Brake Overhaul – Matchless G3L WD

How to overhaul the rear brake on a classic British motorcycle. Applicable to most British motorcycles with rigid rear suspension and drum brakes

If you watch my last video about the hidden history of nubra you’ll know that I had to cut the ride short on the matchless because of squeaky brakes well this video is the fix how to do a break overhaul on a matchless G3 lwd so I think you can hear what the

Problem is now the video is specifically about matchless but if you’ve got an old British bike with a rigid rear end and drum brakes I think there’ll be a high level of commonality between what I do here and what you may need to do with yours it’s much easier to get at

Everything if you remove the chain and it only takes a moment so the first step is get a small screwdriver and remove the little pin that holds the spare link onto the chain we’ll just get the chain neatly out the way taking care not to pull it off the front sprocket

Now I’m going to wind out the chain tensioners on each side and this will allow us to move the wheel forward a little bit and that helps with getting the spindle out you’ll be pleased to find out there is no need to remove the rear wheel completely to carry out the

Brake overhaul but we do need to get the spindle out so next thing I’m going to undo the right axle nut and then the left now remove the split pin on the rear brake drum retaining bolt and remove the knoted bolt wind out then remove the brake

Adjuster move the wheel forward a little bit and then use a brick front and back just to take the weight off the spindle you’ll notice I’m doing this on a hydraulic workbench but there’s no need to you can do all of this at ground

Level now I push the SP in a little bit from the right hand side and that allows me to grab it on the left and pull it out further once I’ve done this I can remove the spacer between the speedo and the right hand side of the

Frame now I undo the speedo cable and lay it carefully to one side then remove the speedo unit from the wheel hub the speedo unit has a little Bush on the inside I’m showing you it here in case it pops out and you wonder where it came

From now I push the spindle across from left to right once it’s gone far enough I’ll be able to remove the spacer on the left side of the wheel now you can remove the spindle because the wheel will rest on the Bricks now by removing the bricks I can

Move the wheel down into the rear a little bit and then I can tilt it so that the bottom of the wheel tilts to the right and this creates enough space for me to remove the rear brake drum unit without fouling on the frame there’s another spacer that sits

Between the wheel hub and the rear brake drum unit and it’s really important we don’t forget this here I’m having a good look inside the wheel hub to make sure that there’s no damage or scoring caused by contact with metal from the brake unit and now a quick look at the general

Condition of the brake cover plate and the brake shoes with the Linings inside it all looks okay to me although the Linings are obviously worn and just in case you haven’t seen one of these before this is how the mechanism operates it’s really simple when the brake lever rotates then this cam

Between the two brake shoes forces them outwards and that forces the lining uh into the wheel hub and slows the wheel down and you remove the brake shoes just by gripping them firmly pulling them apart and rotating the whole thing off so it comes off a little

Hinge now where one end of each brake shoe meets the cam there’s a mushroom shaped metal plug and underneath this plug each one has a washer and this is what’s used to adjust the brakes you put more washers in and you get more brake tension as the lining wears down next

Are remove the little Springs so I can separate the brake shoes the two Springs are identical now as far as I know there are only two things that can really cause a noise inside the brake unit if everything’s working basically as it should one is contamination and this can be indicated

By a sort of a shininess on the brake lining we can certainly see some evidence of that and I think that was the EV that was what was giving the initial squeaking but the next thing is metal on metal contact because as the lining wears down if it goes down far

Enough then the rivets can make contact with the wheel hub and we’ve got evidence of this here because we’ve got a really shiny section of one of the rivets to get the old Linings off I’m simply drilling into the brass rivets which are really soft from the inside of

The brake shoe and then tapping them through with a punch Oh there are eight vits on each shoe and they all came out fairly easily and it’s not until I compare the old liners with the new that I realized just how worn they were now it’s time to rivet the new liners to the brake shoes now I haven’t

Riveted anything for about 35 years the last I did this was a school metal work class and I certainly don’t have any specialist tools but the brass rivets are quite soft here I’ve got a packet I need 16 and there seem to be four spares now when I put the rivet through

The liner and into the brake shoe you can see it goes down into the recess and the idea is that we have to hammer or peen over the other end um whilst making sure it stays recessed so I had a quick Scout round garage and I got a a chain

Kit here and this little plate which is used for pressing chains together has got a spiger on the end which is the perfect size for holding the end of the river that you don’t want to move while you hammer it from inside the brake shoe the rivets that came with my brake

Lining kit were way too long to try and bend over they just make a right mess so I used a pair of Clippers here the ones I used to remove uh fuel hose Clips to shorten the river before I peened it over if you the advantage of a tool like

This is that you can use it actually while the rivets in the brake shoe but if you don’t have one then an ordinary pair of pliers with that little pair of scissors uh inside the hinge would do just as well but you’ll have to do the rivet before you put it into the

Shoe and now with the rivet shaft nice and short and with my DIY tool holding it firmly from the other side of the shoe so it doesn’t move away from the recess I’ll use a punch to mushroom the end of the rivet shaft over and as with anything practice makes

You better so the first one took me about 5 minutes the last one took me about 5 seconds so here I am a little later on when I’m getting a little bit more used to the hand skills required A punch with a flat head is good to start with but a punch with a point on it is much much better at applying Force to a smaller area and mushrooming over the head of the river shaft and that’s what I’m hunting around for here and here we are with all the rivets

In now I’m not going to win any neat riveting competitions but I managed to do it without any special tools all the rivets are in really securely and importantly the heads of the rivets on the side where the lining is are deeply recessed and won’t be rubbing against the inside of the wheel

Hub and notice I’m doing the reassembly without gloves CU I’m quite Keen to make sure I don’t get any contamination on the liners because that’ll make them squeal I put the top spring on first using hand pressure and not shown here but I used a small screwdriver to lever

In the lower spring now I’ll give the wheel hover a good clean with some brake cleaner or carb cleaner doesn’t make any difference and some tissue now I’m putting the spindle in from right to left just far enough that I can hook over that little spacer that

Goes inside the wheel hub and when I Tred to put the brake cover plate back on it simply wouldn’t fit uh the new Linings were just too wide and they were pushing against the outside of the wheel hub so I removed it again for a little thing and the answer is really obvious

You’ probably worked out already without me even saying it that what we need to do is remove those two little spaces underneath the mushroom end camps that go onto the uh the cam and if we do that because they’re there to compensate for wear then the two brake shoes will move

Closer together and a whole Arrangement will be smaller and it should fit in just fine and as suspected with the space is removed the whole thing goes in easily and now we’ll put everything back together in the reverse order with which we took it apart and if you don’t mind

I’ll keep this going pretty uh quick by playing some music and rattling through at four times Speed [Applause] [Applause] [Applause] And now the moment of truth let’s see if the brakes are still squeaky and squealy I on think you’ll agree that’s a really good result well I hope the video has been of some use to you if not or you have any suggestions to make it better

Please do let me know this is the first time I’ve done this job and uh I’m always eager to learn from other people so thanks so much for watching and see you on the next one