Re: BigKev's 1937 115-C Convertible Coupe

Posted by DavidPackard On 2023/1/12 22:48:29

Kev, thanks for the correction . . . I must have misidentified your chassis number, and then worked upward in the parts listing, thus completely missing the last line. Even with all of the springs identical I could still get the primary moving first by having the hole in the shoe closer to the anchor. That would really confuse things by now having, in addition to shoe length, primary and secondary shoes with different spring hole locations, but the whole industry is driven by ‘lowest cost design wins’. Or perhaps the whole mess of primary and secondary shoes was overcome with better friction materials.

As far as I know the tapered rear bearing design with the thrust block was introduced with the ’38 JRs. In the land of Brand X low torque on the axle nut is believed to be a contributor to axle failures. In my ’48 Eight fatigue cracking started at many origins in the radius between the taper and threads, which lead to the wheel coming off, but thankfully the drum and shoes kept the wheel walking only about an inch down the taper. Perhaps with the axles ‘in hand’ you can give them a thorough inspection.

dp