Broke breaks on my 67 American

[Matt Haas <mhaas@xxxxxxx>]

Last night, I decided to dive into the brakes on my 67 American. I guess I 
should have taken knocking the weed wacker over (which broke it's spark 
plug) as a bad omen and called it quits but I've never let common sense 
stop me from working on something before so I dove right in.

When I pulled the front drums off (I haven't done the rear yet), I got a 
little bit of a surprise. What I expected to see was a Bendix setup with 
cable operated self adjusters but what was on it is what looks like a 
Wagner system with link operated self adjusters. In fact, the front brakes 
look exactly like the heavy duty six cylinder setup for a 67 Rebel.

I took a look in my TSM for the 67 and it says it should be Bendix, it 
shows assembled Bendix, talks about cable adjusters, but also shows the 
link type adjuster without saying anything about it being different from 
the normal Bendix system I was expecting.

I also looked in my parts book and it has the same part numbers for 67 and 
68 brakes. No mention of any change over during the 67 model year except 
for the master cylinder (some cars, like mine, get a Wagner master, others 
get a Bendix master that was also used for 68).

Anyone ever run into this before? Is this some sort of odd ball Bendix 
setup or am I going to have to track down mystery parts?

Also, I found out that the brake hoses are original (and rock hard and 
cracked), the wheel bearing grease has turned into half dry paste, the 
bearings didn't have enough grease in them to begin with (this toasted the 
bearings), my master cylinder is shot (and since I have a Wagner master, it 
costs about 3 times as much as the Bendix one in my 68), and to top it all 
off, the flare nuts rusted themselves to my brake lines so I get to buy new 
lines as well. I'm using a stainless steel set from Inline Tube, it's 
listed as fitting 68 and 69 but according to my parts book, will also fit a 
67 if you have a Bendix master. If you have a Wagner master, the lines 
coming from the master have different part numbers so I'm going to guess 
that they will not fit (I'll know for sure in the near future). I may send 
those lines off to Inline Tube to have them make a set.

On a brighter note, the front drums look very nice. They're so nice, in 
fact, that I'm not going to turn them (they were last turned about 5,000 
miles ago so I wasn't terribly surprised that they were nice).

Thanks,

Matt

mhaas@xxxxxxx
Cincinnati, OH
http://www.mattsoldcars.com
1967 Rambler American wagon
1968 Rambler American sedan
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