The time I spent just hitting this car with Thor cannot be overstated

Well today was certainly busy, but I wouldn't have it any other way.

I spent six hours in The Garage today working on the Maxwell brakes (and other projects on the side), and I couldn't be happier at the results.  So much has happened up there since my last post about the little Maxwell that I don't know where to start.

Last post I had just gone through the incredibly difficult process of getting the axle re-aligned and hooked back to the leaf springs.  I was aided by new U-bolts that were fabricated for free by some colleagues, and they ended up looking fantastic.  After the axle was hooked back on, now it was time to move onto the brakes, starting with the right rear (or the right, since there are no brakes on the front axle).

The first order of business was to remove the adjusting nut at the top front of the brakes.  The Maxwell had an ingenious system that takes all of two minutes to understand:  Rods connect the front brake lever to each of the rear brakes.  Where the rod comes in, there is a pivot point.  When you brake the car, it pulls the top of the brakes forward, squeezing the pads against the drum of the wheel (which, unlike modern drum brakes is inside of the pads).  Springs along a horizontal rod get compressed as that top moves forward, so when you're ready to let off, the brakes spring back to normal.  That's all there is to it, really.

The above is a picture from the rear center of the car looking outward.  You can see the pivot point in the center of the picture and the springs at the top.  The two pads are of some undetermined construction, so I'll have to do some checking to figure out what to use as pads.  Either way they're held on with brass rivets, so that shouldn't be a problem.

As you can also see above, I'd been dousing the moving parts of the brakes with penetrating oil every chance I got.  When I first began tinkering with the car long ago, nothing moved on the brakes.  By the time that picture was taken, I could pivot the arm and thus apply the brakes slightly, but there still was not much movement.

The first order of business would be to get the tire off---something I've never done on this car before.  I had attempted it long ago but soon gave up to go work on other things, as the wheel puller we have was not quite the right size to aid in the removal of this particular wood spoke wheel.

When taking the wheels off the Maxwell, first one has to remove the main lug nut and then a washer that comes off of the spindle.  From here, theoretically, with some force the wheel can be removed.  Not so easy in this case.

I bashed on the tire relentlessly for quite some time before attempting other methods (prying, wiggling, lubricating, etc.) until my father arrived home from work.  He bashed it a few times before recommending that we try hitting it a slightly different way.  The last time he had removed a wheel this old was when he was a young child and his father (the first Woodsie) restored a ~1903 Franklin.  Eventually we were successful, although the locking pin inside the wheel gave much sooner than I anticipated, thus injuring my leg as it leapt joyfully from the car.  This came after my father set a giant, super heavy mallet on the tire, only to have the tire rotate and send the enormous mallet crashing into my knee.

With the tire off I had an unabated view of the brakes like I'd never had before.  The scene did not look promising, though.  So much rust and so few moving parts meant that I would risk breaking a few old pieces if I struggled too much with them during removal.  With that in mind I gathered WD40 and a newly-discovered old can of PB Blaster, alternating use between the two on whatever part I needed freed.

I also tried my hand at mixing my own penetrating oil based on some wives tales I'd heard on the internet.  After gaining access to a new bottle of acetone, I found a 1980s bottle of automatic transmission fluid (ATF) and a 1960s Vlasic pickle jar in which to mix the two together.  Pouring my home brew over the parts, I soon found that the combinations of my three oils were actually loosening some of the rusted pieces.

I removed the brake adjuster (as seen above) and found that there were little swatches of the original blue paint still on it from 1910.  At the same time I also learned that this always-black piece (which I assumed in the past to be Bakelite) was actually brass!  I can't imagine how gorgeous it must look clean, but the aforementioned swatches tell me that it was once painted, so I may have to cover it in the end.

I used my grandfather's tap and die set to clean the threads on the adjusting nut and on the brakes as well (I love that set, by the way.  It always makes me so proud and honored to use it).  Then I scrubbed a little on the brakes themselves (seen below).  I soon realized that in order to make them work again I would need to take them entirely apart; as a result, my task just seemed a whole lot bigger.  I would begin by using the super large rubber mallet---which I now affectionately call Thor---to hit the brakes in every direction I could just to free them up.

After a while I could get the shoes to move inward and outward slightly, but not much.  Without the impediment of the wheel I could, for once, take a full swing when hitting the car.  I'm sure Thor loved this as much as I did.  Eventually I also spent some time hitting the pivot point (parallel onto the leftmost part of the spring in the above picture).  After a while this too could actually pivot and move for the first time in my life.  I soon realized that the little pin that held the threaded piece onto the arm would be a beast to remove, as would the one below it where the arm attaches to the rear brake pad.  Both would have to come out, though, if I hoped to get the thing working again.

