Brake Equalizer Fabrication



4/11/10
Brake Equalizer Fabrication

It seems all I’ve been thinking about is Ferrari brakes. I’ve been struggling with a problem on a Master Cylinder on a 275GTB, and there has been lively discussions about it on F-chat and my Vintage Ferrari forum. Hopefully I’ll get to the bottom of it soon.

On my own car, I was contacted by a friend of mine in Denmark that owns a production machine shop offering to machine my brake equalizer rod with his CNC lathe. Morten owns a beautiful 250GTE that has been recently completed, and was happy to offer his talents. We spent a couple of e-mails conferring my measurements with an equalizer he had. His was slightly different, but I think the crucial measurements were the same.
CNC lathe

Although I was willing to give it a shot on my home lathe, I couldn’t pass up an offer from someone who does this for a living.
rough parts

Morten sent me these pictures of the partially made push rod. I can’t wait to try one of these out!

I’ve gotten a lot of advice and opinions on this brake equalizer unit, and it seems people are split on whether to keep it or disable it. Those who weld up the ends and gut the insides claim it never worked right in the first place and is not worth the effort to fix it. Those who rebuild these units claim it’s a relatively easy part to rebuild so long the seals are sourced. I have struggled over the last couple of months taking all this information into account, and I feel I must keep perusing this project to some kind of resolution. If I try my best to fix this unit, and yet it continues to fail, I will become a believer of the other group, but I owe it to everyone else that has asked the same questions. At the very least, we now know what it looks like inside one of these things!

Mark the date! Saturday, May 8, 2010 will be the Third Annual Radcliffe Motorcar/Tomyang.net Spring Event.
 

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