Major problem number one.
The rivets were drilled out easily but no amount of effort would remove the old asbestos linings from the shoes until it was realised that some previous owner (in the USA) had also bonded the linings to the shoes. My mechanic was adamant that the shoes were useless and that a complete new set was required. - Jack Barclay were out of stock and so was the factory. Much scratching of heads got us nowhere even the thought of searching the scrap car merchants.

Quite by chance I mention this problem to Chris White of York (the author of another feature on this site) " Ah yes" he retorted "try this chap Tony Pugh in Leeds who specialises in brakes for old cars". After a quick call to Tony, the shoes were overnighted to Leeds, stripped down by a special process, relined with his linings, repainted and were back with me 3 days later at a total cost of not much over a £100 including courier charges. About a fifth of the cost of a new set of shoes which weren't available anyway.

Problem number two
We rebuild the slave cylinders. - Horrors, on one of them, the new seal kept on dropping through it. After much knashing of teeth, we then found that 3 wheels had SCII cylinders but the 4th was a larger SCI cylinder!!

Since January 2005, the fitting and supply for fitting in the United Kingdom of asbestos based materials is prohibited. Limited exceptions, mainly for the Ministry of Defence, are not relevant to owners of old vehicles. Vehicles already fitted with components containing asbestos may continue to be used. Older (pre 1973) vehicles were given a five year exemption before being obliged to use non-asbestos brake linings when replacing. The exemption, on grounds of safety, has allowed time to assess the suitability of available materials and manufacturers have overcome teething problems and developed new lining materials during this period.

There were many problems with early non-asbestos brake and clutch linings. These included poor friction and rapid wear, often resulting from intolerance of high temperatures for some woven materials, cracking of certain moulded linings and high abrasion leading to rapid wear on discs and drums with some pads and moulded linings. Moulded linings have also been prone to require extensive bedding in. It has not helped that some relining companies appear to have often fitted non-asbestos materials that are completely unsuited to the braking system of the particular vehicle, for example, using abrasive materials for vehicles with steel drums or fitting low friction moulded bonding material, intended for the rear brakes of cars with servos, or to pre-war motorcycle shoes. We have encountered, and rectified, many problems of this kind in recent years and now routinely advise owners of old vehicles who find their brakes are much worse after a reline that the problem is almost certainly due to the wrong material having been fitted.

Nevertheless, the more serious initial problems with non-asbestos materials have been largely overcome and in recent years we have been able to use good quality high friction moulded and woven materials for relining and remanufacture of linings. In fact, the non-asbestos woven materials generally have a higher friction value than recent asbestos based materials, withstand similar or higher temperatures, form to radius more satisfactorily and tend to be better in appearance overall. For clutches for older vehicles, we have supplied very satisfactory non-asbestos linings for many years.

While it is now possible to obtain suitable material in roll form for making linings, both moulded and woven, it has proved difficult to find satisfactory ready cut and formed (and preferably ready drilled) linings for most of the references we are concerned with. The effect of this is that the small overall increase in price for non-asbestos linings compared with asbestos-based is not evenly applied across all linings. Linings that we could not buy ready made in the past, and so were obliged to make, will show little or no change. This refers mainly to woven linings used on vehicles up to the mid 1950s. The biggest proportionate increases will be for the moulded linings used on later vehicles, especially linings we were able to buy cheaply as surplus stock. For shoes for later vehicles there will also be larger proportionate increases because of the lack of suitable non-asbestos old stock and the work involved in relining. In summary, there will in future be much less differential in me price of brake linings and shoes according to the age of vehicle.

Disc pad prices are similarly affected. A few references of pads used on older vehicles are still in bulk production and they are fairly inexpensive because they have been made in sufficiently large quantities to easily cover the high initial tooling costs. However, for older pads much of the tooling has now been scrapped and retooling to manufacture by the process used for large batches is prohibitively expensive for short runs. In association with a friction specialist we have developed methods for economic production of smaller quantities and are gradually introducing a range of scarce disc pads to cover references not in our present extensive stocks. Our supplier is also able to reline disc pads in cases where new pads are unavailable. For this, or any queries regarding disc pads or brake and clutch linings, please contact us.