There has been a bit of a pause of late – Steve has been on holiday and is also busy at home with a building extension, Tony has been on holiday and all of us have been rather tied up with other commitments! But with our thoughts turning again to getting the back wheels on now as soon as possible, we have been looking at the brakes and the braking system. Steel 1mm Blanks have been laser cut for the new dust covers which go inside the back wheels over the shoes and springs and they still have to be finished off at the Leicester out-station! New brake pads have arrived and await riveting to the brake shoes at base in Axminster.
The original handbrake compensating gear was still fitted to the chassis recovered from under the Shepherds Hut – it was bent and corroded and there was no way of recovering the actual tube and shaft from there to use again so it had to be cut. It consists of a 1 1/2” diameter steel tube which can turn on a 1” steel shaft which runs through it, as the hand brake is activated and to the tube are brazed two arms. Although the arms were also heavily corroded, we hope that we can recover these and that they will prove to be be good enough to be used again.
The levers, with some of the original shaft left on them to hold them by for machining later on, were first of all sand-blasted, just to clean them up and so that we could see what exactly we had there. At that stage, the original brazing becomes very clear to see.