Lotus Elan and Lotus Elan Plus 2 Forums

Anybody remember what this wee part is for

Looks like it's off the hand brake ratchet.

Great thanks i thought it was something to do with the handbrake

And I believe they are pretty much unobtainable !!!

The handbrake involves a bell crank, the end of which fits into a square hole in the top end of the brake shoe's web. The H-shim goes into the square hole first, and the bell crank bears against it. It fills in the excess clearance. Without it, the parking brake mechanism doesn't have enough range of motion to properly apply the brake.

They're no longer available new, but they're easy to make. What is the thickness measured at the center?

Regards,
Tim Engel

Ditto the last posting, glad you could explain it as I was stuck for the right words.

It must be 30 years since I last had my hands on one of those, my Westfield 7 which I sold in 1997 had drum rear brakes, 20 years before that I was changing brakes shoes most weekends on customers cars, funny that I can recall a tiny bit of metal from all those years back but not what I did yesterday or in the last couple of minutes, the latter is a result of malaria, the former old age.

Esprit2 wrote:They're no longer available new, but they're easy to make. What is the thickness measured at the center?

What's the application? Without a scale reference in the photo, my first thought was the tiny drum brake H-shim, but there are no drum brakes on any Elan.

If it's considerably larger than what I first thought, and stamped out of thin spring steel, then it could be the brake pad anti-rattle spring used in some disc brakes.

If I'm heading down the wrong (drum) path, I'll continue for a few more steps before I go lay down by my dish. In for a penny, in for a pound...

I don't know why I asked for 'only' the thickness. How about:
1) Length along the legs
2) Width along the H's crossbar
3) Width of the gap between the legs
4) Width of the H's crossbar.
5) ... and the thickness.

With a handful of simple dimensions, replacements would be easy to cut out.

When replacing the shoes, the H-shims typically stick in the old shoes. It's important that you transfer them to the new shoes, and don't throw them out with the old shoes. When they're gone, they're gone... unless you're able to make a couple of simple parts.

The attached illustration shows a typical self-adjusting drum brake assembly of the day (Elite-Eclat), and the H-shim can be seen floating in space, high-center on the back-plate, just forward of the parking brake bell crank.

Regards,
Tim Engel

No - wrong end of the car - it goes in the handbrake lever tube, (the round ones) to allow the notches in the lever column to clamp against the tube.

No picture to hand at the moment I'm afraid. There are two of these nuggets in series, with a tiny, tiny spring to facilitate the release.

Regards
Richard

richardcox_lotus wrote:No - wrong end of the car - it goes in the handbrake lever tube, (the round ones) to allow the notches in the lever column to clamp against the tube.

No picture to hand at the moment I'm afraid. There are two of these nuggets in series, with a tiny, tiny spring to facilitate the release.

Regards
Richard

Yes I thought the same, you can see the knife edge at the top where it goes into the groove on the shaft. Mine only had one so I made another one, this then gives the ratchet a finer mechanism as they are spaced half a groove apart if you see what I mean?