FH - starting on the brakes

 Now that we are waiting for the tyres and we have the rear mudguard off, we can have a look at the rear brake.

First glance suggests everything is in order. The springs are all in place and don't look distorted at all; the adjuster is there with the two little mushrooms; there are no cracks in the shoes or the plate.

The shoes look old; they are worn, but not down to the rivets, but they look a bit greasy and glazed. This is the leading shoe:

This is the trailing shoe:

The drum is starting to see wear from being recently wheeled around and used a little:

I'm going to clean these up and see what the engagement looks like using the sandpaper technique. That will let me explore the adjustment and remove any greasy deposit to see if I can improve the performance before I commit to relining the shoes.

I've documented how I do this before, but it's essentially a long strip of 60 grit emery tape stuck to the brake drum with double sided tape. You then back off the adjuster, refit the brake plate and the wheel spindle, and spin the brake plate in the drum.

You then apply the brake with the lever so that the shoes contact the emery. The result is that the linings are reduced in the areas where the are high and this improves the fit of the lining against the drum. In this case, the exercise showed that the linings were already a good fit against the drum, but were clearly rather glazed.

We'll do the same at the front, and test ride it again.