Has anyone changed their own brakes?
I need to replace brakes on my 1997 Damon Hornet 2754b, Ford E-Superduty Chassis. Is this something I can take care of myself? I can change brakes on a car.
Forum Discussion
There are no drums on the E-SuperDuty chassis (which was renamed to the E450 a year or two later). It's disc brakes all around, with the parking brake being mounted on the drive shaft in a little housing bolted to the back of the transmission. Incidentally that means you can't rely on the parking brake when jacking up a rear wheel, as the differential will let the other wheel turn freely once one loses traction.
From what I've seen online, it's not an impossible job to do the brakes on them. The rear calipers use some sort of a split pin thingy rather than bolts to join them together, which apparently requires a little different fiddling to remove but isn't terrible once you know the trick. The fronts are more typical construction.
I've always paid someone to do the brake work for me. I'm pretty sure I could do it, and there are plenty of other chassis maintenance things I've done, but somehow just haven't cared to do it myself...maybe partly due to a bit of unnecessary fear about the sorts of problems a serious mistake could bring about, and partly because mucking about under vehicles gets less exciting as time marches on.
In general, the E series chassis isn't too challenging to work on. There are a few things for which access is less than ideal (e.g. upper front shock mounts, spark plugs, vacuum system for the heater controls....) but by and large things are reasonably accessible and repairable and don't need lots of special or extra heavy duty tools.
From what I've seen online, it's not an impossible job to do the brakes on them. The rear calipers use some sort of a split pin thingy rather than bolts to join them together, which apparently requires a little different fiddling to remove but isn't terrible once you know the trick. The fronts are more typical construction.
I've always paid someone to do the brake work for me. I'm pretty sure I could do it, and there are plenty of other chassis maintenance things I've done, but somehow just haven't cared to do it myself...maybe partly due to a bit of unnecessary fear about the sorts of problems a serious mistake could bring about, and partly because mucking about under vehicles gets less exciting as time marches on.
In general, the E series chassis isn't too challenging to work on. There are a few things for which access is less than ideal (e.g. upper front shock mounts, spark plugs, vacuum system for the heater controls....) but by and large things are reasonably accessible and repairable and don't need lots of special or extra heavy duty tools.
