Rear brakes on your 2002 Tacoma feel tight?
July 29, 2009
It may be the emergency brake cable acting up.
First I’d better mention that I write a lot better than I wrench. This blurb, therefore, is for the very occasional shade-tree mechanic, not for the dedicated gear head who will probably find it ludicrously simple.
For example when I started the project I didn’t know which cap to take off to loosen the brake shoes. Honest. It’s not that simple. There are two black things at the bottom where they used to be on a Beetle. They don’t come off. Then there’s a little one up at the top. That’s the one, it turns out. I took the wheels off, thinking I might find an adjustment port in the plate under the wheel, like on my golf cart. No.
Deprived of an easy and obvious way to loosen the brake shoes, I selected the looser wheel and tried to take the drum off without easing the shoes back. I remembered my mechanic mentioning you can thread two bolts into special holes on Toyota drums to work as a sort of drum-puller. I tried two, 5/16” bolts. These worked, but one stripped before I had torn the drum free from the shoes.
Stymied, I went to the garage and returned with a 20 ounce framing hammer. I was going to do some pounding and see if that would help. With the help of the hammer, I was able to relocate the unadjusted brake shoes enough to slide the drum off over the top. Remember that this wheel was the one which was tight, but far from seized.
Once I got the drum off I realized the emergency brake cable lever and linkage looked kinda stiff, so I decided to whack it a bit. It took a fair amount of work to move it, and it is supposed to articulate freely, right? I found some lithium grease in a spray can in the cupboard, so I socked it to the various levers of this linkage until it had freed up. Then I nuked the area with brake cleaner so that I wouldn’t wreck the shoes.
Not having learned the lesson which should have been obvious at this point (that the emergency brake linkage is what is causing the brakes to bind, and the shoes can be freed up by forcing the lever back towards the drum) I tried to transfer what I had learned of brake anatomy on the right side to the left-hand drum. Just for the record, the adjusters are threaded right-hand on the right, and left-hand on the left. If you remember nothing else from this tale, retain that.
Then when you have a screwdriver poised to rotate the adjuster, you can puzzle out which way to turn it. I admit I guessed and got lucky. The way it wanted to turn (I can’t remember which) didn’t actually free up the shoes, but it did no harm, and before long I decided to try banging on the emergency brake lever with my hammer and that freed up the shoes.
It wasn’t quite according to plan, but it was obviously the correct thing to do, because the drum came right off once I had forced the lever back into place. Then all I had to do was lubricate the linkage and work the levers until it responded to the pull of the brake springs.
I remember watching my mechanic use coarse sandpaper on the drums and shoes to roughen them up before reassembly, so I did that and carefully put the drums and wheels back on.
Then I had to set up the back brake shoes, of course, because I had turned them way in to facilitate assembly. The emergency brake operates the adjuster plate inside the brake drum each time the cable is tightened, so I methodically put the parking brake on and released it many times until the brakes would hold on a moderate slope.
When I moved it the truck immediately felt lively and healthy after the repair. Before, it had felt cranky and rough, not pleasant to drive. I guess the stuck wheel put an awkward load on the suspension, and did its best to keep the vehicle from moving at every start and turn.
The job took a morning of leisurely work, but paid off in much better ride and performance from the truck, not to mention the dramatically increased life expectancy of the brakes.
So the lesson? Before you try to turn back the adjusters, get the slack out of the emergency brake lever. You may not need any more.
Breaking up the logjam of Canadian politics
July 29, 2009
Jeffrey Simpson’s column in today’s Globe speaks of the four blocks in Canadian federal politics, and how they consign Canadians to minority governments for the forseeable future. The Conservatives hold the west and rural Ontario. The Liberals hold urban centres in Ontario, English-speaking Quebec, and the maritimes. The NDP pulls 15%. The Bloc controls Quebec. Simpson does not mention the Green Party in his analysis.
When speaking to veteran political observer and Leeds and Grenville Liberal nomination candidate Marjory Loveys this week I formed the impression that she is well aware of this logjam, but an interesting impression emerged from the discussion:
The philosophical differences between the NDP and the Liberals are certainly no wider than those of the Reform party and the Progressive Conservatives. When’s the last time the NDP tried to nationalize a bank? Oh wait: the Republicans did that. And Stephen Harper’s Conservative Party of Canada has practically nationalized the auto industry. Uh… so what’s keeping the Liberals and the NDP from forming a coalition of the left to balance the CPC? And the Green Party doesn’t fit anywhere on the political spectrum. It’s a trend, a fashionable place to park a protest vote. If the Liberal/NDP get a platform together and involve the Green trendites, a majority may well be within reach.