The time I spent just hitting this car with Thor cannot be overstated.  I would work up sweat after sweat, spending five or ten minutes at a time repeatedly hitting different parts of this car and seeing them move millimeters at a time.  I would sometimes switch to the regular metal hammer before going back to Thor, but in the end I had always made a little progress.  If I combined my hitting episodes, though, I imagine I spent a few hours of my life hitting that car.  In the end, though, the arm would pivot easily and the springs would actually spring the arm back into place!  In essence, the brakes were extremely close to working!

I knew this was not good enough, though, and that the car needed to be done correctly, so I persisted.  I whacked the brake pads far enough apart that I could get the forward spring off the adjusting threads, then eventually I wiggled the pads enough to get the whole adjustment thread piece out of the center guide on the axle.  This meant I was free at the top of the brakes and had just one nut at the bottom to remove before the whole brake mechanism could come off the car.

In the meantime I tried hundreds of different ways to get those pins out.  I pried, I hit them, I grabbed them with vise-grips, I jammed different sized screwdrivers under their heads, I used a propane torch to heat the metal before hitting them and prying them and grabbing them some more.  On and on I went to no avail.  This was turning into the hardest part of the restoration so far.

The elements of my home brew of penetrating oil.

Part of the ongoing trouble was the fact that early on I planned on making my own pin-remover with a socket and a clamp, but the only clamp that we had was (1) old, as expected, (2) didn't have a rotating head on the threaded end, and (3) was not in the least bit square and straight.  As a result, when I tried to screw the clamp inward, it pushed itself off of the pin or off of the socket.  When I tried it the other way the old metal on the clamp would give way and the socket would gouge into it.

After some time I decided to move onto that bottom nut that would free the brake mechanism.  Oddly, this was incredibly easy to remove, which was a byproduct of soaking the whole thing in penetrating oil repeatedly.  And with that, I became the first person in 100 years to be holding the Maxwell's brakes in my hands, which was a pretty amazing feeling.

But this blog post is far too long as is.  There's so much more to talk about, but that will have to be in the next post.  In the meantime feel free to get (mostly) realtime briefs on Twitter at @WoodsiesGarage.  Thanks, all!

My interview with American GP3 driver Conor Daly: Barcelona, Force India and Hares!

American Conor Daly has been working his way up the racing ladder steadily for the past few years, but many more Americans took notice when the 20 year-old won the second of two GP3 races in Barcelona earlier this season.  Following that with a straight-line test for the Force India F1 team before heading to Monaco, Daly’s first full year in GP3 has proved to be a busy one, but I caught up with Conor for a candid interview about this whirlwind of a year shortly before the Monaco round of the GP3 championship.

Daly, the son of former CART and Formula 1 racer Derek Daly, is a former World Karting Association champion and multiple winner in Skip Barber and Formula Ford.  Originally entering the Road to Indy, which aims to aid racers in ascending to the IndyCar series, Daly won the Star Mazda Championship in record-setting fashion in 2010 (nine poles and seven wins) before moving on to Indy Lights the following year with Sam Schmidt Motorsports.  After capturing victory in Long Beach, Daly competed in GP3 with Carlin Motorsports (splitting his season between Europe and the United States).

But throughout all of these accomplishments, Daly has perhaps garnered the most attention in just four races in GP3.  Currently fifth in the championship standings with 23 points, Daly won the Barcelona sprint race on the opening weekend of the GP3 season, but it wasn’t easy.

What many people didn’t realize was that Daly had already been offered a spot testing the Force India before the opening weekend of the GP3 season---something he called “a nice little incentive” for those first two races.  However, that didn’t make things simpler for him in the feature race.

After a great qualifying, Daly dropped several spots at the start, from which he was never able to recover.

“I saw the pole sitter, [António Félix] da Costa jump and I released the brake just slightly which made me pull in the clutch paddle so when the lights actually went out I was slipping the clutch way too much,” Daly said.  As a result the car stayed relatively stationary before creeping away slowly.  Despite the disastrous start, the clutch had only been slipping for a total of 2.4 seconds.  “It was definitely my fault, and it was sad because I was in a good position to try and win but unfortunately I wasn't able to do so,” he lamented.

