Hi Everyone- Do any of you know of a shop or individual in the southern New Hampshire area that is reputable and has experience with the dreaded Ford Lucas Girling hydraulic brake systems? My 1995 F700 dump truck has a brake drag issue on the right rear that needs to be taken care of. Either a frozen wheel cylinder or broken return spring or ???????????? I have the Dayton 5 spoke wheels so that makes getting to the brakes a bit more involved. I'm thinking of doing the job myself but the problem is more of lack of time vs not wanting to tackle the job even if it is a real. If anyone knows of a shop please pass on the info. Thanks in advance- RRRAVEN Deerfield, NH
It could be the park brake chamber not releasing fully on the right side, you could cage it to see if it's causing the brake drag? You can replace the park brake chamber quickly and easily if it turns out to be the problem. http://www.justanswer.com/medium-and-heavy-truck/7yuw8-removing-e-brake-rear-lucas-girling-brakes.html Just a thought! Good luck, Greg
Also check the brake hose going to that wheel, they will sometimes collapse inside. I've had a 1988 L8000 (service truck) with this system for the past 15 years and they have been relatively trouble free.
I tried caging the right can but the weird thing is that with the parking brake engaged or off there is no spring preload or resistance on the right caging bolt as I turn it out to the ~ 2" dimension......weird. So I tried caging the left can to compare them and that is the same.....no feeling of preloading/caging the spring. Even though my parking brakes work fine and hold the truck no problem and release it's almost like the caging bolts are no longer connected to the piston, can this happen? My left side has the proper shoe to drum clearance but the right side has clearance at the top shoe but the bottom is dragging and causing the drum to get way too hot (as in smoking hot) on a 28 mile drive the first time I noticed a problem. I tried backing of the manual adjusters but they won't budge. Fun, fun..................
always hated them dang BOKER, Lukas, Girling brakes, the adjusters are most likely frozen up. they do have a drag spring on the adjuster spanner that can be difficult but most often they are get froze up. I used to have a broken handled screwdriver that I jar the spanner nut loose with. There is an adjuster on both sides of the backing plate also, Ford used to include a silicon based grease in the cylinder rebuild kits that was brake fluid compatible to lubricate the adjuster screws. Most likely, the upper adjuster is the most severely froze up and the lower self adjuster continued to compensate, which caused it to tighten down. When you do get it apart, be sure to reassemble it using a drum-shoe caliper to preadjust the shoes. They are extremely picky about the drum to shoe tolerances.
ftp://164.106.79.2/Instructors/Rscoville/WABCO Meritor Brakes/Drum Brake HD.pdf See if this helps?
bvfdfire- Thank you for the .pdf link, I already had that one saved from another forum but thanks for the effort! I was able to score two brand new (not rebuilds) Euclid # E-6120 parking brake can assemblies on E-Bay for a very, very reasonable price. The reason I bought these is that a few weeks ago when I went to cage my right side parking brake spring there was no preload/resistance when turning the bolt out. So I tried the left can to compare as I would think if you are caging/compressing a spring you should have some tension. The left can was the same way, no resistance. So now I am thinking that sometime during the life of this truck (1995 F700 dump 23,000 original miles.....I bought it with 19,000) someone must have caged the spring cans with an impact gun and broke the pin/attachment method that holds the caging bolts to their inner pistons? My parking brakes work fine but I was trying to see if the right side was causing my slight brake drag. The new cans have plenty of spring preload when turing the caging bolt in or out. Now here is my question......how do I remove the parking brake cans from the backing plates if I cannot cage the springs? I'll end up eating the things if I back it out with that spring preload not bottled up! RRRAVEN