F

firmsi

New Member
Hello all I am a newbie to landies but (so I thought fairly mechanically minded....)
I'm looking for ideas with my series 3SWB brakes as the are pulsing and pumping up..

I got teh series 3 about a month ago and noticed the brakes wer crap and pumped up.. no worries I thought bleed them maybe find a cylinder leaking blown seals .. after noons work???

Mmmmm.. so here goes. I have read all the advice offrred on brakes on the forum and websites and tried everything to no avail.
turns out its had new shoes and pistons recently. I have bled and bled and even did it with an easy bleed but still they pump up and the pedal can go to the floor. So in my investigations the first thing I saw was the muppet who fitted the cylinders got the 1 1/4 and 1 inch ones mixed up so there was one of each diametre on each axel. so that was rectified both 1 1/4's n front but didn't make any difference to the issue. after copious bleeding and adjusting I thought the drums must be worn and or egg shaped so i bought new drums from craddocks

fitted them and to my horror the pedal was worse and it was pulsating even worse!
so i read up a bit more and noticed on the back the pads fitted in the front had less diameter of friction material than those on the back. I thought I would swap the pads front to rear so that the pads with most material were on the front. again this has made no difference whatsoever. I cannot find any info or any pics of how the pads front to rear differ on a swb.

my master cylinder is non servo BTW.

I am rapidly coming to the conclusion my hub (axels) maybe bent (hence pulsating even with new drums) and my master cylinder seals may be letting by hence pedal still pumping up.

Could my new drums from craddocks be egg shaped???
all the pads cylinders and drums are 3rd party nothnig is lucas or girling so probably made my monkeys in china
I am really getting to the end of my the with the bloody thing..HELP!!!
 
Keep searching on here, im sure i remember reading someone advising a series owner to hold the cylinders closed while bleeding, and also explain why this needed to be done...

Ive also had to do this on subaru clutch slaves to get them working..
 
You can also clamp the 4 brake lines with the special tool ( or mole grips with something to protect the lines with ) this can help you pin point the problem, ie clamp all 4 lines if your pedals hard, this points to the master cylinder...
 
yes i saw that post and tried a G clamp on them, bled each in turn, to start with I clamped them so far it must pushed the pistons past the bleed nipple cos they would not bleed so i slackened it off a bit and bled them, made no difference to the pedal

ready to torch it......
 
yes tried clamping the flexi that goes to the rear the pedal was harder but brakes were rubbish. eventually the fluid pushed past the clamp and locked the back brakes. result was inconclusive as clamping off two cylinders is bound to reduce pedal travel. it still pulsed but not as much.

anyone know a good specialst in the surrey area prefferably near banstead/ epsom way? I may have to admit defeat here....
 
drums brand new from craddocks who i thought were a top landrover specialist although my luck is such there are probably cheap chinese ****e...haven't thought of wheel bearings yet so will check them, might try putting old drums back on one at a time as i swear pulsing has got worse since new drums went on its very noticable rekon the pedal moves a cm under my foot on light braking.
 
all landy parts peolpe use the same wholesalers depends what parts you get .pulsing in pedal can only be drums or wheel bearings
 
got to admit haven't tried the wheel bearings so thank at least thats something i can look at for the pulsing. as for pumping looking at new master cylinders on ebay can get one for just over £20 so could try a new master cylinder i guess...

the pads in front and rear are definately different does anyone know if they should be the same shoes in front and rear of a SWB pre 80 series 3?
 
so the difference is the length of pad material on the shoe. one set has a gap before the material starts the other set has more diameter of material
tried swapping them about front to rear but pump is the same

can't find any pics of newly fitted shoes to get some idea, craddocks list front and rear shoes they might be the same though
 
Just to check (cus i made this mistake the first time i started playing with brakes on my series) have you adjusted every adjuster properly? Makes a huge difference :doh:
 
yeah done that on every adjuster lots of times, not sure what else to do! going to buy a new master cylinder cos they are cheap and see what happens with the pumping up..
but that won't sort the pulsing ..
 
abs? heh, noup. did you cleaned the drums before fitting in new shoes? i didnt and the "storage grease" burned my shoes!!
 
yip cleaned off the grease... one ting is i hadn't got many drum securing screws left on my vehicle if the machining on the drums was **** then i supose its possible they are going on cockeyed but each drum has at least one screw, theyaint expensive so i'll get some .. again doubtul it'll solve the pulsing
 
try without screws and bolt wheel on whilst someone applies foot brake. spin wheel before tightening and jab brakes on to centre.
 
firmsi said:
so the difference is the length of pad material on the shoe. one set has a gap before the material starts the other set has more diameter of material
tried swapping them about front to rear but pump is the same

can't find any pics of newly fitted shoes to get some idea, craddocks list front and rear shoes they might be the same though
Click to expand...

The shoe with the gap before the lining should go to the front on each side,it's called leading and trailing,the idea is the shoe grabs the drum for better braking. It won't make any difference to the pedal pumping up or pulsing but if not fitted correctly will efect efficiency on the road.

If your pedal is pumping up it's either shoes not adjusted correct or air in the system,if you clamp all 3 flexys at the same time does the pedal become good?( don't drive it as you'll have no brakes!) if it is there's probably nothing wrong with the master clyinder
 
thanks for all the help so far guys i will try the idea about centering them with no screws, on the leading and trailing shoe idea this is what i initially thought however on close inspection I cannot pair them up this way as out of the 4 shoes with the gap before the material starts (which you might think are the leading shoes) only two have an adjuster/spring post so I cannot put them into all 4 drums as leading shoes.. I haven'tried clamping all the hoes but doing just the back one does result in a firmer pedal but then there is less movement in the system. The flexi to the rear is old and could be ballooning I guess, will try the above but then I guess my next move will be a new master cylinder and rear flexi, might buy another set of pads to check how they come as new because the ones i have were fitted prior to me buying the vehicle. Someone on another post somewher mentions possibility of a bent or damaged stub axel which would lead to teh pulsing. I would need to try and rig up something agint the wheel and then spin it to check for eccentric movement ... all in a all its turning into a bit of a saga this one! If I can just get it good enough for the MOT I can ;live with the odd niggle...
 
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