I've needed to work on Homer's rear brakes for some time now . . . ever since I've owned him, to be correct.  Anyway, I've had this one problem keeping me from taking a look to see what was really going on behind those drums . . . a 46 millimeter problem.  I've looked, and I can assure you that there isn't a 46mm socket for sale in LaFayette.  But, I finally figured out today that a 1 13/16 inch socket is less than half a millimeter too big . . . it'll do the job just fine.  I works really good if it's on the business end of a good 1" drive air ratchet!

Today, with Kyles help, I removed both rear drums, freed up all four brake adjusters, freed up the e-brake levers on the rear shoes and installed BRAND NEW emergency brake cables.  For the first time since I've been driving Homer, I've got a full brake pedal and a fully functioning e-brake!   \/

:lol:  By the time Homer is "mechanically sound," there's going to be nothing left of the body!  I guess then I can just weld on some flat sheet metal and tubing and start calling him Homer the Super Rail!

I thought I was the master of rigging, but somewhere back 15 or 20 years ago in Homer's youth, he was worked on by the GRAND MASTER!  I've known since the first time I crawled under Homer, some rigging had been don to the driver's side e-brake cable.  About middle ways of the bus there was a mend in the cable.  It looked like the cable broke up front and rather than replacing it (I thought probably because they didn't have a 46mm socket) they cut it a little more than midways, cut the new cable a little more than midways, looped them together and clamped them off with small cable clamps.  When I tried to replace the cable with a new one, I figured out the true extent of their rigging.

They removed the old cable completely . . . when they tried to install the new one, there was something stuck in the hole in the backing plate that wouldn't let the big end of the cable go through.  So, they took a BEETLE e-brake cable, and cut a foot of two off of  it.  They took the front of another e-brake cable and cut some off of it from the brake end.  Then they ran the rear section of cable through the backing plate from the brake side, slide the flex tube on it from the back . . . ran the back half of the cable in the tube from the back, the front half from the front  and right about the middle of the tube they CUT OUT about a foot of the tube so they could make the mend!

After about two hours of trying to drive the obstruction from inside the backing plate hole, we figured out what it was.  It was the metal end of the flexable tube from the old bus e-brake.  I would bet this was from the ORIGINAL cable installed at the factory in 1973!  I know the history of this bus back at least 15 years and this cable had to have been done before then.  So if the piece was stuck bad enough 15 or 20 years ago to cause someone to go to the extent of rigging they did, you can guess how tight it would be stuck now.  After we finally figured out what it was, Kyle locked a pipe wrench on it and twisted it while I beat on it with a drift from the brake side of the backing plate . . . well, it finally came out!  The only sign of their rigging left is a missing foot of of the cable tube in the middle of the bus . . . but at least there isn't a mend in the cable showing in that gap now.