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General TR Rear Brake Shoe Orientation

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Please see the attached photo. This is how my brake backing plate and cylinder setup looked when I bought the car. My other TR is the same. Seventeen years ago I posted a question about this because the manual shows the brake shoe alignment to be more "front and back." Most people here said no big deal. But before I put my new shoes back on I thought I'd ask again. You'll note that virtually nothing matches the manual. The cylinder is upside down, and the installed shoes will be turned almost 90 degrees.

Everything works fine except I note two things: a) the emergency brake is too low to the floor. It engages almost immediately, and the available adjustment seems to change things only slightly; and b) despite all the bleeding procedure, to me the brakes seem slightly soft and engage after a couple of inches of play. I'd prefer engagement right at the top.

If I were to flip the cylinder, I'd need to carefully bend the brake line pipe that appears "stock" because it otherwise will not align to the cylinder. The angle changes materially. I'd also need to reposition the emergency brake cables and lever.

Actually, on reinspection of the backing plate, I'm not sure the cylinder can be flipped. It appears to have a dedicated slot for the emergency brake lever.

FYI this is the passenger side of the car, and the wheel cylinder is toward the front of the vehicle.

Any thoughts?

Brake Shoes.jpg
 
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If I remember, you have a 1960 with the Girling axle. I think your brake back plate is rotated from stock. But, there is also some other things going on I do not recognize. What is the hose/tube right over the back plate? The frame on the right has a sharp brake that looks different...could be the camera angle though.
 
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Mine is ā€˜66 TR4a. That ā€œtubeā€ is just the rubber axle bumper. I canā€™t re-rotate the backing plate because the emergency brake cable will not reach, nor will the steel brake line to the cylinder. Iā€™m assuming this is all unique to a 4A, at least until I learn otherwise. I confirmed my other 4a is identical.
 
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The only way you could change the cylinder orientation would be to remove the hubs and swap backplates left for right.
this would put the hand brake lever upside down to what it is now.
But if it is the exact same as your other TR then there must be a way to adjust the hand brake cable.
 
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The orientation you show is correct. Remember, the manual was largely written for a TR4, not a 4A, and it has a lot of deficiencies where the 4A is concerned. I suspect that rotating the plates will create a lot of unforeseen problems. I know, this is confusing--I had to do a lot of searching to figure out exactly how it went together.

Yes, you might have to bend the brake pipes a little. You can get a tubing bender which will allow you to do that safely. I have several different types. For things like this I use one that looks like pliers, but has jaws that hold various sizes of tubes.

You should be able to adjust the hand brake by backing off the adjusters at each brake. Be sure to screw them both in or out the same amount. If there is not enough room, you might just have badly made parts. The hand brake has a high mechanical advantage, so a little adjustment of the cable should cause quite a bit of a change in the handle height. If that's not happening, something else must be wrong.
 
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Interesting; and not many pictures in the webā€¦

Drivers side: > Brakes <

looking through my restoration pictures, it seems my driver side is up/down, but the passenger side nearer to a 45 degree angleā€¦ but I canā€™t say for sure, as I have a photo of my drivers side during disassembly and passenger side during assembly. Only the passenger side gives a decent indication of orientation - even then, it is before the rear axle was attached, so perhaps the roation is incorrect! I can say that all the parts went together as they should / without undue fuss; pre-bent brake lines and e-brake cables.

hmmmmā€¦.. fortunately, I need to adjust the drums, so Iā€™ll remove the drums for a closer look and have better pictures soon.
 
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Yes, I have noticed that there is a dearth of pictures of TR4A brakes on the web, and the shop manual isn't much help. When I was restoring my car, I regularly scanned the internet for useful pictures, and I have a folder on my computer with (probably) a couple hundred pictures of various things that had confused me. But the subfolder on brakes has only a few pictures.

At this point, I'm pretty confident that I finally got it right, but I wouldn't bet the farm on it.
 
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Popeye said:
Interesting; and not many pictures in the webā€¦

Drivers side: > Brakes <

looking through my restoration pictures, it seems my driver side is up/down, but the passenger side nearer to a 45 degree angleā€¦ but I canā€™t say for sure, as I have a photo of my drivers side during disassembly and passenger side during assembly. Only the passenger side gives a decent indication of orientation - even then, it is before the rear axle was attached, so perhaps the roation is incorrect! I can say that all the parts went together as they should / without undue fuss; pre-bent brake lines and e-brake cables.

hmmmmā€¦.. fortunately, I need to adjust the drums, so Iā€™ll remove the drums for a closer look and have better pictures soon.
Click to expand...
Update/correction: both sides are horizontal. Just like Sarastro. Actuating cylinder towards the front.
IMG_5372.jpeg

IMG_5370.jpeg
 
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