The 109 has been off the road for a while as it blew a seal in one of the front brake cylinders and due to me losing my usual brake bleeding assistant to baby duties it’s taken far longer then it should have done to get it sorted! I’ve never been able to use an Eezi-Bleed on the 109 as it has an odd sized reservoir cap and none of the Eezi-Bleed caps fit (even in the extension pack) so it’s always been a pain bleeding the brakes. The reservoir is an Autoplas one, no idea if it is original or not and I’ve decided to replace it with the correct Land-Rover one which my Eezi-Bleed will fit, making bleeding the brakes a one man job.
The reservoir was easy enough to replace, just tap out the two pins holding it in the cylinder and pull it out of the seals that it sits in. The new one came with two new seals so I cleaned the holes up and fitted the new seals and reservoir.
On stripping the font brakes down I realised I needed two new 11″ drums as they were quite badly scored so got a set of Mintex shoes from Paddocks along with two Drums (can’t remember the make but they aren’t Britpart and they are ok). Also needed to free up the adjusters as they were totally seized.. a couple of days soaking them in penetrating oil and eventually the freed up and are now working fine.
I’ve also changed the arrangement of the front two brake cylinders so the bleed nipple is on the top cylinder rather than the bottom, therefore in theory making it easier to get all the air out. Twin shoes are notoriously hard to bleed so I’m hoping this will make it a lot better. I managed to use the exisiting bottom to top brake pipe but had to make up a new one from the flexi down to the bottom cylinder. Just need to bleed them now.
