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Posted to rec.crafts.metalworking
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Turning brake drums
wrote in message
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On Thu, 23 Jul 2015 17:37:03 -0700, Larry Jaques
wrote:
On Thu, 23 Jul 2015 17:29:08 -0400, wrote:
On Thu, 23 Jul 2015 03:55:15 -0700, "Howard Beal"
wrote:
Any tips on turning brake drums on a toolroom lathe ?
Gonna do a brake job on my car over the week end and
am thinking about turning the drums myself.
TIA.
Best Regards
Tom.
Generally speaking today if they need turning you are better to
replace them. They are on the thin side to start with, so machining
them at all makes them too thin to work properly. Drums are
(generally
speaking) pretty cheap.
This is true for newer vehicles, maybe 1990 on. But earlier
vehicles
had more meat on the drums. New rotors are much worse, built to be
replaced rather than turned from the get-go. sigh I'm not
looking
forward to financing the replacement of my rear disc+drum rotors on
the Tundra down the line, lemme tell ya. The emergency brake uses a
drum made in the interior of the rotor hub. Very odd setup.
That said, I have 54k miles on the beastie now and need to look at
those.
Not like you are in the middle of a third
world country with an obsolete vehicle (like my old '49 VW in
Zambia
in '73 or '74, where I had to hack-saw and chisel a 1961 VW drum
(half
an inch too wide) to fit when the spline stripped out of the
original
on a trip)
Sounds like that was a real joy to perform. Ugh!
You do a lot of strange things when there is no other alternative.
That drum took almost 2 hours of hack-sawing and chipping to get it
to
fit - on a Sunday afternoon about half way between Choma (the new
capital of southern province) and Macha (home of the Macha Research
Trust and Malaria Institute).
I also made an "exhaust system" for it out of copper plumbing
fittings, Land Rover driveshaft, and a gas filler.
Had a Peugeot 204 and the engine mount let go - making it impossible
to shift gears (4 on the tree) so I welded up a solid mount to stay
mobile until I could get a new rubber one shipped in.
It was involved in a rather major colission - T-boned a Datsun 1200
and shortend the car 4 inches and swayed the front end almost 10
inches - would never have even THOUGHT about repairing it here - I
pulled and hammered it back into shape without replacing a single
part
other than the battery.
The battery in the VW died - and it was over a month's wages for a
new battery. I jury rigged a Land Rover crank and crank-nut to the
end
of the crankshaft and hand cranked it for months until the battery
in
the big Leland Lorry died - one bad cell, second from the negative
end. I hacksawed off the neg post, drilled it and screwed it to the
intercell link in the middle of the battery, pulled ou the back
seat,
and threw it in.
We had a land rover that put a rod through the block. We bored it
out,
machined down a fergusson tractor sleeve and shrink-fit it in - then
finish bored it to fit the original piston. With a cube of
rad-sealer
it sealed up perfectly
Among a lot of other crazy things.
http://www.economist.com/news/middle...art-making-lot
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