Over the course of the race a difficult battle with Marussia Manor Racing’s Tio Ellinas developed until a late safety car bunched the field together.  In the ensuing sprint to the end, Daly’s main focus was finishing the race in one piece and setting himself up for the sprint race, which would invert the top eight finishers from the feature.  He would go on to finish P6, which meant he would start P3 on the inverted grid for the sprint finale.

More jump starts saw penalties befall those in front of him, and the sprint race quickly became a one-man show with Daly pulling away.  He later revealed that in the final few laps he had to keep himself from thinking too much about what would happen if he won.  Instead he made himself concentrate more.

“The car was so good that I was able to focus on hitting my marks and just finishing out the race,” he said.  “I had to manage the tires towards the end and was able to finish with a good gap behind me so I was quite happy.”

 One of the best moments of the weekend for American fans was seeing Daly holding the American flag as he celebrated in parc ferme after the race.  Where did the flag come from, though?

 “I made sure to have my Dad bring the American flag from home because I knew I would get to use it at some point this year, I just didn't honestly think it would be this soon!  I was so thrilled to hear the American national anthem.   It was a very emotional moment and I can't really describe the feeling I had.  I was relieved because I knew that I was starting to prove myself in Europe.  I was extremely happy but it’s just the beginning and I can't wait to get to the next race in Monaco!”

For the rest of the weekend the young American was approached by numerous luminaries of the GP3, GP2 and F1 worlds.  At one point he was even congratulated by Ferrari F1 team principal Stefano Domenicali---the importance of which was not lost on the Indiana native.

“It is always nice to know people are watching,” Daly smiled.  “I don't want to get too caught up in it, though, because it’s a long season and I just want to focus on keeping the good finishes coming and scoring points to be there for the championship at the end.”

I have to ask, then, are any future deals coming out of some of those important conversations?

Daly laughed.  “Not that I know of at the moment!”

Fast forward to the Force India test a few days later. This was Conor’s first taste of a Formula 1 car.  Obviously he had grown up hearing about the machines, but the jump between GP3 and F1 technology had to be a great one.

 “They are indeed massively different cars.  The F1 car was absolutely incredible.  I was pretty much living every childhood dream I ever had!  There are just so many different settings on the steering wheel and it is a far more technically advanced race car than anything else in the world,” he explained.

But the coolest thing, if he had to choose something?

“Ultimately, though, the coolest thing had to be the sound under hard acceleration; just absolutely beautiful.”

Since the test was a straight-line test---one of the few types of testing that has been allowed by the FIA over the past few years---Daly had plenty of opportunities to accelerate and decelerate, sometimes being told to accelerate as hard as he possibly could (which he described as being “the best part” of the session).  There was a brief moment, however, when he got to test out the handling as well.

Somewhere around 150 mph a hare ran out onto the Cotswold Airport runway where Daly was testing (located in Gloucestershire, England).  Although it wasn’t as much of a near-miss as some would like to think, Daly said he ‘did have to make his way around [the hare] as it sprinted away.’

Surprisingly, having worked with the Lotus GP3 team and now Vijay Mallya’s F1 team, Daly says that the two squads are extremely different, but only because the Lotus GP3 team is really ART GP.

“It's funny because everyone thinks because we have the same name that we are heavily affiliated with the Lotus F1 team but really we aren't,” he explained.  “Lotus GP is really ART GP which has been one of the best teams in the world competing in junior formula car racing.  Fortunately, though, the [ART GP] team has aligned themselves with the Lotus F1 team which gives us the cool color scheme and a great historic name.”

 Even so, Daly says with a chuckle that he is yet to meet anyone from the Lotus F1 team.

From there Conor was going to be heading to Monaco---somewhere he had never raced but had always dreamed about experiencing.

“I have been looking forward to this race since it was announced on our schedule.  I love street courses,” he said.  “I have raced on many street courses in America, and I've thoroughly enjoyed every single one.  Now I get to race on what is arguably the best street course in the world!”

Citing the 27 cars that will be taking part in the race, Daly noted that he may need a little luck when it comes to avoiding the inevitable traffic jams, but through simulator work and studying the track, he felt very comfortable leading up to the race.  He even mentioned that he was most looking forward to “pushing the limit in qualifying and using every inch of the track to try and get the pole.”

So, with one victory in the first two races, Daly would head to the French Riviera to the legendary and dangerous streets of Monte Carlo, where few could have predicted the outcomes of that weekend’s races.  We’ll catch up with Conor and get his thoughts on Monaco and the following round of the GP3 championship (Valencia, Spain) next time.