Model A - brake plates

 There hasn't been much action on the Model A lately – I have been rebuilding the top end of the Huntmaster and doing a bit of travelling. However, here is a little interlude: some while back we painted the brake plates from the Model A ready for rebuild and last year I acquired a new set of brake cams from the Slovak Klub.

You can see from the picture how bad the originals were - there was an awful lot of movement in the bush on the brake plate. Karol at the Slovak Klub supplies his replacement cams with a diameter of 13 millimeters which I thought was a problem until I realized what he was doing – if you drill out the brake cam bush on the brake plate, 13 millimeters is enough to take out most of the wear and you can fit new brake cams without replacing the bush, which saves a bit of time.

They work very well, although the square section is a bit oversize too - probably intentionally!

I had also noticed that whilst Karol's cams were identical, the old ones were not. You can see from the picture of the rear brake plate as the bike arrived that the position of the brake lever is a long way forward - too far forward:

The new cam puts the brake lever in a more sensible position.