Parking Brake Cables

Cleaning up the brake master cylinders was a simple enough matter. The housings had to be grit blasted to clean up the rust on the outside before epoxy priming. A lot of care was taken to seal them so no grit would get inside. New o-rings will be installed on the plunger. The biggest problem was the 2 bowden type cables attached to the cylinders to operate the parking brake locks on the plunger shafts.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

.

The cables were both stuck and I thought they were rusted up. I started inspecting them by carefully bending the housing to look between the coils for the rusty area. None were found on either cable. What I did find was the cables had been painted some time while the plane was in service. The paint had gotten in the coils and bound up the cable core. It took a couple hours of careful work to brush the paint from the housing using a file card (file brush) while carefully bending the housing to open the coils. Once that was done graphite was worked into the housing and the cables work fine.

When the o-rings get here I'll reassemble all of this.