Servicing 66 Parking Brakes

[Steven A.]

I'd like to check out the state of the parking brakes on my 66. Reading the archives, I get the sense that this may be one of those classic mid-year PITA projects. On the other hand, it seems that the process is (i) take of the wheel, (ii) take of the knock-off adaptor, (iii) detach the caliper, (iv) hopefully find that someone else has drilled the rivets on the rotor and pull it off, (v) replace broken and rusted components and (vi) reassemble and adjust. So, what are the pitfalls and traps for the unwary? I see there's a special tool made to make it easier to put the brakes back together, but that it's still tricky.

Any words of advice? Is there a clear (i.e. with pictures) step by step description of this job somewhere?

Thanks.

[John H.]

Re: Servicing 66 Parking Brakes

I'd like to check out the state of the parking brakes on my 66. Reading the archives, I get the sense that this may be one of those classic mid-year PITA projects. On the other hand, it seems that the process is (i) take of the wheel, (ii) take of the knock-off adaptor, (iii) detach the caliper, (iv) hopefully find that someone else has drilled the rivets on the rotor and pull it off, (v) replace broken and rusted components and (vi) reassemble and adjust. So, what are the pitfalls and traps for the unwary? I see there's a special tool made to make it easier to put the brakes back together, but that it's still tricky.

Any words of advice? Is there a clear (i.e. with pictures) step by step description of this job somewhere?

Thanks.

Steven -

The Rowley Corvette site used to have a how-to tech article for doing that.

[Steven A.]

Re: Servicing 66 Parking Brakes

Thanks, John. I found the article. It starts out like this: "This is one of the most difficult repairs we have done on Corvettes". Probably more than I want to tackle.

[Clark K.]

Re: Servicing 66 Parking Brakes

Thanks, John. I found the article. It starts out like this: "This is one of the most difficult repairs we have done on Corvettes". Probably more than I want to tackle.

Take it to a Corvette restoration shop that you trust. This job is only for experienced Sting Ray mechanics. There are a lot of things that you can do wrong, but that is just me talking (writing). -Clark

[Jim D.]

Re: Servicing 66 Parking Brakes

There are plenty of tutorials online to show you how to do it. Here's one - http://www.corvettemagazine.com/2005...brake-lead.asp
They really aren't very hard to do at all. Just take your time.