Replacing my Brakes Options

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This weekend was step one of two of replacing the brakes on my '76. The previous owner upon selling to me told me that he had rebuilt the front calipers and the brake fluid looked very nice and fresh in the master cylinder. Looks like a nice fresh tank of ATE super blue..... I will find out later that what's in that tank doesnt look like what's in the brake lines....

I started this project because when turning the wheels in the rear to set timing, I can hear the left rear brake dragging, and loudly. I feared it was a bearing, but it wasnt. The brake was dragging. I lift the car and put it on 4 jackstands, the evil kind (IMG:style_emoticons/default/sad.gif) I need some proper pin-thru stands. I have all 4 tires under the car in case the car decides it wants to smoosh me.

I'm using 4 new rebuilt calipers from Eric Shea. With these calipers are 4 new rotors, new front bearings, new seals, 4 new softlines, all new pads. A total of $1038 in parts from Eric.

From the pic...the parts are gorgeous!

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How does this happen? These seals look completely melted! What's going on here?


I want to end this section with how I removed the softlines.

You need an 11mm open wrench and a 17mmcombination wrench and 17mmdeep socket, more on the deep socket in a minute.

The front soft lines are easy to get off because there are two clips, one holding either end of the line. Make sure you have the 17mm on the soft line and the 11mm on the hard line and lefty loosy those suckers apart. I think you will break the hard lines if you dont support both sides of the joint. The soft lines can be on there pretty good! My soft lines were original to the car by the small metal collar on them saying 05/75. Making these lines 33 years old in service!

The rear softlines are a BITCH to get off. Eric Shea gave me a great tip on how to get them off: you need to cut the line very close to where they go up into the body. Then you put the 11mm wrench on the hardline up there, and put the 17mm deep socket on the softline fitting and then CAREFULLY wrench away. I had to use needle nose pliers to get the clips off of the softline fitting to drop it off the mount there. You have to work it back and forth and it'll come off...eventually. I bent the mounting tabs down slightly to seperate the softlines from the hardline joints. I suggest cleaning the hard line flares thoroughly before re-attaching the new soft lines.

The rear brake rotors came off really easily after the PB blaster was used on the flat-head screws that keep them on. The inner adjusters came off really easily after PB Blaster. I didnt have to do anything other than use a 4mm allen key, easy.

The left caliper had brake fluid inside the parking brake mechanism, I think this means the thing is shot. I'm not sure though.


I will end by saying that my brakes didnt feel spongy per-se. They were pretty much non-existant until you pushed nice and hard on the pedal. I think the brakes are in horrible shape and am really glad that I got a whole new set. I hope the car will be less sluggish and will not overheat in the future. I'm also looking forward to some improved stopping.

Does anyone have any recommendations for some brake fluid for me? I have super blue in there, I'd like a gold or orange colored fluid so that when I flush the system I know when I'm good and flushed.

I'm awaiting some parts that USPS lost in shipping before I can finish the job and put these pretty new brakes back on. I'll post the completion in here! Hope you enjoyed!