Brakes Broke

I think I have spoken of my Veg Oil powered Citroen Ax Ebay special before, bought in November 2007 for the princely sum of £125, and intended for use as my commuter car/parts chaser/runabout/banger rally car.

Well it converted well to Veg oil and is running cleanly and cheaply on both SVO (new oil) and recycled waste oil acquired from 2 cafes I frequent.

It has however soiled it's copybook. It joins a BMW 320 and a Triumph FWD as one of only three cars in probabkly fifty I have owned in the last 22 years that have disgraced themselves by having to be recovered on a breakdown truck. Most breakdowns of my various bangers have been rectified at the roadside, although a Yugo I owned twice had to be towed home, once with an exploded coil (never seen before or since) and once with a sheered flywheel location pin.

Any I digress. The Citroen, yet to acquire a nickname, had been running well. For a £125 bargain buy, needing just a CV boot and a headlamp adjuster to pass MOT after a few years standing it was performing exceptionally. Hitting roadside debris holed the radiator last month and cost me £65 for a new one, but saved a few pounds in weight, as the old one was all steel, the new one is plastic and alloy.

It let me down badly however on Sunday morning. I was already late finishing my night shift, and as I left work the handbrake resisted a little as I released it and set off, just a minor niggle i thought. About a mile and a half down the road I stopped at red traffic lights and applied the handbrake. As the lights changed to green I released the handbrake let up the clutch and rose about 9 inches on the back haunches as the car refused to budge. The nearside rear wheel had locked up solid. Suspecting a sticking brake piston I tried to reverse with similar comic effect - the car appeared to be doing press ups as it rose again on the suspension. With much clutch slipping and high revs I coaxed it, wheel locked around the corner into a car park.

A call was placed to "international rescue" otherwise known as my sister Reb, who lived less than a half mile away, and who I knew would have some tools to hand. She duly arrive in her Ford Ranger with a siezed trolley jack and a selection of useful sockets and spanners, plus a much needed large hammer. Ffteen minutes saw the trolley jack working and the car raised off the ground and wheel removed. The brake dru however resisted all attempts to free it off.

despondent, dejected and knackered after a 12 hour nightshift I gave up and called out a friendly recovery agent, who we just happen to put a lot of business through at work. I didn't expect a freebie recovery, but got one anyway, as they were running my way on a Police Recovery, so they were passing anyway - thanks Robin at Bells Truck Services.

The AX arrived home and was shunted into a corner until I finished nights.

monday afternnon I started again trying to remove the drum. I tried coaxing it gently, then using heat, cooling it, whacking it with a ruddy great hammer - nothing worked. The only solution in the end was to take a grinder to it, and cut the brake drum in half as far as I could, then split it with a cold chisel. This did the trick and revealed the extent of the problem - the friction material from one shoe had parted, then worked it's way 180 degrees around the drum until it had become very firmly affixed with the shoe in that side, locking the drum very tightly. I've seem this happen before, but never to this degree where the drum is locked cmpletely. I think it was compunded by the overall wear on the shoes, making the handbrake adjuster go overcentre as well, locking the mechanism on that side. But no warning was given, the brakes worked just fine one minute, then jammed the next.

A new brake drum came in at £42 quid. Normally I would change both sides, but given the banger status of the Citroen (by virtue of age rather than condition) and it's low mileage I measured up the opposite drum and found it had hardly any wear at all. At the risk of a minor brale imbalance I have replaced just the one drum I damaged in removal, but fitted new shoes to both sides, giving them a genorous coat of copperslip grease to ensure smooth working.

Job done, the handbrake is now much better, the spring resistance can be felt through the lever, and the brakes are fine.

Bearign caps are £3 each, although they come for a Saxo rather than the AX, with a different size hub nut. I have reused the old hub nut against advice, as the straking point is different once refiited due to wear on the bearings, so it should be fine. The alternative is to find onother nut the same size fitted to something else, and as I can't see a failure being likely why bother?

The next major project for the Citroen is to see if Hydrogen Injection is feasibly as a fuel booster, using tap water to onert the H2O into oxygen and hydrogen on the fly, and running it in through the air intake to reduce the amount of Veg Oil burnt. An intersting hobby project for this bargain banger. I'll post my findings here, so watch this space.