Textar Brake Pads again.....

I finally got my Textar brake pads sorted! Textar pads are increasingly hard to find and on the point of bring prohibitively expensive.  See my post of April and June 2019 for the story.

Textars......

The plan was to (re?) insert 'pad wear' warning light wires into a set Textar pads that did not have them. Back in the day, not all Ds had the brake wear warning system as part of the loom and it's possible that Textar either sold a variant without wires, or that someone simply cut the wires off.

DS loom with warning wires

DS loom without warning wires......

The casting for the backing plates include a shallow groove where the wire sits and presumably the mould for the brake pad itself similarly makes allowance for the groove and a wire.

The wires sit in a groove behind the brake pad material

I wanted to drill out what I was convinced was a pre-existing hole.....

Tell-tale marks of a hole

......but a standard drill was not long enough to clear the edge of the brake backing plate.

The chuck is blocked by the backing plate

The slow boat from China carrying the extra long drill I'd need failed to arrive so, before I went on holiday, I ordered another one. This time on a fast van from Stourport-On-Severn. I got back from holiday to find it had arrived - so I could crack on!

If you look carefully at the photo below you can just about see that the silver drill on the left is slightly longer than the standard length black drill on the right......

This one should do it!

Taking one of my old Textar pads, I sandwiched the drill bit in the groove between the brake pad and backing to get the drill alignment. It turned out that the drilling line aligned to the corner of the back plate - so was easy to get right. I also took the opportunity to mark the drill for the correct drilling depth.

Confirming the drilling angle

Textar pads are old school asbestos, so some safety equipment was definitely in order. I used goggles (because I was drilling) and a facemask (because of asbestos dust). I also kept my face well away from the drilling area.

I was nervous drilling the first hole but much happier when I saw fragments of copper wire and shredded fabric appear from my drilling hole. These were tell-tell remnants of the end of of a brake wear wire that had still been embedded in the pad.

Drilling the holes out

When all four were drilled, I took the pads out in to the open and gave the holes a quick blast of compressed air. I recovered the four wires from the pads that were worn and broken and cleaned up the brass contact ends with emery paper.

The wires were recovered from my old pads

I had decided to use exhaust sealing paste to glue the wires home. I had reasoned that the wires did not come under any tension and only needed to be lightly secured in place. The paste was non-sticky, happy at high temperatures, and crumbled to nothing when crushed or rubbed.

I used exhaust assembly paste as my glue

One by one the wires were coated in paste and carefully pushed home. It was a simple as that. I resisted the temptation to heat the wires with a hot air gun to help the paste go off. It would do that in time anyway.

Does what it says on the tin: "Problem solved".