B24 Brake Overhaul

[Zane]

I am in the beginning phases of overhauling the brakes on my Aurelia as it has sat long enough that time has required it to be safe. I have ordered new rubber brake hoses, new components to rebuild the individual brake cylinders, master cylinder and brake fluid reservoir from Mike at Lancia Spares. I will have the brake pads re-shoed locally and will know shortly what is needed to be done with the drums themselves once they are removed. My hope is that I do not need to have them turned.

Two of the four wheels (one in the back, one in the front) spin freely while the other two are VERY hard to turn. I have adjusted the pads from the back of each drum as much as possible by turning the 2 nuts that have the "cup" under it and those wheels are still very hard to turn. I don't think I will have an issue pulling the drums from the wheels that spin freely, but I'm concerned with how best to pull the drums from those wheels that are tight. Is there another way to relax the brakes from the drum other than the adjustment I made with the nuts on the back of the drum that have the small cup under it to allow an easier pull of the drum?

I know on the drums I must remove the center nut and pin, but after that, what is the most common method of pulling the drums that are tight?

Attached is a picture of both the front drum and the rear drum assembly with the Potjoint now removed.

Thank you for any insight that can be provided.

Zane

[Zane]

Nothing comes quickly when working on an Aurelia. You spend more time educating yourself on the proper methods and procedures needed for the job as well as sourcing the correct parts then you do turning an actual wrench. Over the past several months I have completely taken the front and rear braking system down. Almost all of the brake cylinders had seized. I think only 1 out of 6 cylinders where not, so tackling the brakes first was a wise choice. As you can imagine, with a car that has sat for over 30 years, the brakes where a mess.

After cleaning all of the parts it was obvious that new parts where needed to be ordered to properly complete the rebuild of the brakes. I ordered new rubber brake lines and cup seals for the individual brake cylinders, master cylinder and reservoir plunger from a Mike at Lancia Spares. I also received a used front brake drum from Mike to replace one that had been improperly re-rung with a steal sleeve (more to come on that).

As it is with most projects when you dig into the job you continue to find more things that need attention. I found that all of the front hub seals had gone bad and wheel bearing grease had slung into the drums so I have replaced those as well. When digging into the rear brakes I found that the rear hubs also are leaking badly and have the seals to rebuild them, but have yet to dig into that job. I also found that the rear differential output seals had also gone bad and had been leaking gear lube into the rear brake drums. Those seals should be arriving today. Having to replace most all of these seals require building my own tools to properly do the job as you cant just go to your local store and find what you need. Needless to say, I hope that once I replace all of these seals I will have a much better braking system in place than I did 6 months ago..

While working on the front end, I found that someone, at some point and time replaced the silentblocs with hard plastic inserts... not good... I have rebuilt the front tie rod assemblies and replaced all of the track rod silentblocs with correct bushings. The car I'm sure would have been all over the road and should now track straight.

Attached are some pictures of the progress.

Zane

[Geoff]

Have you already sent your brakes out? There have been difficulties with the sleeving on Aurelia brakes - I ended up sending my Appia ones out to a shop in LA who had done work for Tony Nicosia there. They did a nice job.

Glad you are going after the seals. They do need to be working! You are on your way!

Geoff

[Zane]

Have you already sent your brakes out? There have been difficulties with the sleeving on Aurelia brakes - I ended up sending my Appia ones out to a shop in LA who had done work for Tony Nicosia there. They did a nice job.

Glad you are going after the seals. They do need to be working! You are on your way!

Geoff

Geoff,

After I pulled the individual brake cylinders and inspected them I was pleasantly surprised by the lack of pitting found. I checked each cylinder bore and they all fall within the appropriate specs. I only had to do a quick pass of very light honing to clean them up a bit. I didn't want to sleeve them if they didn't need it, so we will see how this works out.

Over the weekend, I wrapped up the front brakes as well as rebuilt the brake reservoir. I'm now moving toward the rear end. Any advice on replacing the rear seal and the best way to tackle the nut found in the attached picture? I am not able to find a torque setting in Pauls shop manual for that nut. I plan to build a jig to fit the nut, but have you used a modern c-spanner with any luck?

Zane

[Geoff]

Zane -

I don't know the answer to this. I'd call one of the mech'l savvy members of the club - Steve Peterson, Walt Spak, Bob Williams, Tony....

Building up these relationships is part of the overall network you may wish to include.

Geoff

[RdeMasi]

Zane,

If there is any appreciable amount of torque on that nut a C-spanner will not work very well. Since Lancia's are rife with those sort of nuts one gets creative in finding a way around.

If you check the EddinsMoto site you will see a craftsman's solution to the problem as he's equipped with a lathe and the talent to use it.

For us less well-talented and well-equipped you could take an appropriately sized nut socket and cut away the portions to leave the teeth which would fit into the slotted segments. I've done this for one of these type of nuts on a Fulvia. I would use a minimum 3/4 socket because if there is a good amount torgue you will need the heft. I snapped a 1/2 wrench try to get a larger ring nut off the rear of a B12. It was finally persuaded to give up with an pneumatic wrench.

Oh and make sure you know which way is OFF because they will use reverse or counter clockwise threads as well.

I looked at a handmade/folklore sort of workshop manual I bought from Australia for the Aurelia and could not find the data you were looking for so Geoff's suggestion of hooking up with the aformentioned gentlemen is the right one.

Ralph

[Zane]

Geoff and Ralph, thank you for your replies. I have had the pleasure of communicating with Steve Peterson several times during this journey and appreciate the many individuals within the Lancia community and the willingness to provide guidance.

I was able to remove the castellated nut with no issues at all. I did take Ralph's recombination and transformed a socket into a nice spanner socket. I was happy to learn that the rear diff output seals are pressed into back side of the nut. This made pulling the old seal out and replacing a snap!

While I'm pulling things apart I figured I would remove the rear drum backing plates. I noticed some light surface rust in a few spots so I decided to clean, strip and prime them to prevent future rusting. Final coat of paint coming soon. I have no plans to pull the transmission out of the car, so I will be spending some time cleaning the old dirt, oil and general grime off while I have good access to it all. I will then start putting the rear brakes all back together.

[RdeMasi]

Zane,

Good to hear your getting it done. I'm including a few photos of when I had pulled the rear suspension and transaxle to clean and paint as well as clean and paint the underbody.


Ralph

[Geoff]

Ralph -
did you finish your rear brakes already?

[RdeMasi]

Geoff,

Yes, sometime ago. As I had everything out, I cleaned and painted the tin, much like Zane, had the brake cylinders sleeved, new seals and remounted everything. Of course as I was bleeding the brake lines, when everything was back in the car, some fluid came down and removed some of the paint on the tins so I need to get under there and repaint.

The plunger at the top of the brake reservoir will stay up for a few days but will eventually sink so I need to trace the cause of that but the brakes are good. Eventually I will have the front shoes relined as I received linings from Omicron sometime ago but are still sitting on the shelf.

Notice the abundant use of "eventually", that word is most important in keeping one's sanity when dealing with old cars. It gives you the sense that you're actually moving forward.

I'm hoping to post photos of some of the medieval tools I fabricated to remove various parts on the Aurelia. Just waiting on graphic design daughter to assist with re-sizing the photos.

Ralph