Elan Parking Brakes, can they be made to work?

[Foxie]

No drawings, only pictures that tell a story.

Gary

Excellent !

I've been able to set up the park brake for many years now, but there's nothing thaty can't be improved

[stugilmour]

Does anyone make a tool that makes adjustment of the knurled bolts easier?

I use a 9/16" box spanner and as long as the adjuster is kept greased you can just turn it with your fingertips and do the adjustment with the car on the ground.

Roger, thanks for pic. Looking closely at Alex's first pic, I think I see my issue. The knurled adjuster nut is installed backwards on mine! I never dissassembled mine, so assuming DPO issue.

[garyeanderson]

I am a belts and suspenders type, the serrated adjustment nuts are unavailable (at least to my knowledge) so I adjust them and then use a 5/16 unc nylock to jam it (with antiseize on the threads).

Gary

[alexblack13]

Nothing wrong with belts and braces Gary... but if the little spring clips are there to lock into the serrations the adjuster nuts don't need locks. they should click click as one turns them and hold nicely in place too. Never known them to back off.

Nice job on the calipers there. Mine looked like that for a while. (Plated) Impossible to actually use the car and keep it looking like a show queen too.

Nice work Gary...

AL' ...

[garyeanderson]

Nothing wrong with belts and braces Gary... but if the little spring clips are there to lock into the serrations the adjuster nuts don't need locks. they should click click as one turns them and hold nicely in place too. Never known them to back off.

Nice job on the calipers there. Mine looked like that for a while. (Plated) Impossible to actually use the car and keep it looking like a show queen too.

Nice work Gary...

AL' ...

Hi Alex

Thanks for the complement, the calipers are just blasted and painted, new pistons and seals, nothing fancy.

This set was done 16 years ago and still looks ok.

I am not fussy once they are built and I put the first scratch in it. I don't think it took long so I can and do just enjoy the S2. The nuts are left slightly loose, it just the way I do it, I lost one once so I jam them now. It may not be the "correct" way, but it's the way that I do it...

Gary

[jk952]

Lots of info on the brake assemblies around, but if sticking in addition to other comments ... note the parking_brake pad casting hook pivots on a pull dowel, the dowel has a reduced diameter where the casting is to lay. Rust, incorrect vertical positioning of the dowel or castings can cause them to bind on the non-reduced dowel diameter, also the casting can bind in the holders due to rust or variation or bent conditions etc. so see that they can move in the holders. The pull dowel has I recall is a 10-32 thread (use a hardend thread) , it can be removed from the brake body but only use a dowel slide hammer puller as the casting can fracture easily of loaded offside, avoid removing unless necessary. (penetrating oil and a bit of heat helps if really seized)
I also used the coil spring to augment the parking_brake holders staying open. Here they only need work once for certification . Mine work fine, but rarely use them anyway....
jk

[elanner]

Jeff and Gary,

Ah-ha, I definitely don't have the little bushes. Big surprise.

If I understand your description/pictures, the purpose of the bushing is to prevent the bolt/nut from squeezing the rod flanges together such that they bind against the operating lever, right?

(Not knowing about the bushing) I briefly wondered whether this could be a problem when I was fitting my new rods. I concluded that it could be and that there should have been a dowel and cotter pin there rather than a nut/bolt. Given that I was busy with CV joints at the time I simply used a new nyloc nut and didn't tighten it down onto the rod flanges.

Anyway, now that I've looked at the parts list I see that a nut/bolt/bushing is the correct setup.

Anybody got any bushes?

Nick

[alexblack13]

Easy to make.

I used a bolt of the correct diameter in Stainless again, gave it a good slabber with some copperslip pushed it through the rod & hole and fitted a little nylock nut. Tighten until no play (OR rattle!!) and bobs your uncle.

But i can make the bushes if anyone is stuck. Steel /stainless / brass/ phsbro? easy peasy. I just did away with them because they are very fiddley..

Hey ho.. Have fun!

Al' ...

[stugilmour]

Well, finally got under the car today to take advantage of all the excellent advice. I think I got the parking brake working on my Plus 2 now; will see if it is still working correctly in a few weeks without additional adjustment or excessive paad wear. So here are some details while fresh in the mind...

