lbhsbz
Putting on the brakes
- Joined
- Jan 11, 2010
- Messages
- 14,476
- Reaction score
- 38,190
I was never great at it....had a job tonight where it was kinda the only option. I pushed shit outta the way on the bench, hit the bench with a flap wheel to freshen it up a bit lol....and ran a short bead....on the bench...yep, still got it (at least as good as I had it before). Looked around a bit for my box of collets/tungstens and couldn't find it, so I cleaned up the tungsten that was in the torch (too big, no idea what kind cuz the paint mark is gone) and found a couple pieces of like .045 filler bent around the garage door that I'd been using to hang calipers that I paint because I can't find where I put all my filler rod either.....and here we go...
Project in question is a set of old ass Dunlop calipers from some '60s Jag, these things are like 1 or 2 year only....pistons are all pitted to hell with bad chrome, so I had to improvise. There is a feature in the piston that locks into the brake pad that is very necessary, so I can't just throw in a different piston that fits. There's also a pin in the casting that engages in another feature in the back side of the piston....I'm unsure of it's purpose, but I'd like to maintain it if I can. MGB pistons are the same diameter...and I've got lots of those, so we'll try to make that work.
Open up the inside of the MGB pistons a bit, bore a hole through the bottom of 'em, face down the bottom surface some, then shorten the original pistons a bit and turn those down to fit in the MGB pistons. Simple....right? lol.
Most outfits that sleeve brake hydraulic cylinders use loctite 680 or something similar...which is good to 300°F. That doesn't sound like a temp range I'd like to attach my name to, so I did it a bit differently.
I figure the caliper bore is bare iron and it survives just fine when it full of fluid and without air, so bare steel should be just fine too....in the area of the weldment.
Maintained the chrome on the critical parts of the piston....should work, first one tested good with no leaks, 2 more pistons to go.
Like new…sorta
Project in question is a set of old ass Dunlop calipers from some '60s Jag, these things are like 1 or 2 year only....pistons are all pitted to hell with bad chrome, so I had to improvise. There is a feature in the piston that locks into the brake pad that is very necessary, so I can't just throw in a different piston that fits. There's also a pin in the casting that engages in another feature in the back side of the piston....I'm unsure of it's purpose, but I'd like to maintain it if I can. MGB pistons are the same diameter...and I've got lots of those, so we'll try to make that work.
Open up the inside of the MGB pistons a bit, bore a hole through the bottom of 'em, face down the bottom surface some, then shorten the original pistons a bit and turn those down to fit in the MGB pistons. Simple....right? lol.
Most outfits that sleeve brake hydraulic cylinders use loctite 680 or something similar...which is good to 300°F. That doesn't sound like a temp range I'd like to attach my name to, so I did it a bit differently.
I figure the caliper bore is bare iron and it survives just fine when it full of fluid and without air, so bare steel should be just fine too....in the area of the weldment.
Maintained the chrome on the critical parts of the piston....should work, first one tested good with no leaks, 2 more pistons to go.
Like new…sorta
Last edited:
