The Toys are back in the pram... but only just

The saga of my rear handbrake calipers continues. As my paddock buddies are off racing this weekend I'm stuck in the garage fitting brake calipers. The new calipers are really my last option so they better fit.

A trial fitting off the caliper inside the rim of the 14" wheel shows that these new callipers don't scrape the inside of the wheel. This is the first success I've had with this piece of kit so worth a small whoo Hoo!

The second success is that the Hi spec hand brake clapper is a direct bolt-bolt fit for the old Ultralite 2 caliper.

However when I came to fit them to the car things got much tougher. With the calipers in the correct position with the bleed hole at the top. They clear the inside of the wheel nicely and the handbrake mechanism clears the upright but the wishbone obscures the handbrake actuation mounting holes and so there is no prospect of the mechanism operating. The alternative is to swap the units on each side of the car and fit them upside down, but in this orientation the bleed holes are at the bottom and so the callipers have to be removed for bleeding which is just a pain in the arse. However in this orientation the mechanism fouls the upright so they can't even be fitted anyway. Aaaargh! (The picture BTW shows the final fixed solution)

So now I have some callipers that do fit inside the wheels and which I can fit to hubs but which will not operate, or some callipers that can't even be fitted to the car!

At this point my toys were about to achieve escape velocity from the pram, the earth and the hold damn solar system.

However engaging brain, rather temper revealed a lateral thinking solution. In the same way that the callipers are "handed" on each side of the car, the actuation lever is also handed and I wondered if I could disassemble the callipers and swap the actuation levers between the left and right side callipers. This would have the effect of moving the lever away from the wishbone that was blocking the cable hole.

I reasoned that surely any sensible piece of production design would have standardised components that could be interchangeable in order to reduce the number of unique parts that need to be manufactured.

My hunch was right! I can swap the levers, and at last I have a rear brake calliper that I can fit under the wheels, one that can actually be mounted to the hub and to which I can attach both a brake line and a working handbrake cable. Now that calls for a beer and good on you Hi Spec.

I'll complete the fit up tomorrow.