Birdddogs '69 Baja and beam build

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Purdy stuff! I remember when I opened the box on my rear discs and saw all the purdies. Years later, still impressive but not so purdy.

You will enjoy them after you get them hooked up and everything bled and adjusted. You may find that there is some shimming of the caliper on the mount to center the calipers on the rotors, which seems to be normal as I had to do it also.

Lee

[Devastator]

paid my brother off for his share of the shop/brewery so it's ALL mine now paid in full, in the clear and his wife can't bitch 'cause I have too much "junk" in it!

Priceless.

[birddog1148]

The right side on hand tight. Not sure that long hose is right, the instructions showed the short one, but not sure where else it was supposed to go. Instructions were not so good.


Found this neat needle addaptor for the grease gun, just the thing for getting grease back into tight spots like bearings.


Playing around the last 2 days should make it easier to knock it out quick tomorrow. Also have a new stearing stabilizer to go on.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

This is how I did it. I still have the soft line at the end of the trailing arm but connect a hard line to it and attached it to the calipers. I did not want the flex at the caliper end as I felt that there could be enough loading that the hard line could break. Also, the soft line at the caliper could be more vulnerable to snagging on something. I also routed the hard line between the shock and the snubber to get rid of the bend around the snubber.

Lee

[birddog1148]

Well thinking of doing a thread on installing this kit for future purchasers. Its not really that hard but man try to find a ISO/ bubble flaring tool in this town. It aint happening and most at the pars stores never seen it.


Lee, I did away the the rubber line and went hard all the way.



Will be finished tomorrow I hope.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

NAPA makes a tubing bender that is really nice and gives short radius bends. The part number is 77-4028 http://www.napaonline.com/Catalog/Resul ... 1&Dp=3&N=0 The picture they have of it isn’t very good so if you want I can take a picture of it. You grab the tube between the two jaws that have radiuses on them and bent the tube right or left. You can make bends very close together. I haven’t had the opportunity to use mine yet but I did see it in action and wow!

I found this on eBay and Amazon also sells them.

http://www.ebay.com/sch/sis.html?_nkw=N ... 0642371755

As far as ball flairs go, you should be able to order one. I probably shouldn’t speak out of turn on this but some guys claim that they can make a partial double flair but stop when they have started to fold the flair back on the one flair and it works… most of the time. I have a couple done on my buggy by someone who knows what they are doing so it does work. I think I would get the proper tool though. I think you might also be able to get adapters from bubble to double flairs too.

Brakes are something you don’t want to do half way.

Lee

[birddog1148]

AND










The Master Cylinder is BAD!
Waiting on the new one to come in

[Ol'fogasaurus]

And the hits keep on comming! It always seems to work out that was doesn't it; my new MC was bad out of the box.

[birddog1148]

Got the new MC yesterday and got it in today, what a #$&$ to bleed. Finally got the rears to lock up and was not impressed, barely got a chirp on dry pavement but could leave 6-8' marks. Figured I would howling squeal when they locked. Good thing my grumpy, dirty old man, camera shy old neighbor was there to work the pedals.


What will adding front disc brakes do?
Glad the Baja is back out of the shop, but the bus had escaped for a few days got locked back up.

[TimS]

I'd give a little bit of break in time before you get too dissapointed with the performance of those brakes.

[Eriksport]

Probably too late for your build, but I found when teaching myself how to do brake lines, the VW double bubble flare whatever its called, that it was easier to buy a fitting/adapter that thread into the wheel cylinder, and ran the standard flare towards the car body. Then I could buy preflared random lengths of line and just bend and route as needed. I'm scared to know how much I actually spend on everything, including the park lock, prep valve, lines/fittings, and T for a pressure switch I imagine I'm near 120 bucks.

Erik

[JUSSUMGUY]

As Tim said I'd give it some break in time. Also, there are a variety of different hardness of pads for that caliper. There is some interesting info on pads for these calipers on the road race, autocross section on this site.

[Ol'fogasaurus]

Probably too late for your build, but I found when teaching myself how to do brake lines, the VW double bubble flare whatever its called, that it was easier to buy a fitting/adapter that thread into the wheel cylinder, and ran the standard flare towards the car body. Then I could buy preflared random lengths of line and just bend and route as needed. I'm scared to know how much I actually spend on everything, including the park lock, prep valve, lines/fittings, and T for a pressure switch I imagine I'm near 120 bucks.

Erik

Erik, be careful of the park lock, they have a tendency to let lose (even the tiniest of air leaks in a join can affect their holding power) or jam shut to where you have to open a bleeder to release the pressure.


The other day I ran into a ball-check type of manual park lock that would eliminate the locking of the brakes problem but not the air getting into the line problem which is why they are not DOT legal for the street.

From personal experience they are not safe to use.

Lee

[Steve Arndt]

It takes a few miles to bed the pads in.

Have you tried putting rear (small) wheel cylinders on the front brakes?

Steve

[Devastator]

Erik, be careful of the park lock, they have a tendency to let lose (even the tiniest of air leaks in a join can affect their holding power) or jam shut to where you have to open a bleeder to release the pressure.

My brother and I both used to run 1 of these, and they used to get stuck closed if you pushed the brakes hard enough to hold the vehicle on a hill. Mine is off in the bushes as far as I could throw it, right next to my brothers.