Left Brake Fixed

 

You can see the wet brake fluid on the brake puck, not good.  The bladder clearly ruptured.  It appears they haven't made any bladders since WWII.  Thanks to the war effort there was a lot of surplus.  As a result no one makes new bladders.  Grove does make some nice disk brakes to replace these for $920, a little out of my budget.

Fortunately a friend, Bernie Estes, had a couple CUBs in the past.  I rebuilt the wings for one of them.  He had put Groves on the other one 10 years ago, and still had the old brakes in his hangar.  Don't you just love people who keep useful things.

I used the best parts from mine and one of his to put together a good brake.  Maybe some day I'll switch to Groves.

I had trouble getting all the air out when I made the new brake lines so I got a syringe from the farm co-op.  It worked fine but the bladder itself wouldn't take any fluid.

Once I had the brake hooked up I used the syringe to fill the line from the bladder to the bleed valve.  Then I pumped fluid from the valve to the brake cylinder under the cockpit floor.  That worked, no air in the lines.

The wheel's back on and the brakes work great while taxiing the plane.

Now I need to solve the magneto problem.  I've removed the mag.  If I can't fix it with the parts I have I'll order all new from Fresno before I head to the AAA fly-in in Blakesburg.