Taking a look at Jack's Brakes

This last weekend gave me the opportunity to have a look at Jack’s brakes, because Jack had been used for boat launching the salt water had taken its toll here as well. I firstly took the offside wheel off for access to the inboard brake drum mounted to the front of the axle. The brake is fixed to the brake shaft by a single bolt in the centre if the drum, with a few blows to the bolt head with a hammer prior to fitting a socket on a long bar and the bolt was easily freed off and removed. After releasing the brakes by slacking off the adjustment with a screwdriver through on of the large holes in the brake drum, I was able to lightly tap the side of the drum with a hammer and remove it.

With the drum removed I could see the effects of the salt water on the mechanism. The pull off springs were well rusted, one of which had come away from the lower shoe and was just hanging there next to the adjuster. The springs that hold the brake shoes to the back plate were fitted were fitted wrong and part of the spring fittings were missing. The brake drum itself was rusted inside and there was evidence of standing salt water in the drum that had contributed to the corrosion. I had quite a bit of rusty metal to clean up before refitting and I also had to figure out how the replacement brake springs kit should fit because one of the replacement springs did not look like any of the springs that were already fitted.
I repeated the process with the nearside brake to find a different spring arrangement which did not represent the offside spring arrangement nor the replacement spring that I had received from my suppliers.

This is the way I’ve fitted the replacement spring kits, pictured is the nearside brake. My reasoning is the wheel turns anticlockwise when the tractor’s traveling forwards therefore the brake drum turns clockwise. Recalling my dad’s explanation of braking systems back in the late 70’s and my college work at the time, this is a leading/trailing arrangement with the top shoe leading and the bottom shoe trailing. However with the floating adjuster, a heavier pull off spring should be fitted to the leading shoe to enable it to activate first then letting the self-energising effect increasing the effect of the trailing shoe which would normally be reduced.