I'm long past the boy racer, well in excess of the 70 years and apart from getting caught once at my grannies aged 19 when I sneaked off route for a for quick scrambled eggs with an army Champ pulling a 680lb 120mm L4 mobile Wombat Cannon and 6 28.3lbs shells by the bobbies I've never been in trouble.

I did my back brakes a coiple of month ago REM and they were disgusting. I've said many times on this forum the brakes ..... all of them are a useless and underrated throwback to the American old she brake - pre-disk ratings requirement as is evidenced by the fact that at the same weight of vehicle the Dodge Chrysler Jeep stable enjoy the safety and performance of bigger 310's all round as a minimum from 2008. The 310's have a healthy aftermarket upgrade supply the 302's never did and 7 years on never will.

I've got good Chrysler factory alloys, all with still new[ish] boots that have done less than 1200 miles and I've just spent lotsa lolly on brand new small parts set, new disks, new pads on the rear and intended doing the same for the front this time with uprated slot & drill disks and green stuff pads. It occurs to me that at my age I'm keeping this bus and I will pay for big disks and good pads all round and sell my existing good stuff on local collect for a contribution to my costs before the new pads, disks, shoes have even done 1000 miles. If it comes with cost of having to buy competition alloys that cost about the same as non competition alloys - I'll bite that bullet too.

Take care Goggsy.

 

So how did the old Austin Champ compare to the SWB Land Rover Q ?

 

I do note that there's no chance of increasing the size of the discs on the back without fitting bigger wheels as my rear calipers are just clearing the thin balance weights on the wheels.

 

A 1000 times better in every way, we had to change to the landies when posted to the Yemen, the champs were heavy in sand. Most of what people now know of Champs is civvie and non-operational, in operational terms they were a 24v Rolls Royce design with 5 forward and 5 reverse gears and an amphibious rottweiler of a vehicle that would pull that L4 mobile over a ploughed field a 50 MPH without smashing suspension or drive train. We did trial a Daimler Haflinger but the Navy got them, they were considered too- light duty for the kind of jobs my unit used to do. Only a 4+1 gear with a 600cc if I REM and the weight of two fat fleas it was an amazing machine that pulled like a cart horse on steroids with that +1 crawler gear. Yes you guessed .. .. I liked the Haflinger.

 

Goggsy thanks for that I had assumed the big disks would never fit the existing standard front or rear wheel size and that the 'back plate' would need the lip cut and flapped to accommodate the 5⁄16in extra disk size. I was hoping that someone had already fitted aftermarket 0J e35*5x114.3 & tyre to a USA T&C or a USA Sebring or Dodge Avenger or Nitro and could tell me their experience, particularly :

- any experience of uprating the calliper performance
- how many mm closer to the suspension strut from the inside rim
- would any mm need to stick out extra of the wheel arch in which case it would be a nono
- ride height, rolling radius, speedo and top arch gap I assumed would be negligible

 

Update to the brakes issue, put the back brakes together and the test report gave :

FRONT & REAR

- 427 / 480kgf @ 7% imbalance front and 343 / 348kgf @ 16% imbalance rear
- efficiency 69%

HANDBRICK

- 284 / 287kgf @ 1% imbalance
- efficiency 26%

Disks & pads as yet not even looked at, I needed a better understanding of rolling radius and rims, maybe someone here might benefit from the following info :

RIMS

- 225-45-18 / ET 35 rims
- ET of 35 [ET means the same thing as offset]
- 13% (+) on the rim diameter
- 23% (+) on the win width
- 07% (+) on the backspace
- 22% (+) on the offset
- the rim will be 9mm closer to the suspension leg and any other bits
- the rim will stick out 29mm further
- the rim will fill the wheelwell by an extra 14mm

TYRES

- 17% (+) on the section width
- 10% ( -) on the sidewall
- 04% (+) on the overall diameter
- 04% (+) on the circumference
- 04% ( -) less [777 instead of 811] revolutions per mile, compared to our old 16x6.5 ET 45 wheels
- the speedo will read 60 when you are doing 62.6km/h
- the tyre will stick out 20mm further

Bottom line on the abortion we call a handbrick. If at the end of the day for whatever reason you are not happy there is one last painful strategy and it will be a pain. Drop the car down, take it somewhere for a mile while occasionally pulling the handbrick on and immediately letting it go, do this frequently over the whole mile and you will grind the 4 imperfect leading / trailing edges to perfectly fit your 'in hat'. Then jack up and re adjust the handbrake, that will get you as near as you are going to get to 100% of the whole surface area of the shoe material applied to metal.

NOTE : I'm lucky I have access to VOSA ATF bi-directional rollers so I can do it without getting out of the driving seat, for others its a run in and rework I'm afraid ..............