Don’t count the Left wing out just yet.
A response to Neil Reynolds
July 22, 2009
Neil Reynolds’ review of Michael Ignatieff’s speech last week in his column (The Globe and Mail, July 22, 2009) demanded a comment. While I greatly admired Mr. Reynolds during his days as editor of The Kingston Whig Standard and even later as the founder of the Libertarian Party of Canada, I fear this review showed a careless reading of the subject and sloppy thought.
Mr. Reynolds: You seem to be reviewing the speech you wish he had given, rather than the one he did. I’m wondering how carefully you read the thing, frankly, for while bashing away for what the Liberal leader failed to say or said badly, you seem inadvertently to end up supporting Ignatieff’s main point in this carefully-veiled jab at his chief opponent: within the traditions of the Progressive Conservative Party of Canada, Michael Ignatieff is a better conservative than Stephen Harper.
Zeke, again
July 21, 2009
Tony and I were standing in the yard today looking down over the field where Bill Barrett was raking hay. Hovering high above the tractor and poised to strike was a large, brown hawk. The only bird I know that can hover like that is Zeke, the red-tailed hawk who grew up in the woodlot. For some reason Zeke’s favourite method of hunting involves following a vehicle moving around a field.
Zeke’s back for his third haying season and he seems less bothered by blackbirds than before. Today he pretty much ignored the redwing which was swooping around him. I guess he had mice on his mind.
Later in the day I spoke to Bill’s wife, Lynn, and she mentioned that Bill had reported at lunch that he “had help in the field today”: Zeke was keeping a close eye on things.
Fight or flight: a note from the old house
July 21, 2009
The new “Conservative”
July 21, 2009
James Travers’s column in today’s Toronto Star bemoans the loss of civility in parliament, laying the blame squarely at the feet of Stephen Harper and the CPC. I keep thinking of Swift’s Liliputians when I watch Harper at work. Here’s a rope-balancer who isn’t very good at it. He keeps letting someone else have the centre and then has to squawk and flap his arms like crazy to keep from falling, first to the left and then to the right. Ignatieff has planted himself more or less in the centre, so the increasingly strident Harper has to struggle on the margins.
Then Stephen Chase of the Globe and Mail has an article on Harper’s announcement that the deficit will continue if growth does not eliminate it, even if it takes ten years, as most economists predict, to get over the current $17 billion/year drain (July 21, Ottawa likely stuck with deficits for a decade: economist).
Funny, when Bob Rae ran a deficit like that in Ontario back in the nineties, he became a pariah, labelled variously a communist, an idiot, a fool, a traitor to his class. Most tellingly, public employees revised the calendar to include the Rae-day, an ironic tribute to his leadership, and the NDP has never recovered.
So when a man leading a party which attempts to call itself “Conservative” adopts the same strategy, do these labels no longer apply? To be a “Conservative” do you have to act like George Bush and ignore the facts, using reckless spending and relentless tax cuts to shore up personal popularity until the country is bankrupt?
Where I grew up a conservative spent what he earned and saved a bit for tomorrow. He shared with his neighbours and cared for the needy. He had no thought of helping a few friends get rich so he could eat at their tables later. Not everybody agreed with the conservative, but they respected him.
Moving Day!
July 18, 2009
We just finished the first meal in or new/old home. We hauled furniture all day and set it up. Charlie and Roz and Mom joined us.
As soon as Charlie hooked up the living room T.V. the bickerring started over the satelite t.v. feed. Oh, well. The floors are nice and the old furniture looks pretty good in the new rooms.
As of now the house in Smiths Falls becomes a construction zone until we list it for sale. Plumbing and wiring to do.
Can Ignatieff use George Grant to gain Tory cred?
July 14, 2009
George Grant still carries some weight with my generation of Canadians. His pessimism ignited our nationalism; his acceptance of the inevitability of American domination left us determined to prove the prophet wrong. But the stimulus and the passion came from Lament For a Nation.
In True Patriot Love Michael Ignatieff uses Grant to establish his Conservative chops. Last week in London he served notice in the Berlin Lecture that the CPC is no legitimate heir to the support of Progressive Conservative voters. He stated in his lecture that Progressive Conservative leaders subscribed to a liberal-democratic tradition very like that of the Liberal Party of Canada. He’s not wrong in this.
Then Tom Flanagan wrote the think-piece in the Globe accusing Liberals of squealing like little girls over a few attack ads, and Harper found himself inadvertently tarred with the Republican brush. All of the sudden Uncle George starts to look pretty good to us wannabe Canadian nationalists, and Harper’s made-in-America politics doesn’t look Conservative at all.
the Walnut Diary 