Brake repairs for the DHC part 6

Or the first job in preparation for this year's edition of Club Triumph's 10 Countries Run almost finished. Last weekend I fitted the various new or reconditioned parts of the brake system to the car. The only job left was fitting new brake pipes. Though two of the four pipes could be re-used I decided to renew all four of them. And I was lucky in that I had an appointment for my work that brought me very close to C&C Parts yesterday. So I thought it rather convenient to spent my lunch break at their premises, to order the new brake pipes and to rectify the faulty brake master cylinder. Despite it being a rather short break, I left there with all parts needed to finish the DHC and a bit more ...

And with the weather being rather fine today it was time to get the tools out again. But before I started on the brake pipes I decided on an alignment check of the callipers. This was prompted by the fact that the discs that came of the car were clearly worn down more on the outside than on the inside. And indeed the callipers were standing a few millimetres to the outside of the disc’s centre line. Luckily C&C Parts had supplied two extra spacers just in case! So these were quickly added to top mount, between calliper and stub axle, after which the spacer already fitted between steering arm and calliper was moved to the other side of the callipers mounting lug. Still not perfect but much better compared with the old setup that has graced various cars over the past 20 odd years. The picture below gives a slightly distorted view as the camera was slightly of centre from the disc. So the offset looks far worse than it is in reality!

With the callipers sorted it was time for the final task of the day, bending and fitting the various pipes. As can be seen in one of the previous pictures I have opted for cupronickel or cunifer pipes. Corrosion free and fairly easy to bend in any desired shape! I started with the ones for the callipers, as these would take longer to bend into the desired shape because I didn’t have a template for them. The left hand side took 15 minutes the right hand side 5, so could be worse!

After that the two pipes from the brake master cylinder were the proverbial piece of cake, with most time spent on searching for the a correct round shape to match the radius for the front/inner pipe. Turned out it was staring me in the face all the time, a spray can with WD40. And of course I spent some time in getting the two pipes to run as parallel as possible 😇

Remains topping up the system and bleeding it, including flushing the clutch system. But for that I’ll have to seek some assistance. Hopefully I’ll be able to finish that somewhere early next week. And the to-do-list for the 10 CR has been slightly shortened;

1. General check and service;
2. Check rubber fuel lines at the back;
3. Fit and connect GPS bracket (=dash out job);
4. Fit PAS in combination with a quick rack (order in progress);
5. Replace brake master and servo;
6. Replace front discs and callipers;