It looks like Jim spends his time lying around….and for this job he did a lot of it…up and down…up and down….
He replaced all the brake lines….and rubber hoses in the brake lines, as well as the wheel cylinders and brake shoes.
This is the old master cylinder. It only had one reservoir. If something happened to a brake line you lost all your brakes.
Jim put a dual master cylinder in it, with a proportioning valve.
This one has 2 reservoirs….one for the front and one for the back….something happens and you still have brakes even if only on 2 wheels. We plan to tow the little Scamp with the Chevy for a couple of Tin Can Tourist meets and a car show or two. Our main car will still be the ‘49 Hudson….it has AC. So the Chevy will make a good winter car.
I got the easy job….I had to “pump up” the brakes as he bled the air out of the lines. The seat was back for Jim so it was like sitting in a recliner…just didn’t have my coffee.
Once the brakes were done it was time for new “sneakers”….(that is what we used to call them years ago)…I guess because of the white walls and back then most sneakers were white.
Jim took the wheels to Pep Boys (had the tires shipped there) and had them mounted and balanced.
The blue stuff protects the white wall so Jim had them leave it on till he got home. A little cleaning and they were perfect.
This is before…
an after…they really set it off.
Even though the tires on it looked good and had very few miles…we had no idea how old they were and couldn’t trust them for towing. We’ve had several old tires come apart …one time 2 front ones came apart while it was up on jack stands. Jim was working on it and the tires were not even on the floor. Not worth taking a chance…and the white walls were the thing back in the day.
Once Jim knows the brakes are working right…we’ll hook up the Scamp and take a little spin to see how it handles. The ‘49 Hudson has towed it over 11,000 miles….and did it in MI, NY,VT,NH and states in between them and FL.
If you go to the index at the top and click on 2014…then click on May you can see our trip.
2 comments:
What a beautiful car! We may have more efficient cars nowadays but they certainly don't have the style of those 50's beauties. Glad to see you are taking safety measures. Bet you get plenty of double takes, smiles and friendly tooting when on the road with it.
The thing I like about these old cars...Jim can fix them...not the best fuel mileage but we feel safe out there with them. May of 2014 we took our '49 Hudson the north with the camper.
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