completely dislodged. The ratchet mechanism was no longer ratcheting, but the handle could be pulled back easily and released. 

They looked similar...but...

The original spring, which is pictured above, had flattened out and had fallen to the end of the hand brake lever. I'd looked in the parts book and had seen what the spring should look like. The existing spring had actually had a spot of brazing added to it to keep it in shape. That might have worked for awhile, but forty or so years later it had lost it's temper.

I looked in a couple of online parts suppliers but they didn't list it. Andy Bernbaum did, but it was listed at 70.00! For a darn little spring. So I kept looking elsewhere. Finally I dismantled the handbrake lever and removed the old spring. I took it with me to my local big OSH hardware store to see if they had a usable spring available that could work as a substitute. 

I found a torsion spring that looked pretty similar for 1.50 and brought it home.

It was about the same size. You can note that the ends exit the top of the coil, but I didn't know if that would make a difference or not. 

I hoped that I could make this spring work.

I flattened out both ends of the new spring, to make it a bit wider where it rested on the pawl. The original spring is doubled over at this point. I took a short section of copper tubing and hammered it flat. I did that to both ends of the spring. I hoped that it would help keep it located in the lever assembly.

I found a photo that illustrated the lay out of the components and reassembled the handle. The spoon would depress, and would spring back. It did ratchet once, but after that, the pawl would not engage. 

I decided that I'd buy the 70.00 dollar spring, I didn't want to keep the car in pieces. But I took another look on the web. Strangely enough, the exact same spring was listed on EBay. My Wife found it for me. I made an offer of 30.00, (should have bid less!) and it was accepted. 

I don't quite understand how or why a parts supply store would be willing to discount a part that much. I'm sure that this is not a part that gets a lot of sales.

Maybe the moral of the story is that if you look for a part from a supplier, you should also search for the same part on EBay. You might be able to buy it at a lower price. It couldn't hurt. 

Once the part arrived I installed it and it worked perfectly! 

However the cable had too much slack to give the brake adequate grip.

The brake is an interesting anachronism,
but all Chrysler products had them.

I have the shop manual for the car, and it detailed how to adjust the hand brake unit. Mopars from this period have a very different kind of hand/emergency/parking brake. Most cars have a cable that applies pressure to the rear brakes shoes via a cable and pulley system. 

These 1930's to early 1950's Mopars harken back to the turn of the last century, by using an external band brake! There is a drum that is attached to the output shaft of the transmission. A movable band lined with friction material wraps around this band and tightens when the handbrake lever is applied. The earliest brakes used on cars were of this type. They were usually used only on the rear wheels. Mopar touted these as being much better than a cable operated rear brake shoe design. They stated that it was superior because it was completely independent of the main braking system. I suppose that if the wheel cylinders in the rear drums sprung a big leak, it could drench the rear shoes with fluid and make them useless. 

Almost every other car made since that time, has used the rear brake shoe system. I suppose that the Mopar system adds an amount of extra reliability.

I first tried to get the brake to work by readjusting the slack in the cable. I imagine that when the handbrake spring broke, the previous owner was unable to release the brake, and a mechanic loosened up the cable to free the brake. I tightened it up but there was still too much play in the system. So I tightened up the band itself. This is what the manual specifies: don't substitute a cable adjustment for a band adjustment! 

Now the brake works pretty well, it can hold the car from moving on a slight decline. I will make further adjustments if needed. Replacement friction material is available, if I end up needing it. I can't imagine that the brake ever got much use except when parking the car.

Having an operational handbrake adds another layer of safety and convenience while driving the car. 

Now I'll turn my attention to replacing the door lock cylinders. They are so worn out that some of the pins have fallen out of the rotating cylinders! The seller also told me that he just left the car unlocked when he used it. He usually kept it in the garage at home.

Even though the car was previously restored, enough time had passed ( forty years?) that it has needed some extra effort to bring it back up to snuff. I'm sure glad that I didn't buy another project car, this time. I can spend some of my time working on it, and more of my time driving it.

That is a much better deal!