More mongol-maintenance
20 MaySince I couldn’t think of anything better, I tightened the leaking exhaust flange as tight as I could, and surprise, surprise, it still leaked just as poorly.
Well, if at first you don’t succeed, move on to something else – the brakes. I re-bled the fronts, but there was no air to speak of. I turned my attention to the rears. The handbrake still had way too much free play, so it appeared the brake shoes weren’t adjusting themselves properly. Despite me posting on April 24th that I had completely freed them up, I discovered I’d done quite a poor job. Once again I dismantled them (this is the 3rd time!), this time doing it properly. Of course it didn’t make any difference, whoever designed the self adjustment mechanism would have been better suited to making butter. After 15 years of life, it bends rather than adjusting. Eventually I gave up and adjusted the shoes myself. If the shoes do wear badly, we’ll be able to tell by travel in the handbrake.
Feeling a bit more of a winner now, I moved back to the exhaust. The mid flange was meeting on an awkward angle, so I remanufactured the rearmost mount to improve this. I flattened the copper gasket in the flange so it would reform and hopefully seal properly, and these two adjustments fixed the leak completely. The pipe now passes a couple of cm closer to the rear axle though, and we’ll see how the two of them get on over the big bumps before I claim a complete victory.
