Nostalgia XK120 build

[rknowles74]

As well as the gear lever I did a few other jobs over the winter.

The handbrake has always been appalling and last year barely scraped through the MOT. I thought I would take a look at it. There was a good article in the JEC magazine a while ago about how to improve the XJS inboard handbrake. Since my car uses the XJS rear end I thought I would follow some of these suggestions (https://jec.org.uk/magazine/vol-38-no-04 - page 46).

The first thing I did was to remove the handbrake pads from the calipers - not easy given the lack of access space. I thought I would change the pads to some suggested in the above article, but on examining the pads I thought it would be better to use the original pads and set them up with a minimal gap from the disk.

I also looked at the mechanism that activates the brakes. The cable outer is attached to one caliper and the inner to the other caliper. Both calipers need to move to activate the handbrake, and that means the cable needs to move freely - both the inner and outer.

I had routed my cable between the chassis and the body so that it was held tightly between them - so not really free to move. This was because the cable was far too long and this route was the only way to make the connection work. I believe this means only the inner cable was moving, and so only 1 caliper was activating.

I ordered a new custom cable-tec (https://www.cable-tec.co.uk/featured-pr ... ol-cables/) of the correct length and with the correct ends. This meant I could route it so it moves more freely. Ive yet to use the car in anger, but hope this resolves the handbrake problems.


Whilst under the car I noticed that the brake master cylinder was dripping brake fluid, so that got rebuilt with a seal kit from Biggred (BRM1285)

Im planning on just driving the car for a while now, although Im vaguely tempted to investigate a cylinder head rebuild for next winter - I think the valve stem seals are not 100%.