Topic: Drum brake spring colors

[ChrisV289]

Out of curiosity, are the drum brake spring colors important? Or something that won't be seen? I bought a kit from Mustangs unlimited and the picture in the catalog looked like the ones I took off the car (yellow, green, light blue etc) but the kit came today and only one spring is yellow. The rest are not colored or are the same blue. Does it matter? Anyone know the exact colors they should be?

[CharlesTurner]

Couple pics...

This was done almost 6 years ago, couple details are off, such as rear shoe hold-down springs are usually black and the cups/washers for the hold-down springs are usually zinc w/dichromate (gold).  Overall, pretty close though.  I had some of the colors custom matched.

[tvor]

The colors do make a difference with regard to the shoe return springs (up at the top, around the anchor pin).  The colors indicate different spring strengths.   The lighter _strength_ spring goes on the primary shoe.  The primary shoe is the shoe that has a shorter band of braking material.  The primary shoe is the leading shoe.  The purpose for this is that with duo servo brakes, the primary shoe is pushed out first (because of the lighter strength spring), contacting the drum as the secondary shoe starts to move out.  The primary shoe rotates with the drum and in turn pushes the secondary shoe as well.  The secondary shoe is forced up against the anchor pin where then it all kinda acts like a wedge.  The secondary shoe has more brake material because it is doing the majority of the braking.

[Brian Conway]

Thanks for sharing that bit about spring strength and function.  Never heard that explanation before and did wonder why the different colors ?  Brian

[mgmradio]

Here are pictures of the front and rear of my Aug 64 car.

[Bossbill]

I'm not sure about this detail and this looks like the right place to discuss this.

Although my car had at least one rear brake job, it appears like the hardware was not replaced.
I've been sourcing individual springs and now have all FoMoCo (aka Bendix in my case) NOS pieces.

I also have a few individually wrapped 80s era aftermarket stamped metal adjuster levers (bottom) and I was going to use those. But I noticed that they had the patent number on them and my originals did not.

I cleaned up the 67s and then a couple from a 65 I took apart and found they only had R and L on them.
This also held true for the 1/4 moon cable guides.

I don't think the 60s era pieces had the patent number on the, so I'm going to plate my originals.
Comments?

[J_Speegle]

I'm not sure about this detail and this looks like the right place to discuss this.

Although my car had at least one rear brake job, it appears like the hardware was not replaced.
I've been sourcing individual springs and now have all FoMoCo (aka Bendix in my case) NOS pieces.

I also have a few individually wrapped 80s era aftermarket stamped metal adjuster levers (bottom) and I was going to use those. But I noticed that they had the patent number on them and my originals did not.

I cleaned up the 67s and then a couple from a 65 I took apart and found they only had R and L on them.
This also held true for the 1/4 moon cable guides.

I don't think the 60s era pieces had the patent number on the, so I'm going to plate my originals.
Comments?

Couldn't find a patent number only Pat Pending

A few examples that were handy

From one of the members restored 65




And three of the four on Mike's low mile 65 Dearborn coupe. Because the the stamping is only visible from one side may explain the lower left picture

[Bossbill]

Well, of course I got it backwards.
Just par for the course lately.

In case you wonder, I finished all the other parts for the rear axle but left it un-assembled so I could store the housing vertically. The brakes as a sub assembly never made it to the list!

[Bossbill]

When I saw the Pat. number on mine (Pat. 2.638.610) I looked it up in order to date the patent to see when they could have started using the adjustment pawl with the number on it.
Patent Pending would mean either you haven't received the patent (you have submitted it, though) or that you ordered a metric ton of the pawls before the patent was issued and you still have many, many in stock. So you need to use them up.

But the patent was filed Aug, 1956. And it got the above patent number May, 1960.
So I could see a few years of using up stock. But 5+ years plus before you decide to stamp on the patent number?

I'm not saying that the pics above aren't what was found. But if they went to trouble of displaying the fact that their patent was pending that they would want to display the patent after it was received.

[CharlesTurner]

Keep in mind that Kelsey Hayes and Bendix were both making brake parts.


Could have been minor changes to the design after the original patent.