The Stovebolt Site Forums Welcome! Welcome Centre Do It Yourself (DITY) Gallery 1959 Chevy Apache 31 "Ernest"

I had yesterday off from work and decided to keep the momentum going on the brake system. I laid out the rear drum setup and installed the shoes and hardware along with the parking brake cable. I have been compiling parts for years on this project and the brake system was no different. The upper loft of my shed is overflowing with cardboard boxes, all have a note on the outside as to it's contents. The trick is finding just the right box, even locating the part is fun.

The rear axel for the 59' is from a 72' El Camino that had belonged to my late BIL. The El Camino was dying of rust so it was delegated to being used as parts by the time I acquired it. The 10 bolt rear was close to the width of the original rear for the truck and replacement parts were readily available at most FLAPS. All of this was some time ago. At that point rear wheel discs were not the hot conversion that everyone is doing these days, the drum brakes seemed like a great fit. If I were to do this again would I have converted to rear disc, probably not, the drums offer plenty of stopping power and don't require a lot of fabrication to use.

Sometimes I feel like that line in the old Johnny Cash song "One Piece At A Time, when he tells of everything going great until they decided to put it together. I had purchased the shoes and hardware kit for the 72' and the parking brake cables for the 59', what could go wrong. the shoes went right on with no issue, the trouble started when I added the parking brake lever. The lever was for the El Camino and fit the shoes correctly but the parking brake cable had a different style end than the lever would accept. So that started the modification stage of the brake assembly, it really didn't take much, I had to radius the slot in the lever to allow the cable end to fit smoothly.

I had a small problem with the self adjusters, the kit didn't seem to have the correct return spring. The spring supplied with the hardware kit didn't have the correct bend on the ends and as such wouldn't engage the pawl. I bent he loop end of the spring around to match the slop in the adjuster and managed to get it attached.

The parking brake cables were another problem, the retainer was smaller than the hole in the backing plate. The cable assembly slides through the backing plate on the lower end and attaches to the lever on the rear shoe. The hole that the cable passes through was just large enough the retainer slipped though as well. I made up a thin shoulder washer and slid it over the cable end and secured the the cable sleeve with the bend tabs on the inside of the backing plate. Problem resolved.

As I previously mentioned I bought a stainless steel brake line kit from Inline Tube. I knew that the brake lines would need to re-bent or otherwise modified to work with my system, I did think that this kit would be a great starting point. The brake lines are very close to the correct length and the bend are in the right areas, so yes it was a good starting point. Other than needing to change the lines to route around the U-bolts and the different angle of the wheel cylinders the lines fit the axel very well.

I am going to continue with the lines, mocking up the connections for the master cylinder and adding the residual pressure and proportioning valves. All of this will be removed and reinstalled once the frame is repainted.