Handbrake Components

The Classic Vehicle Restorer knows this problem:

One must invariably have a workbench cluttered up with small projects not consequential enough to attend to whilst larger assemblies are tackled. 

Right? A transmission and transfer case is a pretty big, heavy assembly -- it needs to be taken apart in many steps. It's a weighty project that takes up the attention of the restorer. One of things one needs to do while taking apart a major assembly is of course taking off everything that's bolted to whatever Big Thing you're tackling. These subassemblies end up on the natural home for such things, which is the corner of the workbench. Or leaned up against something you continually trip over. 

After a while they have to be attended to. Up next for me was the needlessly complicated Land Rover handbrake assembly. 

The Land Rover handbrake is 'neat.' Modern vehicles use a brake on the wheels -- either electrically operated or, in most cases, a simple cable that clamps the rear brake somehow to stop the vehicle from rolling.

Land Rover thought that idea was dumb. Why not just make a whole separate brake mechanism and put it somewhere really inconvenient, like attached to the output flange on the transfer box? That way, it'll be right in the firing line of all the crap flung up by the front wheels AND directly located behind a huge reservoir of oil. WCGW?

But it gets better! In order to do this, the six bolts that hold the brake drum on are hidden behind the drum itself and are just wedged against the output flange. They're held in by a mud shield -- which is funny, because all it does is keep mud in, thus causing the seal to fail more quickly. Heaven help you if your bolts are rounded off because if they are, you're chiseling the nuts off the brake drum. 

I guess I got lucky because mine were only sort of rounded off. 

Honestly, the whole assembly is so needlessly complicated it's no wonder they kind of went bankrupt in the 70s. 

You can see in the photos above that the parts count just for this mechanism is getting pretty obscene. Brass bushings, bolts, springs, rods, clevises, pivots, circlips... yikes. And this is only the stuff I photographed after I was done taking it apart! 

The keen eyed LR enthusiast restorer (for there is no other kind) will note that the button on my handbrake release of course was seized and the threaded end snapped off. Fuck! Another hard-to-find part from 1960 that'll be a bear to find... 

The springs, bushings, clevises, etc. are not in great shape. It's pretty clear that someone just bodged the rod together with some weld at some point. Or did they come that way? Who knows. 

And this one's bent. Sigh. 

Remember me talking about seals? 

One of the problems with the LR transmission brake is that, British engineers just never really figured out how to do them. So in almost every case, the rear transfer case seal leaks: if your Land Rover doesn't have a leaking rear output seal, you just haven't driven it yet.

What this results in is oil contamination of your brake linings -- they pretty much become an instant drag, and not much more than that. To no great surprise, my transfer box had been leaking too: 

Yuk. I bet this thing never worked even once. 

Both sides of the transmission brake backing plate are coated in gunk. The mechanism itself seems to work okay; it's just a mechanical spreader. But with the linkage being sloppy and the brake absolutely coated inside with oil I suspect the thing never even got used. Why bother? 

Even the outside was so coated in oily mud that the adjuster wouldn't turn. You can see I've tried to clean it up a little. 

Much of this mechanism will need to be rebuilt. All of the brass bushings; all of the springs, clevises, and linkages, and of course, new brake pads. I think the only components I can reasonably save are the handbrake lever itself, the pivot arm, the brake backing plate and *hopefully* the brake mechanism itself. Everything else is kaput. 

Let's move on to something else that I keep tripping over! All of the various steering rods and linkages I pulled off years ago...

First I took off the collars that pinch the tie rod ends on each of the linkages: 

There are an awful lot of these things. Man, did the Brits ever love their linkages, springs, and joints. 

Then comes a shit-ton of heat and penetrating oil. The vise is as tight as I can get it:

You can't see it in the photos above but the ball joint and longitudinal steering rod is smoking after being heated with the MAPP torch. 

It's remarkable how 'strong' rust is. 

This is one of those things where you just have to persevere and go further than you think (read: a tighter vise, stronger curse words, more heat, and a longer lever) to get the job done. But eventually, you will separate long-married components:

... and end up with a neat pile of stuff that will do nicely for sandblasting. 

Don't worry, dear reader: I'm still tripping over those components. They're just more disassembled now than they were before!

Oh, and just for fun, here's the page from the Series 2 Parts Book on the mechanism:

See? Complicated. I wasn't kidding!