Teds Floaters

S

Steve Rinaldo

Member
I finally finished the installation and went for my first ride today. The first time The pedal went to the floor and had very little brakes. I tightend the adjusters up the way I used to on the stock brakes and now its like the brakes are on slightly all the time, but a good hard pedal, Do any of you have any suggestions for adjusting the brakes with Ted's kit? If I get tired of fooling with this stuff can I reinstall the long spring and make the brakes work like a stock setup? At this point I see no advantage to using this stuff. Steve
 
At our club meeting, we were told to let them bed in for 100-200 (careful) miles and they would be great. Did you have your linings arced to match the drum ID?
 
I talked (virtually) to Ted several times when installing mine. You HAVE to have good to excellent brakes. You HAVE to Arc the shoes/lining to the drum.

I ran mine a little tight (and smoky) for 50 miles until they "bed in". Now I only push half as hard as standard brakes. Be ready for a slide when they work correctly, or when you push hard in an emergency.

Well worth the money.
 
set them loose initially until they bed in. They will require frequent adjustments until they are seated properly. Then you can set them tighter. If they are not exactly fit to the drum, they will self activate. Arcing them and centering them from the start will minimize the break in period. Once they're broken in, they are very good brakes.
 
after installing ted's system on my 31, getting them properly adjusted, the car stops like it has hydraulic brakes. Best thing to come along for a Model A in a long time
 
you definately have something wrong . mine are excellent . maybe take them off & start over . read as you go . best actually is call or email ted .... steve
 
I am going to say this kinda 'tongue-in-cheek':p, but if you have good to excellent brakes, ....why would you want to install the floater kit?:)

:rolleyes: For grins & giggles, you should try and just remove the one spring on each set of shoes and see how this fools you into believing you have much improved brakes and pedal "feel" with your old stock brakes.
 
having issues also. Did a COMPLETE brake job this winter...pedal to drum. I think I have found the culprit. It is complicated for me to explain here. Tom W may stop by so I can visually show him. it looks like some driving time will cure it.
 
I am currently putting Ted's on my car. The installation has been a bit finicky and I haven't tried them yet. It seems that if you get them set up they work grat so I am hopeful. There are guys in our club that have had a great experience and other's who have taken them off. Here are a couple of things that might work.

I went to great pains to get the shoe arched to the drum.

Try shims (washers) on the pins to tighen up the rollers and brake adjusting shaft so the shoes can't flop around.

I mounted the springs so they pull the shoes toward the backing plate. Spring hook faces out on the shoes.

The anchor plates are really finicky to adjust so that the adjusting shafts move freely in the adjusting wedge housing. I started by pushing the anchor plate up against the roller track rivits and then had to play around from there to make sure there was no binding. Even 0.01" in the vertical position of the plate or skewness seemed to make a difference in either binding or the rollers popping out of the track.

Making sure the cotter pin on the roller pin is not interfering with the old roller track is something that needs to be checked and is a bit tricky. Ted now has modified rollers that don't require the use of a cotter pin on the inside. I don't have these.

I hear the comments that if you are going to this much trouble, why not just stick with the standard setup. The article in the Model-A times and the self-energizing concept was what incentivized me to try them. Again, I haven't done a road test yet.


If anybody else has some suggestions please send them along. I haven't tackled the rear's yet.

Mike
 
Brent i thought the same thing, I was told that if you have good brakes this would make them great, So i thought if i had bad brakes it would make them good, makes sense right, but they do a real good job for me very little pedal to lock them up, stops as good as my 51
 
When installing these Floaters people expect to get a hard pedal and instant good brake instead because they do not arc the linings .Here are the shoes from the black 34 thats been in there about 4 years ,You will notice the even ware on the linnings ,These linnings were 1/4 " and we could not put the drum on We glued some sand paper on a drum and used that to sand a bit off ,By removing the adjuster and putting the squre end in first this let the shoes come in to get the drum on .(This was a bit of a Shade tree fix )but we did it just for the exercise ,Its better You can get your local brake guy to a Arc them for you ,We also promoted a good coating of rust on the drums (you might be able to do this by lightly soda blasting ),We ran the car with the brakes lightly on till the brake was smooth.within half an hr we had good brakes ,washed it out with baking soda .The only new parts in the whole systiom was the linnings .We focused on the fronts ,got them slidding .with the rears backed of ,The pedal will be softer than the stock system or more pedal travel .Be sure to do up the axle nut correctly , dragging brakes can be caused by the axle nut being to loose .
 

