arrrgh these brakes

Can anyone help me ive been working on my series 3 for a while and finally got to the brakes a simple job of changing shoes has gone too new cylinders, brake lines. So iam putting it all back together and what seems to be some adjusters on the brake plate are stopping the shoes returning and wont allow the drum to fit over ive gone through the manual and none off the pictures in there are the brakes on my landy they are 11 inch brakes on the front with 2 cylinders per side top and bottom. Do i literally undo these adjusters and turn them round or am i missing something else Cheers graeme.

Are the shoes you took off identical to the ones you're fitting? There are a couple of different fitments dependant on whether you've got twin leading shoe (2 cylinders per side) or single leading shoe (one cylinder each side). The Bearmach parts catalogue has pics that may help
http://www.bearmach.com/partscatalogues/series_fastparts_A4_lo.pdf
Start on page 17, it's a chunkyish download.

Something sounds very wrong to me. I've got 11" front drums on my Series III.
Front Brakes are single cylinder top and bottom, so one cylinder and a slot on the top and the same on the bottom. They're also left and right handed.
If you've got 2 cylinders on each wheel cylinder, they're rear brake ones, 2 cylinders at the top and a linking bracket between the 2 shoes at the bottom.

I actually bought another set of brake shoes as the adjusters would tighten up and then fall off the stud. Luckily one of the mechanics walked through and said that I had made the classic mistake of thinking that the shoes were the same .Once he showed me the difference it was obvious.
Fitted the right way round they work a lot better.Check carefully.
Bleeding them was the next problem.

In the end i just had to clean the adjusters they were caked in mud and set in place so th brakes are on and working properly now thaks for all your advise guys,
Can the bleeding be tricky then,
On to the next job
Cheers graeme.

yup

bleedin tricky.

your right bleeding tricky ive thought i had blead it ok but now after a couple off days sat in the barn the brake pedle is spongy,
any ideas any advise greatfully recieved,

You can soon find out if the problem is with your front or rear brakes by clamping the flexible hydraulic pipe that feeds the rear brakes.With mine the front brakes were great but I had real problems bleeding the back ones.
One thing that helped was to slacken the adjusters right off so that the springs pull the shoes back. This pushes the pistons back inside the cylinder and gives less space for air to get trapped.Of course you then have to readjust the shoes but it sorted the problem with mine. Good luck!

get a ez-blead kit.

Bleeding is one of those things that can take 10 minutes or half a day if you have not done it before.

Not sure if it is the same for a series 3 (I have the odler style brakes). But on mine, I jack up the landie at the front until the master cylinder is sitting about level and that makes it very quick to bleed indeed.

One of the ways to know (well not for certain, but usually points in the direction) to know if your blakes have been bled properley or not...if you hear a creaking noise in the brake lines when hard on the peddle that means you have air there. Depending where the noise is coming from, you know what brake (or at least wether it is front or back) to bleed.

if yer really struggling and yer int got a pressure bleeder this is wot yer need do.


jack up the arse end of yer landy as high as yer can and support it on stands
then wedge the brake pedal down as hard as you can and leave it wedged fer a good few hours, over night is best. then remove wedge and bled the folkers.

repeat wiff the front end

You will probably have problems will the shuttle valve located in the engine comp. Small block with a switch and 5 brake pipes fitted to it.

SUZUKI said:

You will probably have problems will the shuttle valve located in the engine comp. Small block with a switch and 5 brake pipes fitted to it.

Click to expand...

i believe that's only if you have dual circuit brakes

make sure the master cylinder pushrod is correctly adjusted as well,otherwise you may not be pushing the fluid round properly

Am having a problem or two with my brakes at the moment.
Mechanically they are sound but the pedal is at the bottom of its range.
even when adjusted so they bind the pedal travel is excessive.
the master cylinder is not leaking neither are any of the wheel cylinders.
Whilst i hate the thought so changeing parts for the sake of it the master cylinder is getting close to the top of the list.
Problem is that the lanny was bought as a bitsa, so i have no idea if the master cylinder is the correct one or not.
the tag round the girling cylinder is brown and says 50/50 i presume this relates to the fluid displaced.
Does anybody know which is the correct cylinder for a SWB with servo and twin leading front shoes?
Regards
Simon

Thanks for all the advise guys i think ive cracked it bleeding wise, i think,
But iam gonna try jacking it up next time,
It now seems to be that the new cylinders are making the old ones lazy and causing one to leak on drivers rear so it seems i have to do the back brakes to.

cheers graeme.