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With Easter Egg Hunts just a memory, the planting season is in full swing in our back yard. After the necessary leaf cleanup (that should've been done last fall but Lime Rock Park was calling) it is time to start transferring seedlings out of the solar shed into the garden in their appropriate places. The fact that those little green sticks all look the same to me means that I am not qualified for this kind of work. I've been banished to the garage to do my own form of spring cleanup. Like Briar Rabbit said, do anything you want with me, just don't thrown me in that briar patch (or garage). Off with the Blizzaks on the grocery grabber that Leigh drives, and on with the Michelins with wider wheels for the warmer weather. She did note that the brakes had a different feel to them lately and sure enough the pads have about given up and the rotors are beyond their wear limits. How does she do that anyway? She never gets her foot into the go pedal enough to get the tach in the red (too noisy), doesn't hit the brakes hard enough to make the rears even work, but she can feel when the rotors are below 20.5 mm thickness? Amazing. I don't remember (here he goes again) that we ever had to do brakes years ago as often as we do with modern cars. The Speedster still has the same metallic lined shoes that were on the car when I hauled it out of that barn in Manchester NH back in '77. Now I agree that the car doesn't have that many miles on it since the '70's, but this car has run at Watkins Glen twice at the 48 hour schools. That was back when it wasn't worth anything. It has run at the old Bryar track (now NHIS) more times than I can count and 10 or 12 years of autocrosses every summer weekend. Of course I should admit that the brakes were only good for about five laps at Bryar before they gave out. Same pedal same pressure it just wouldn't stop the car. That condition always came with plenty of warning as the brakes went away gradually. I think that it was all part of the brake conservation program built in by the Porsche factory. As Ed Sanborn used to say " if you run out of brakes stop using them". After a cool off lap that was really needed, we could park the cars in the gravel covered pit area (remember that ?) and watch the front wheel bearing grease boil out through the speedo cable hole in the cap. As soon as it stopped bubbling it was deemed cool enough to go out again. It never occurred to any of us to actually check the brake shoes or drums. That was something that you looked over in the off season, not at the track. Every now and then we would hear of someone that had a drum go "out of round" on them but that was unusual, like losing a transmission seal. The drums could be turned on a lathe at the local auto supply for about $3 each. And they would do it while you waited, but you couldn't go back and watch. Something about insurance or trade secrets or something. It all seemed so high tech at the time. Now days it's near impossible to have a shop install brake pads in a car without going for the whole enchilada. Pads, rotors, sometimes even wheel bearings and calipers. To the tune of real money. A recent quote from an independent shop on a mid '90's BMW was over $800 and the dealer was over $1000. My parts book list rotors at $60 each and pads at $55 an axle. Where's the rest of the time? Finding the car in the lot? Is the lot really that big? I realize that this is a safety item and as the service writer says, "you want your family to be safe don't you", but really. Brakes have always been considered wear items, but it just doesn't seem that replacement every 30k is good engineering at work. Or maybe it is if you're in the brake manufacturing business. Just give me the old days when a panic stop was exactly that. You never knew if or where it was going to stop. But you didn't have to spend a lot at the brake shop. I guess that life is full of little trade offs. Another spring project is to change the look of the Speedster after all these years. Not change anything that can't be brought back to stock but just a different look for a while. For my non-technical readers thanks for reading this far, you are free to go now. This all started when I bid on and won (is that the right word?) a set of 911 type five spoke wheels with the wide lug bolt pattern to fit the drum brake cars. The set I got was at least 25 years old and had never been out of their original (now moldy) boxes, let alone mounted on an actual car. We're talking brand new here! These were made back in the '60's and were popular with the Cal Club look found on all manner of VW rides. Ghias, Bugs and most of all buses. They have polished lips and spokes with black centers. The problem is that VW uses a 12mm stud and Porsche uses a 14mm stud on their early drum brake cars. That means that the Porsche stud fills up the hole in the wheel too much to allow the 911 type lug nut to seat and then hold the wheel on to the drum. Oh, did I mention that the off set is different too? So before I dropped the shiny new rims at the machine shop to make the holes bigger, I needed to make sure that they would fit up under the fenders with out heating up the paint under hard corning. I know, how hard can you corner a 45-year-old car? More about that later in the season. I wanted to use a 50 series tire on this 15 inch rim and all the ones that I had were mounted and balanced so I needed to "borrow' one for fitting. A box of donuts got me a free loaner from Ely at Shine Racing (good people and they like donuts) in Walpole. I took the tire to a local tire shop a busy Saturday and explained that I just wanted it mounted to try for clearance on a car in my garage. I'm not sure that the manager believed that I would come back but he took a shot and said that he'd charge me when I returned. Back to the garage to try the wheel on both rear corners since these early cars are often different one side to another. The Speedster is no exception as there is a "finger space" on one side and room for a piece of paper on the other. But there is clearance, just what I needed. I was back to the tire store in 30 minutes, this time with a hot cheese pizza, to get the tire off the rim. It's amazing how food can get you right up to the head of the line. Tire came off in a jiffy, before the pizza was cold, the work was free and I was off to the machine shop. I took a spare drum with the wheels so that the machinist could see exactly what I was trying to get to. He's an old VW guy himself and seemed to enjoy the project as much as I did. The lug nuts are actually too deep to seat properly so I had ordered a set of washers that were large enough for the nuts to go through. Those washers and the 22mm (!!) lug nuts came from a wheel dealer in Kansas. The problem was that the washers didn't seat correctly in the recessed area machined into the wheel. So it was either machine some more metal off the wheel or take some off the outside the washers. The machinist said that the easiest way was to reduce the outside diameter of the washer. But he said that wasn't a good solution because the washers would rust where he cut the metal. I man after my own heart! When I told him that I would clear coat the washers he agreed to the simple fix. Now is the hard part... waiting !! Check back next month, until then... Keep the Faith!! |
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