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Got my car out on the road with my Ted's floaters installed and they work well from a stopping perspective. I now have about 100 miles of city driving on them (stopping and starting). The problem is that when I put the front up on stands and spin the wheels there is quite a bit of drag and more driving around doesn't seem to make it any better. The contact on the shoes to the drum is really good so I'm confident that isn't an issue. When I try to bring them up to get less pedal the drag gets worse. Any help, ideas and/or encouragement would be appreciated. Thanks

Mike
 
I have installed several sets of Mr. Flathead's brake systems with excellent results. You have to pay very close attention to all the instructions and advice that has been published to date.

The drums must be round and the shoes arced to match. You must use a centering tool on the back brakes when installing the "pins" as Ted calls them. The pins are a cam action that rides on the roller tracks and replaces the round headed pins. The tool enables you to select the proper cam lobe. Bratton's sell a good centering tool.

The eight brake adjusting shafts (two per wheel) must be smooth and free of any gouges, along with the tunnels they ride in. If there is a seam on the shafts it should be filed off. The brake floating action depends on these shafts moving back and forth un-impeded. They should also be well lubricated.

If the drums are round and the shoes match you should be able to adjust the shoes up until they just kiss the drums. Back them off slightly and the wheel should rotate without resriction. Do this with the brake rods unhooked. Hook the brake rods back up and adjust them according to whatever method you desire. I use a notched stick on the brake pedal and I adjust them so that the fronts come in slightly ahead of the backs. This is according to Ted's suggestion. It works for me. I have a high firm pedal and very good brakes.

Tom Endy
 
Tom Endy said:
I have installed several sets of Mr. Flathead's brake systems with excellent results. You have to pay very close attention to all the instructions and advice that has been published to date.

The drums must be round and the shoes arced to match. You must use a centering tool on the back brakes when installing the "pins" as Ted calls them. The pins are a cam action that rides on the roller tracks and replaces the round headed pins. The tool enables you to select the proper cam lobe. Bratton's sell a good centering tool.

The eight brake adjusting shafts (two per wheel) must be smooth and free of any gouges, along with the tunnels they ride in. If there is a seam on the shafts it should be filed off. The brake floating action depends on these shafts moving back and forth un-impeded. They should also be well lubricated.

If the drums are round and the shoes match you should be able to adjust the shoes up until they just kiss the drums. Back them off slightly and the wheel should rotate without resriction. Do this with the brake rods unhooked. Hook the brake rods back up and adjust them according to whatever method you desire. I use a notched stick on the brake pedal and I adjust them so that the fronts come in slightly ahead of the backs. This is according to Ted's suggestion. It works for me. I have a high firm pedal and very good brakes.

Tom Endy
Click to expand...

Seems to me that if you did all that to the brakes without the floaters you would not need floaters?!
 
Mike - from as far as I got with setting up my floaters, I can unequivocally tell you that there is a lot less pedal effort required to stop the car with the floaters versus without them. My original brakes were set up perfectly with the shoes arched and the setup per the service bulletins using the measuring board. I thought I would give the floaters a try as an experiment, however, I recognize that I am still having a dragging issue. I also gave the high compression head a try as an experiment and again I can tell you it made a significant difference.



 
mike
what kind of high compression head did you use ? do you have insert bearings?


mike
 
I agree with Brent and the others. If you have good to excellant brakes you are in the 10% crowd of people that own Model A's. There is no work needed then! The others are only waiting to sell there cars, or don't care, saying Model A brakes were always poor, so I'll live it, or figure that its too expensive. The last set of brakes I did, without Teds Floaters, the owners complaint was that now he will now have to install seat belts, so his wife will not go through the windshield. Fixing your brakes is expensive, up to $2000 for all 4 wheels, if everything needs to be replaced, and people think they will be able to fix everything with Ted's kits. Even he will tell you that it won't!

As for less pedal pressure, unless something is binding, if you are that weak that you can't push the brake pedal down, how do you manage the gas pedal?

New cast iron drums, molded modern linings, good roller tracks and all worn moving parts replaced, is all you really need....
 
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