The bushing referred to in Jeff's post and shown in Gary's first pics was missing from one side on my car. I fashioned up a replacement by drilling a nut and filing down the points to fit in the operating lever hole. Works much better now; I think with only one bush the tree was locking up the bushed side but no contact on the other side. As Jeff says, the operating lever hole is considerably bigger than the holes in the clevis. My bush is a bit short, but don't think it will be an issue as have made sure there is a bit of clearance on the clevis attachment and it's not binding.

Cleaned up the adjuster nuts and installed them the correct way round. The spring clips that ride in the knurling needed to be re-shaped as they had been riding on the 9/16" hex and were bent out too far to hit the knurling. Adjustment is now easy with the 9/16" deep socket. Installed compression springs and two washers as recommended to assist with keeping the pads off the rotor.

Bent the centralizing straps back to a 90 degree square configuration. Seem to act correctly now to hold the pads slightly off the rotor. As Rohan mentioned, they were bent considerable inward. this was probably the main problem with my setup.

Had binding on one pad on the pivot pin, and very difficult to remove pad. Was able to fit the new pad, but will have to keep an eye on it I guess.

Adjusted cable fully inward. Cable was fouling the dog bone to the sway bar (Spyder chassis; might be different routing on stock chassis). Must have made an assembly error when I had the engine out.

Assembled linkage as per Alex's excellent instructions. Pads adjusted so wheels spin freely while supported on the wishbones. The Spyder supplied brake cable & crimped nipple attached to the tree clevis with adjuster fully in. Dropped the stock non-adjustable rods in to position, and everything seems to be correctly positioned and the correct lengths. The cable is pretty slack to the touch but snug enough it runs straight. I had a nipple with grub screws made up for the cable end, but I guess I won't need it now. My tree lever is the newer curved type, and it is presently not fouling the diff, frame, or body while moving thru the required range. Also note the tree clevis on my car looks a bit different from Alex's pic, and the nipple would have to be modified to fit inside the clevis attachment.

I assembled all the bits clean and dry to keep from picking up road grime.

Cheers!

[garyeanderson]

This seems to be a fairly informative and useful topic that has and will help folks so to add some more info will not hurt the topic. I think that it is directly related to how well the parking-brake works and the question was asked before and talked up a bit so I'll just post a link to the length of the cable itself and not add the photos.

Parking brake cable length
elan-f14/parking-brake-cable-length-t22636.html

There are two photos, one was posted when the question was asked in March 2011 and it has 286 views, the second photo has 50 views nearly a year later, this kind of surprises me as I edited the topic back on the first day of spring and added it. It's been viewed 50 times. This seems to show that the question is still current and active, people have been able to find it on there own, wither just browsing or with the search engine. Thats the self serve feature that some folks like to use and I sure like to see being used.

Gary

[stugilmour]

Gary, thanks for posting the link and new pics.

To add a few more details...

My cable length seems to be OK, but keep in mind mine is a Plus 2 with Spyder chassis, and the replacement cable was supplied by Spyder, so should be expected to work.

Here are a couple of images from Ray`s on-line parts catalog at rdent.com. They show the differences in the Elan and Plus 2 clevis` on the tree. The Plus 2 tree clevis is a closed affair, which makes things a bit more difficult to make up an adjustable nipple like Alex used. The size of the slot on top of the Plus 2 clevis is very small, so a piece that will fit inside the slot may not have enough meat to thread in grub screws.

The Plus 2 tree shown in this parts book is the older type with a shorter arm. My car has the later style, which appears to be longer and curved. This thread shows the some of the variations.

elan-plus-f13/hand-brake-tree-t20972.html

When re-building the car, my tree broke at the bottom where it mounts to the frame. I made up a bit of a bodge replacement with a brass plumbing tee and a compression fitting to hold the broken tree base, which seems to work OK.

When the body was off the car I had trial fitted the hand brake mechanism. This doesn't work that well because the chassis ride height is so high compared to the final position, and this upsets the actuating rod lengths. When the chassis height settles the hand brake pads will bind.

HTH

[garyeanderson]

Hi Stuart

I rounded up some trees and took some pictures in place of others. As you can see they are a bit different in the size and the location of the top pivots and length of the arm and the bottom line is "don't get hung up about the trees" they probably all work just fine, the pads don't need to move far to engage the rotors so adjust it a bit and they ought to work. The dates are not all that firm, they are a guess, the same goes for the Early and earliest, I really don't know and don't care a lot as they work and I just want to drive the pig...

Gary