VCCA Home Forums TECHNICAL - 1945 AND EARLIER 1929-1932 Soft Woven Brake Linings

My soft woven linings work fine. Driven some 3,000 miles on these shoes in just over a year. Brakes squeak sometime but not much. Pulled the drums for a annual inspection to find three corners looking as I expected and the left front corner looking "furry" compared to the others. Lots of lining material left on all four wheels. Drums are not scored.

So what's up with the one set of linings?

(I'll post two photos when I can remember how to do that!).

See VCCA Member's Photos for pics.

Good question. Now is it a difference in the actual lining or roughness of the drum?

The difference is in the lining. It's much dustier than the other linings. The outside of the inner bearing seal and the grease deflector was also dustier.

I used a small wire brush to clean the dust off of the two brake shoe lining faces before re-assembly. I cleaned the road grim off the outer surface of the brake drum and noticed tiny blisters in the black paint in about the same area as where the shoes would make contact with the drum (too much heat).

The other three drums do not show the same tiny blisters. My guess is that left front wheel was either dragging too much or was doing more than its fair share of the breaking.

That makes some sense. However the cross shaft does compensate to some extent for the differences in adjustment. If the adjustment is far enough off the rest then it would do more braking than the other three.

The adjustment you refer to: is that the adjustment at the Service Brake Camshaft Operating Lever: or some other adjustment at the cross shaft?

I suspect that the adjustment you refer to is at the Camshaft Operating Lever.

Did you have the soft lining boded to the shoes or rivetted?
Having the lining bonded will make the soft lining go hard,as the shoes need to be baked to set the adhesive to bond the lining to the steel shoes.This can be a cause of squealing brakes with the old style pressed steel brake drums.

These brake lining were bonded. I was offered a choice between rivets and bonding. However the fiction lining shop suggested that bonding would be better even after they were told what the linings where to be used for. Not knowing my back side from a gopher hole, I followed their recommendation and went with bonded linings. (On a side note: these bonded woven linings we are talking about work far better than the modern brake linings that were placed on the car when restored by the professional restoration shop in Bradford, ON prior to my switching to bonded woven linings .)

I have a second set of shoes. I can have those riveted this time (third time lucky).

Bonded or otherwise, the possible reason for one wheel being very different from the other three could be excessive load (heat). Small blisters in the paint on the outer drum of the same wheel was present and was not on the others after the road grime was cleaned off the drums.

Brake noise is not a problem. The little bit that I had has disappeared after cleaning the brakes.