Brake Dragging Slightly

 

The left wheel is back off because there was a light drag in one spot.  It was there when I put on the new bladder.  I decided to taxi it a bit and then see if it was still there, of course it was.  It hung up the wheel enough I was worried it would do something squirrely when the wheel started turning on landing.  The right thing to do was to pull it back apart and fix it.

It happened in one spot as the wheel turned so I assume the 70+ year old brake drum is slightly out-of-round as well as something out-of-round with the mechanism.  

First I blued the metal frame thinking it was rubbing, based on the sound.  That wasn't it.

I used the blue marker to blue the entire inside of the drum.  Spinning the wheel rubbed plenty of blue onto 2 of the pads.  I measured those 2 pads and found they were 0.300" thick, basically new.  I sorted through the pads I have and found 2 which were worn  about 0.010" thinner.  That solved the stopping on the pads, but now I could for sure hear metal on metal wear.

I removed the pads and blued the metal frame that holds the pads in position, wheel back on and spin.

With the pads removed there were areas where the blue was rubbed off the frame.  After 4 hours filing a little, cleaning up metal filings, re-bluing, installing the wheel, spinning, removing the wheel and repeat, I stopped the metal rubbing.

The wheel spins great and the brakes are ready for a test flight.

I need the wind to switch back to a southerly wind and we're ready to fly.  Yay!