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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The rear pads just dont seem right to me... if you look down at the top of the caliper, they look like this... \||/... with || being the rotor. It seems that the pad spreaders or clips are keeping the top of the pad way back against the body of the caliper while the pistons only push out the other end. I didnt put the pads in, but they looked just like the old pads for how they were installed. The haynes has the rear venting set up with the pad clip thingies out, but this just doesnt make sense to me, the pads would be adjusted correctly for something that wouldnt actually be used, the clips would be there when the car is actually driven. I dont understand how to get the pads parallel to the rotor, they are always at at angle.

99% of the pedal pushing was slow and firm, but the pedal always went to the floor. I'm used to a pretty hard pedal in that car and not but 2 inches at most of travel. I said to stomp occasionally only on the rears as I figured it would knock some air bubbles around if she did. it actually did jar a few bubbles when she did that.