I’m trying to keep up the momentum but the season seems to get in the way a bit. Still, I am getting bits and pieces done. I turned my attention to the brake discs and started on the rear one.
There is a bit of a ridge as expected and I decided to clean it up a bit. If you object to taking a file to a brake disc then look away now. Files may be a bit crude and imprecise but they have been part of precision engineering for ages. Don’t try this at home unless you are very confident. The first step is a wire brush to clean the centre and then it get covered in marker pen so I can see what I’m doing.
As you can see, I’m not taking anything off in the area where the pads have been in contact
Here you can see how much metal is being removed
And that’s the first stage done.
Next it gets a fresh coat of marker
And then another filing operation but in the opposite direction to help remove the deep scratches and flatten it all.
Then I coated it in marker again as I wanted to try a draw filing operation in the direction of rotation as a final smoothing process.
In process
And done. As you can see I haven’t touched the area where the pads have been in contact.
After cleaning
And after a bit of sanding to clean it all up.
Its quite flat
The back doesn’t look great either. Its a bit trickier with the raised centre.
First it gets wire brushed
Then more marker pen
I have to do the back at a weird angle but its working.
Op 1 complete
Second filing op complete. I cant draw file this side unfortunately.
After sanding.
Masked and painted
With the masking removed. I prefer to scrape paint edge.
Cleaning the edge with a knife blade
All done
And the back
Now I just need to sort out the fasteners. Here they are after a wire brushing. I’m going to drill them for wires, same as the sprocket.
This is a bit low tech. I just centre punched them by eyeball using a countersink.
Drilling slow and steady with lots of stopping for sharpening. Quite tricky to sharpen these little drills. Despite my best efforts I broke 2 drills.
Last one
All done and countersunk ready for plating
After plating
Looking good but I’m going to make some washers.
The front disc got the same treatment and this is the result
I still need to sort out the bolts for the front disc.
