On July 9, 2010 I bought a 1954 Dodge Coronet D51, 4 door, flathead 6, with the "PowerFlight" 2 speed automatic transmission. all original. One of the first things I learned about the vintage transmissions is there is no park just reverse, neutral and forward; when you "parked" the car you place the transmission into neutral and pulled out the park brake.
The car was originally purchased from Callaway Motors Inc. Cleveland Tenn. on February 2nd 1954 for $1890.00 and was delivered on the 12th of that month to a Mr. General White 740 Wildwood Ave. SE Cleveland Tenn. General White insured the car with State Farm Mutual Automobile Insurance Company in Cleveland. The policy card I have says the coverage is A,B,C (I suppose that means it covers everything?) and runs from Feb.13th '54 to April, 25th '54 the premium being a whopping $7.60.
There is very little rust and the paint looks pretty good. I am finding, however, that it has been repainted at one time. It cranks and runs good but it has zero brakes and the brake system will have to be rebuilt. So this is where we will start.
I had to borrow 4 good jack stands from my preacher and I set the '54 Dodge up and removed the tires. Removing the front brake drums was a piece of cake I then removed the slave cylinderswhich were in very bad condition and looked like they had not worked in a while. The master cylinder seems to be in very good condition so I am not going to fool with it unless I have to. Now for the back brake drums. Okay, so anybody who has experience in removing rear brake drums from a vintage Dodge and who is reading this probably knows what's coming. I removed the lug nuts, spayed some PB Blaster on the axle tapped the drum a few times with my claw hammer and gave the drum a tug. Didn't budge, nothing, nadda. Sprayed more Pb Blaster tapped a little harder gave it a good solid pull. Zippo, not even nothing. Three hours later I was crashing the hammer against the drum and with my feet straddling the wheel well and planted firmly on the side of the car and both hands on the freeking drum I pulled with every ounce of strength. You guessed it nothing. Next came the torch - now about four days into this blasted drum. I torched the hub and key till I figured the car would go into melt down, beating the sides of the drum so hard you could have heard the noise back up in Cleveland Tenn. where the car was first sold. Nothing, nothing and nothing! I consulted an older man who had done this kind of work many times, he says "ya need a bigger hammer, that ole claw hammer ain't never going to get er done." So I went out and bought a three pound sledge hammer. Next day I torched the drum up again and with my new heavy duty super duper hammer I gave the drum a good tap, tap, thud. The thud you just heard was my vintage brake drum cracking around the outer rim. The blood drained from my beet red face and I became my normal pale washed out self. I turned off the torch and thought to myself "well shoot fire, I wonder where I am going to find another drum for a ninteeeen Fifty FOUR DODGE! Now, my wife said something about that I wasn't just thinking to my self but was actually screeming some words that don't seem to match up to my memory of the event.
To summarize my efforts todate. Two front drums off, check, one rear drum badly burned by a torch black with soot having two bent lugs (don't ask) a crack half way round the out side of the drum and pieces of the outer rim broken off and laying on my drive way and the drum is no closer to being off the car than when I first began, check.
What's a Drum Puller?
Okay it's been over a week with no success in getting this rear drum off. I have done a little research and found out you need a drum puller. I went everywhere I could think of that might have a brake drum puller but had no luck finding one. I even tried some heavy duty chain in combination with a heavy duty automotive scissors jack. The only thing I succeeded in doing with this contraption is wasting more time and bending another lug or two. After another week or so of trying to find something that would pull this drum off I was at a point of just throwing up my hands or throwing in the towel or what ever it is you do when you reach the end of the rope. Then talking with my brother he had the idea of copying the lug pattern on a piece of card board and having a machine shop make a wheel puller specifically for this model car. So that's what I did and the machine shop did a great job making the body of the puller out of 1/2" boiler plate and having a heavy duty machine threaded bolt in the center that could be turned using a 36" pull handle with an appropriate socket. It worked great, took me about 5 minutes to slip it over the lugs put on the lug nuts, tighten the bolt against the axel then give the bolt about a 1/4 turn and pop the drum was off. I danced a jigg in the drive way. Then of course it only took a few minutes for the other drum and it was off.
Next, The unfortunate discovery
We pulled off all the old brake shoes and wheel cylinders etc. and cleaned each backplate and axel and all the other parts till they shined. While I was cleaning the axel tip on the right side of the rear I noticed we had badly smashed the fine machine threads of the axel at the tip, where the main nut threads on to hold the brake drum onto the axel. The axel tip was actually bent.
It appeared to be too badly damaged for a thread chaser or even a thread dye to rethread it. I worked on this for seveal days mainly searching out advice and correct tools etc. I finally ended up buying a 3/4" NF chaser. I sat down with the axel in front of me and began to work on it with a sharp triangular file and trying the thread cutter back and forth until it actually caught and I was able to slowly recut the threads and repair the axel tip.
I had a shop in Atlanta reline the shoes like new and replaced all the wheel cylinders etc with new parts and put it all back together, bled the brakes and that task was complete.
