I spent the past couple days refurbishing a park brake lever to install on my '25 touring (cut off), replacing the badly pitted and bent one that was on the car. I ran into a major snag however.

Below you see a picture of the lever all the way forward and the ramp for the clutch lever bolt is not clear not clear of the adjustment bolt area. I compared to the one I took out of the car and sure enough, that one was rotated just a bit more forward.

I then just for kicks compared it to the one on the doodle bug and that one was excessively more forward and clears the clutch lever bolt by a mile.

So I guess my question is what is correct here? I don't know once I adjust the clutch lever bolt if it will still have clearance on the edge of the ramp. Right now in this pic there is very little clearance with the edge of the bolt even with the bottom of the clutch lever.

Chad,
could it be you are using a T Truck clutch part? I believe they are a little longer. Just wondering.
jim

Jim,

I thought that too, but I measured the height of the ramps with my calipers and compared to the old one and the one on my doodle bug, all three are the same. Plus if I remember right the TT one is quite a bit longer.

This is going to kill me after all this work over couple days if it was for nothing. Has to be a reasonable explanation I would think.

The old one on the doodle bug, the doodle bug may have used a truck frame so a comparison will not be of any help. From the center of the cross shaft to top of cam should be approx 3 1/4 inches for the car. Taller for the truck (TT)

If you take out the clevis pins from the brake rods and push the brake lever all the way forward the bolt should clear the cam. If it is still the way it looks in the picture, you have either the wrong part or something is bent. The brakes should be adjusted so the pin goes in when the lever is all the way forward. If it pulls the lever back, the rods are adjusted too short.
Norm

Chad

Maybe the cross shaft cam is bent out of shape on your replacement. That could produce an offset.

Here is older post where some measure of the angle was made.

http://www.mtfca.com/discus/messages/179374/212619.html?1306112340

Norman, Brake rods and low pedal linkage are both out and unattached.

Dan, I will look into that post and report back.

Today I put an angle finder app on my phone (Clinometer -- which is really slick and seems to be very accurate from my other testings I did around the house). According to the previous thread posted by Dan, there was a 35 degree angle of the back straight edge of the cam with the hand brake lever straight up and down. My old brake lever assembly agrees with that almost perfectly--35 degrees from vertical.

I then set the one I just installed in the car to vertical and checked with the angle finder. That cam on the back edge has it at 28-29 degrees. Moving the angle finder to 35 shows me it is off quite a bit. I don't have any other lever assemblies around here that are decent enough for this car, so I think what I am going to do is cut and reweld at the proper angle.

This will also allow me to shorten the leg of the cam just a smidge for more clearance. Is it ideal? Not really, but it should work. If I find a really nice lever assembly in the future that is correct I will swap it out then. Unless this sounds like a horrible idea.

As a speculation, I measured the one on the doodle bug and that has almost 50 degrees of angle from vertical. But, it appears it has been modified to do so. Maybe this isn't as uncommon as I think? I also wonder if my frame on the pickup is sagged in the middle, that would account for some of the clearance issue too.

After thinking it over for a day while at work, I decided to try something a little different than just lope the cam lever off and reweld it. I decided to cut the edge were it is brazed and then drill the pin --- luckily it does not go all the way through. I don't have oxy-acetylene torches, so I gave tis a shot with a MAPP gas torch.

I heated up the round part of the cam around the shaft until it was turning red---unfortunately it wasn't going to melt the braze. My hope was the braze hadn't seeped under the cam. I was wrong. But I did get it to break loose, and working it back and forth with my hammer and using a punch to try and move it down the shaft I managed to get where I wanted to be. It was now free.





Once I filed off all the brazing, I set the cam in its new spot and gave it a couple of tack welds. Unfortunately, that it is all tonight. Next step is to put it back in the car and see if it will work or if I have to readjust. Or worst case, cut the cam to shorten it just a bit as I also fist discussed. Once all set. I will re weld it where they had brazed originally. I set it at 39 degrees off vertical, seems 35 is what the factory used and this one was at 29 degrees originally.

Over the days since my last posting I looked at a few other cars, one being an untouched original, and noted the various angles of the handle and clutch brake cam. It seems that the cam is set between 35 - 40 degrees from vertical.

I also took note of the crossbar angle when the handle is all the way forward and it seems to be about 20 degrees from vertical. The handle itself runs about 22 degrees from vertical.

So with all that, and knowing as I noted above that I reset me cam angle to 39 degrees, I test fitted the assembly back in the car this evening. The results are excellent, and I can proceed with finish welding the cam and repainting the handle. I hope this helps anyone in the future that seem to buy screwed up vehicles as I usually do.

This first pic is of the cam and clutch bolt with the brake handle all the way forward. Note the difference from my first pic.





This second pic is with the handle straight up in the neutral position. The clutch bolt does slightly raise more as the brake lever pulls back, so I am definitely on the front edge of the neutral crown.

Looks good!

I think I'd have installed it and tried it out before welding it in place but nice work any way.