So with the rebuilt gearbox fitted I decided to crack on with the brakes. I fitted new TRW slave cylinders with new brake shoes and springs all around. The brake drums were pretty good but I gave them a light skim in the lathe. Hopefully they still have some life in them. Unfortunately I can't find any photos from this part of the job, thats what happens when I don't keep up with the blog!
My biggest issue was the pipes. I had been putting this off as it looked fiddly and confusing. I decided to buy a Automec copper nickel brake pipe kit from the UK as all the pipes are supplied at the correct length and with the correct fittings. Should have been easy! but it turned out I had ordered the wrong kit. I ordered kit DA7409 - Land Rover Series 3 88 Dual Early > 1980. which to read, sounds correct, but as I have know learnt, there are 2 different variants of the dual circuit brake system for a series 3 Land Rover (possibly 4 if you count thread changes/metric creeping in on late models) One with a tee piece on the front cross member which feeds the front L & R wheels from a single line and the second variant which has an individual line for front left and right coming from the PDWA valve (will cover the PDWA in a late post).
Dual circuit brakes were an option in the UK home market, but were fitted as standard in New Zealand (and Australia I believe) due to local legislation, and from what I have seen, all early S3's (and very late 2A) here in NZ have the latter variant with individual lines from the PDWA. So to summarise, none of the front pipes in my kit were compatible with what I have. For any one else reference, you want the kit for 'lightweight' Series 3 Military Land Rover, as these had the same set up. This again gets confusing as there are two lightweight variants. I'll paste in an extract from an email incase the info is useful to anyone:
The brake pipe set GB5620 has a longer right hand front pipe (45”) than the earlier lightweight model (GB5613) which has a 34” right hand front pipe and a 69” left hand front pipe. The rest of the pipes are pretty much the same in both sets but the GB5613 has master cylinder pipes with a large and small male fitting at each end rather than one pipe with large 7/16” male fittings and the other with small 3/8” fittings.
So in the end I used the rear pipes from the kit, and had the fronts made to length from copper nickel pipe at Safe R Brakes here in Christchurch, using the fittings from the Automec kit where possible. I know I could have done this myself but I don't have a flaring tool etc. I think i will invest in one now!
Anyway, Photo Dump!
Did you have to bend the pipes yourself? Other than the problems with ordering the wrong kit were there any problems with the kit? I'm looking at ordering one or making my own pipes so interested if it was worth the money.
ReplyDeleteHey Rupert, yeah bent them myself. The copper nickel is easy to work with, but work hardens if you repeatedly flex it so pays not to work it too much. It would look better if a pro did it with bending tools but I was able to use large sockets to bend the tube around to get the desired radius.
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