My son and I are rebuilding the brakes (parking and drum both) on his 1951 Ford F1. The parking brake lever in the cab was all rusty and the torsion spring that holds the pawl lever against the sector gear was broken into two pieces.

We searched and searched (even asked the FTE users in our forum) and were not able to find a replacement part. SO, WITH A LITTLE HELP FROM THE INTERNET, WE MADE OUR OWN. http://home.earthlink.net/~bazillion/intro.html

We were able to find three 3' sections of music wire at a Radio Control (RC) type hobby shop. Those model RC airplane builders use is for control links and landing gear. We needed 0.055". The cost was less than $2.

We built an arbor from a long 5/16" bolt and a winding lever from a piece of scap 12"x1"x1/4" steel and an old #10 screw. Our base was a simple bench vise.

It took us three tries, but only about 30 minutes, to to get one that was very close ... and very functional. Then, one hour in our electric oven 1t 500 degrees F.

So far, it has worked flawlessly and Chris and I are very proud of our success!

Hope that this article helps you all out sometime ... it is really quite simple and saved us a lot of headaches.

Richard

 

That is a neat link, Thanks!

I have found those spring assortmanets available thru hardware stores to be lifesavers. Many times one of the springs from the assortment can be modified to work in another application. I think they make those assortments from springs left over from manufacturing operations.

Many different stock springs can be found in hardware stores. Using some of the techniques listed in that link can help with modifications also.

 

I have found it very useful to be a pack rat. I save every nut, bolt, washer, switch, pin, spring and other odd parts left over from my projects or taken from something I'm throwing away. This has resulted in a sizeable collection that has saved me more than once. I must admit that I have never made a spring from scratch.
Dono