For the last 12 months, I have been helping the owner of this 66-road car documented here; complete his search for the final pieces that would make the car 100% complete and original. There are some other things that need to be done to the car due to age etc., but the car had one piece that no one seemed to have or know how to find. After about 6 years of searching and the help of several individuals both in the US and England, all the pieces have finally been located and installed. The owner would like to document here on the forum that adventure and acknowledge those individuals who gave their time, knowledge, experience, effort, and money in an effort to help him complete his car.
What he started out with, were some pieces that another owner had sent, but no idea how they went together. Their assembly is documented earlier in this thread. No cable or associated pieces that would make the setup work were available. With the aid of the schematics, which he had, we figured out how the cable was connected to the brake pedal and the handle shaft. Now all we needed was a cable, some cable adjusters, and one or two other pieces, and we could start putting them together.
With a little research at a local bicycle shop, and an old timey ACE hardware store that had about 20,000 square feet of tools and parts not to be found anywhere else in the Atlanta area, I came up with an idea that we could take a bicycle cable, as they only came in two sizes(5 & 6mm.), weld a .25 inch rod end on its end to match the clevis pin, and use it for the cable. The owner liked my idea, but wanted to search some more in order to find the original manufacturer, or someone who could manufacture the original cable. He has been looking for about 5-6 years, emailing, calling, and writing owners across the globe in his quest.
He would like to thank the following individuals for their selfless help in the quest for the parts. John Hardy (England) who tracked down a production road car in England, a very long distance from his home, and photographed the road car's e-brake system showing what an installed original cable looked like from one end to the other. John's selfless research took place over several years; Frank Catt (Wealden Engineering in England) who created a prototype cable from emails and phone conversations regarding measurements, within one week. Don Silawsky who owns a production GT 40 in Maryland/USA, who saw the quest in GT 40s.com several years ago and forwarded the owner to Sean Singleton in England; Sean Singleton (England), located an original road car e-brake cable and carried it to a cable manufacturer/machine shop and had it duplicated to perfection. Doug Kirk, who knows more about the GT 40 than anyone he has ever known and who races his Safir GT40 in Seattle, took measurements from his brake cable's components and drew prototype drawings of the cable during the early years of his search.
Here are some more pics of the ebrake setup and the effort required to install it.
E-brake rod.
Cable in the cabin.
On rod.
In front clip
Threaded housing and cable adjuster
Next we had to get the rod end and the cable end adjuster down to the brake pedal. The brake pedal was dislodged, and turned sideways in order to get hands down to it. This still proved to be a challenge.
Getting the rod end inplace,putting the clevis pin with washerson both sides and the cotter pin in place took a lot of patience, balance and holding pieces still while moving others.
Doing these is like doing Laparoscopic operations in surgery. Having access to those instruments makes these steps a lot easier. If you can get someone in surgery to get you some of their old instruments, they will come in handy in tight spaces.
While working that day, I got to feeling pretty queasy, from some greasy doughnuts and wasnot able to completely put all back in its place. So another one hour trip is planned soon to do that and hopefully get the car on the road. I have more pics of the car itself and its various parts which I will post later. Meanwhile he and I will finish with his other classicd cars and get them on the road as well. I am also trying to get DRB#5 closer to completion. My wife wants me to have it finished by summer. Will post some progress on it soon.
Bill