Bloody Brakes!

[Bob Bowling]

Tom2000 wrote:

The car is off the road anyway and by the time I get to tax it the car will need an MOT as well, appreciate the unintended patronising comments of care though!

Hi Tom
I am sorry if you thought I was being patronising. I assure you I wasn't. I was fortunate having a father and grandather who had been repairing cars (albeit with varying degrees of success) for many years when I got my first car (1960 Herald, 12 years old and as rotten as a pear) and I learnt a lot of things from them, one of the most imortant being when to call in some expert help. Its one thing fiddling with stuff that may make you car run or sound like a camel with indigestion, its quite another when it may mean a wheel drops off or when you press the brakes nothing happens. Always think safety, use axle stands to hold the thing up in the air when you are under it, and read the manual before you start something. If you can turn one up anywhere the AA book of the car published in the 1970's covers a lot of the stuff that you may want to get involved in, and is contemporary with our cars.

[Tom2000]

Cheers Peter, and I do have Axle stands I just didn't have them with me :)

Since the car isn't going to be on the road until I retax/MOT her i'm thinking that I may well replace some of the rubber bits surrounding the general area of the axle as they look (not badly) but slightly starting to perish, I may also take em off for an evening and give them a good rub down coat of paint, what d'ya think?

Tom

[GT6boy]

I have learnt all about cars from working on my Triumphs. Workshop manuals etc are invaluable, but the AA Book of the Car is an absolute must :). A workshop manual assumes an under-pinning knowledge of the workings of the car(not something I had), where-as the AA book provides a really good grounding in the workings of the car as it was in 1970. Especially good as a large parts relate to our cars and show a Herald/Vitesse being worked on. Can't recommend it highly enough :)! Always see copies at car boot sales for a quid.

[Tim Bancroft]

Hi Tom,

Good luck with the car, please do not think bad of people on here, all the previous comments and suggestions will help. If people post it's generally because they want to help.

I would think about some renewal of suspension components, especially an inspection of the trunnion at the end of the vertical link.

Have a good look at all four corners of the car and check over the brakes and suspension components.

By the way to access the stub axle nut and split pin it will be necessary to remove the dust cover, this can be a sod. I have generally found the use of small drift to work.

Anyway good luck and always think about safety.

Great that another Triumph is being used, also great that a young person is using one!

[toomanyprojects]

Tom2000 wrote:

Since the car isn't going to be on the road until I retax/MOT her i'm thinking that I may well replace some of the rubber bits surrounding the general area of the axle as they look (not badly) but slightly starting to perish, I may also take em off for an evening and give them a good rub down coat of paint, what d'ya think?

Tom

And so it begins, before you know it you're doing a full restoration!!!!

Think long and hard before you take anything off the car that does not need changing. You become fanatical, and you are not yet in the position (experience wise and probably finacially) to take on such a big chunk of work.

When you are inexperienced, nothing is as easy as it looks, it often isn't when you are experienced either....

My advise, along with all the other excellent advice here, would be to get experienced help to finish your brakes (you will learn a lot and as everyone points out, they are safety critical), then do anything else that is neccesary for the MOT. Use the car and fix the things that go wrong for a few years. Again you will learn alot.

The best you can do is have an experienced mate who regularly works on cars and help him/her in exchange for some help back. I'm sure most of us have learnt this way.

I would love to help you in exchange for a hand back, god knows I've got enough car jobs on my list, but it's a bit too far to travel.

[willcolumbine]

What he said! I started off doing a few little jobs on the front suspension and ended up doing everything - polybushing, AVO shocks, steering rack, alloy mounts, new calipers, discs, powdercoating, radiator, alloy wheels etc etc. Took me ages and cost a fair whack too!

[GT6DavidMK1]

Tom2000 wrote:

I was told that you need to take the entire hub off, if I remove the calipers and the dust shield I have enough access to remove the four bolts holding the hub on one at a time problem is they are very tight and the disc just spins meaning I can't get the bolts off to take the disc off.. ?

Tom, I did say you need to take the hub off, not with the stub axle!!! :P, and to do that you take the dust cap off , then remove the split pin, undo the castle nut, and when pulling the hub off, be careful not to drop the wheel bearing's on the floor(grit doesn't help them!!) ;)
So why you trying to knock the stub axle out? :o

David.

[shedmonkey]

Intresting thread- if you didnt know you had to take the dust cap off and remove the hub nut the next logical step would be to try and bash the stub axle out! I remember seeing a great photo of an A40 entering a corner at Goodwood full chat with his n/s front wheel making a dash for freedom 10 yards in front of him due to a stub axle failure so its always best to ask on a forum such as this if you are unsure of what even seems a simple task -I always post mine up as "daft school boy question"  and I seem to have put a few up on here over the years!
Back to the thread (sort of) when ever I replace discs I tend to always replace the wheel bearings as an axle set at the same time -they are not that expensive and are a vital part -and dont forget you should be checking bearing adjustment at a maximum of evey 6,000 miles or so -or sooner if you tend to park you car in flooded rivers on rallies etc
Now the thread drift! I was very lucky that I spent hours as a child watching my Dad ,brotherss,brother in-law etc working on cars motorbikes etc etc so just sort of picked it up -My Dads generation couldnt afford to pay garages and he taught me  a very valuable lesson "there is always two ways to skin a cat!"- which basically meant dissapearing into the garage for 1/2 a day  and  avoiding his  domestic duties whilst he lapped in  valves following  "de-cokes" or checked a cylinder head for flatness using a pane of glass and engineers blue! and if it wasnt flat the engineers blue would be rplaced with very fine grinding paste!
I was also very lucky enough to do a decent engineering apprentiship where you spent your fist two years in "apprentice training school" learning basic bench fitting,turning,welding fabrication etc before you even got let loose on site -its sad that a lot of these skills we take for granted are being lost in our modern bolt on throw away world
So good on you Tom for having a go -just keep yourself safe! steel toe cap boots are good idea as well -I managed to run myself over (mainly my foot) with a Rover v8 auto ...long story.. but I had my cappers on which saved some pain if not embarassement
Keep us informed of progress and feel free to ask as many "daft school boy questions" as you like -help is always at hand!

[rotoflex]

I started working on cars (the GT6 specifically) without a manual, & probably the first thing non-intuitive thing I had to fix was something related to the brake hydraulics.  It didn't kill me, & I would hazard a guess that most of the people posting in this thread who did their own work are not dead yet, either.  Unless you just have a short driveway into a busy street, you've got room to gingerly check your work in a state of absolute paranoia.

I did get a shop manual very early, & kept getting them: Autobook, Clymer, etc., as it was a while before I could get hold of a factory shop manual at the time.  The Haynes manual probably has no more iffy spots than any other 2nd party manual, but like other manuals gives you an early section on general procedures:  put it on jackstands, examining tires for particular types of wear, how to look at spark plugs, etc. so they're good to have.

It's also so helpful to have a second good mind to consult, as things can get so baffling & frustrating that it seems like your head will blow up.  I was lucky that my father, although not a car guy, had a good logical way of approaching problems:  "Well, if you need weight in the back of the car to put the axles on, water is one of the heaviest things in the world, why not put a cooler back there & fill it with water until it's exactly as heavy as you want?", "I guess the reason the reason they put fluid in the brakes is that air is compressible but a liquid is not, so that's why when you put them back together you must chase the air out of the system", "If you need more force to get it loose, you can get it by making the lever longer, what if you put a long length of pipe over the handle of that socket wrench?", etc.  You get that here, with insights more specific to the car, also available at the weird hours you find yourself working on the car.

Buy a torque wrench!