Brake Work Birthday Gift: How Many Mistakes Can You Find Here?
Since I’ve got ungodly quantities of top-shelf booze thanks to my other job, I figured I’d celebrate my 900th birthday by having a party and pouring said booze down my guests’ throats. A couple of them went overboard on the gift department, including one who made me a coupon for free brake work on my Dodge A100 Hell Project.
2010 Ununquadium Medal and Index of Effluency winner Rich has been haranguing me for endangering innocent lives— and my own— by driving a van with single-circuit, four-wheel-drum brakes, so here’s his very thoughtful birthday gift. Yes, he’ll help with the brake-line bending and flaring (two skills I’ve never been able to master, despite many expletive-filled attempts) when I upgrade to the nanny-state-approved dual-circuit master cylinder, and he’s even got me halfway convinced to do a disc-brake conversion as well.
Can you find all the mistakes?
That wasn’t the only great birthday surprise from an Ununquadium Medal winner. Cadillac Bob of Speed Holes Racing AMC Marlin fame handed me a gift box that turned out to be full of Brezhnev Era Soviet 1:43 diecast-car awesomeness. How about a USSRDM Fiat 125?
Bob spent a couple years of his childhood in Moscow, when his engineer father had a contract job there, and he brought back a bunch of toy cars made for glorious workers’ children. I was stunned by his generosity in giving up several of them, but he says he’s still got plenty more.
A Moskvich 412!
Would you believe the Soviets honoring the Renault 16? Fiat, sure, but Renault?
Believe it! These cars now have a place of honor in my office, right next to the diecast Leyland P76 and the diecast GAZ-13 Chaika I picked up on eBay.
Murilee Martin is the pen name of Phil Greden, a writer who has lived in Minnesota, California, Georgia and (now) Colorado. He has toiled at copywriting, technical writing, junkmail writing, fiction writing and now automotive writing. He has owned many terrible vehicles and some good ones. He spends a great deal of time in self-service junkyards. These days, he writes for publications including Autoweek, Autoblog, Hagerty, The Truth About Cars and Capital One.
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Murilee, if I'm not mistaken the V8 powered A 100's used the same 11 inch brakes that were used on the big block powered B bodies of the 60's. They worked quite well under most conditions due to the large surface area of the shoes. And the A 100 isn't very heavy, so if I were you I would stick with the drums for a stock driver. I would switch to a dual master cylinder with a proportioning valve, though. Under normal driving conditions brake shoes last longer than pads due to the increased surface area.
Looks suspiciously similar to the mangled pieces of junk I use for master cylinder bleeding.