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Buick 1928 standard tourer brakes


gward1211

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Hello from Australia.  Can anyone offer comments concerning 1928 Buick brakes?  I have recently had the brake bands relined.  The brakes seem to be adjusted correctly and all movement points have been lubricated.  The brakes overall are not very effective.  Only under hard braking down a good hill will the front brakes warm up.  The rear brakes can get quite hot but are still not great.  Eg, I can't lock up any wheels on a loose gravel road.  Is there any way of increasing the braking force on the front wheels.  It seems that any adjustment to shorten the rods/cables will just be undone by the equalizer bar.

Kind regards

 

Geoff Ward

 

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The best thing you can do is get a copy of the Buick service manual and go through the entire adjustment process. There are something like 25 steps. Do not skip any of them, all are important and have likely changed or been tampered with by this time. There are pictures and specifications in the manual that need to be correct for acceptable brake performance. It is also importsnt to have the correct brake lining on the bands.

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Thanks everyone for you comments and thanks Rod W for the copies of the manuals.  The problem has been solved and it is quite amusing.   A friend who was around helping me spotted that the brakes on my car did not match the setup shown in the manual.  It turned out that the brakes had been assembled incorrectly by the person who restored the car 25 years ago.  The backing plates were on the wrong side and the main pull lever (lever no. 23) for the front brake actuation was in the wrong position - it pointed up instead of down.  We swapped the backing plates over and pulled apart the universal joint that connects to the actuating mechanism in the backing plates to reposition the lever and, voila, after adjusting the brakes, they are working very well.  For the past 25 years it has mainly been the rear brakes doing the work. That said though, the front linings were worn almost as much as the rear linings, so they weren't totally inactive.  With the new linings, I couldn't get the front brakes to work without an huge amount of pedal pressure, so I don't know how they worked so well before - because the prior brakes weren't too bad.  And, yes, I did use woven brake linings.

Once again, many thanks.

Kind regards

Geoff Ward

Edited by gward1211 (see edit history)
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