I must confess I've worked on a lot more Fords in my life and generally not much of this (1953) vintage. This is my first post and I need y'alls help figuring out how this parking brake is supposed to work. You see, a customer brought me his 53 Chevy 3600 for some maintenance and repairs. One problem is the parking brake mechanism. The floor mounted pedal will not stay pressed. It doesn't appear to have any way to keep it down when pushed. The piece on the floor pan is a bit rusty and appears to have had some sort of metal plates inside. Those look to have disintegrated....
I found a new piece of metal online and ordered it in the hopes of having all parts necessary to fix the problem but that didn't turn out so well. Does anyone have a description, pictures or guidance on how this is supposed to work?!
Matt--the round piece that goes thru the floor board needs to be polished, sanded, wire brushed, free from oil, rust etc--then it should work. I did it on my 49 and need to do it on my 51 3100 I just got from CA--Bill
That's great input! Thanks very much! So the locking action is purely geometric/frictional? Because if there's nothing else going on in that bracket I'd conclude the lock where the lock rod passes through it must be bent or worn out too far. It does feel a little bit sloppy and as stated, doesn't lock at all. I suppose I'll try to bend the lock a little bit and if that doesn't help I may have to weld the lock and drill a new hole with tighter clearance. Cleaning up the lock rod surely won't hurt either....
