Brake cylinders

peter_m

I'm  going to have to get a couple of new brake cylinders for the front, as the ones that are on seem to be jamming every so often. I wonder if anyone has sleeved the existing cylinders with stainless steel and then utilised some generic slave cylinder pistons, as the original cylinders seem to be very hard to come by? The rear ones seem to be readily available almost anywhere.

The other thing I saw on another website was that somebody has decided to use 22mm front cylinders at the back in place of the supplied 15mm cylinders. SDP put 15mm cylinders there for a reason, namely to balance the braking force between front and back to enable stable braking under normal conditions. If  22mm cylinders are put on the back it doubles the design force on the shoes and will inevitably produce a tendency for the vehicle to become unstable during braking. Brake bias adjustment is usually only done on rally cars to promote rear wheel drift and increase cornering speed. It's a definite no no on road cars and would certainly invalidate any insurance that the owner would have. To publicise this mod on a public website is not something I would entertain as any accident could easily lead to the insurance company getting wind of this and removing cover and the vehicle being crushed by the police as a result. Really not worth the risk.

heinkeljb

The problem with sleeving the wheel cylinders with stainless steel is that over time, there is a tendency for the Iron of the wheel cylinder and the stainless steel sleeve to react with each other causing the pistons to stick.

Having said that, I know it is done for other makes of vehicles and they use aluminium pistons - so 3 different types of metal to have electrolytic actions taking place between them! 

Both sizes of brake cylinder are available - so just buy the appropriate size one for the position you want to put it in. Have you tried Haflinger Technik and the various European suppliers?

John