Inca Yellow

The brake switch have finally given up and my brake lights have started sticking on intermittently. The brake switch is the original one and was pretty rusty, so it wasn't a surprise it had stopped functioning.

Despite the Rostyle wheels being pretty much solid, you can still see the brake calipers on the front and the drums on the back through the holes. As we had pretty full tins of heat-proof paint from the engine block paint jobs, we set about with the brushes.

The front brakes have never been as 'tight' as I wanted and I knew they could be better. The pads looked to be halfway down or worse, so I wanted to see if a new set would make a difference.

The brake switch on the later MGBs is in a pretty awful position behind the pedal box. We managed to test ours in-situ using a multi-meter, so we knew it worked, but we had to remove it to re-fit the wiring. Luckily a little bit of effort on the lock-nut released it without damage.

The MG is moving under its own steam for the first time in around 17 years! Turns out the clutch wasn't as stuck as we had feared, which was a major relief. The new cylinders and lines, along with the torque of the engine, seem to have helped it break loose.

Now we had our new clutch and brake cylinders in place, today was a day for topping up with hydraulic fluid, checking for leaks and bleeding the system.

Got the rear brake disassembled today to replace the brake cylinder. Unfortunately you need to take the whole lot off to do this. John Twist from University Motors does a good step-by-step of this, though repeating his steps on a wheel still attached to a car and whose parts are a tad rusty takes a bit more time.

Today we started bleeding the brakes, front and rear after replacing the brake lines. We used the EeziBleed kit for the front set, but the kit's reservoir bottle sprung a leak so we reverted to the pedal pumping method for the rear sets.

New stuff in the post this week - a full copper brake line set and steel braided brake hoses.