Anybody want a new friction tip for their vacuum brake?

[Admiral]

I made a punch to make new leather discs for my various distributors, though I went to a local shoe-repair shop and bought a replacement heel piece. The leather is about a quarter-inch thick and cost me all of a dollar. There was enough material there to cover about 10 vacuum brakes, far more than I'll ever need.

[tubman]

Originally Posted by Admiral

I made a punch to make new leather discs for my various distributors, though I went to a local shoe-repair shop and bought a replacement heel piece. The leather is about a quarter-inch thick and cost me all of a dollar. There was enough material there to cover about 10 vacuum brakes, far more than I'll ever need.

Where were you when I needed you? Having this stuff doesn't do any good unless you let others know. BTW, what did you use to punch out the discs? If you have something better, I'd like to know; it's the hardest part of all this.

[5851a]

Place I worked at had a set of gasket punches. I see them on Amazon and other places. Lang tool 950. Ones at work came from Snap on guy. Same package except Snap on was in red box.

[Admiral]

Originally Posted by tubman

Where were you when I needed you? Having this stuff doesn't do any good unless you let others know. BTW, what did you use to punch out the discs? If you have something better, I'd like to know; it's the hardest part of all this.

Sorry! I just saw this thread the other day. Anyway, here's what I did.

This is the punch, a simple piece of mild steel bored to the appropriate diameter with a tapered cutting edge on one end. I used a piece of scrap metal for this since it was free, easy to machine and I'm not making hundreds of these so if the tool gets dull it doesn't really matter.



Here's the disk, which is easily cut from the shoe heel, either by setting everything up in a vice and cranking it closed or -- if you're the particular sort -- you can do the same in an arbor press. The former was dead simple and took about five seconds. As mentioned by others, I jammed this leather piece in there with a touch of super glue to hold it fast. After this, I oiled it well and installed it.



And here's the plunger/piston it attaches to.



And a correction, the leather appears to be about .205", not .250" as I initially indicated. Still, it seems to work just fine in my car. No complaints.



Hope this helps!