Citicar Brakes

[bennelson]

Hi Everyone,

As you may know, I have both a homebuilt electric car, as well as a "Classic" EV - a 1977 Citicar.



I have barely used the Citicar for the last while, because the brakes don't work.

Today, I took the car over to my friend, Rich, also known as "Mr. Speed."

The brakes on these cars are now kinda notorious. Back in the 70's these were cheap and easily available parts, but now they are a little more difficult to find. Also, there were few enough Citicars made that they don't show up in the computer systems of auto parts stores. You usually have to find the old guy at the store who has dusty old catalog books to help locate parts.

Anyways, we completely removed and took apart all the brakes. On the one, we polished it up and honed out the inside of brake cylinder. We weren't able to find the brake rebuild kits at the local parts store, so we just finished removing all the other brakes and prep for the rebuild.

Here's what the parts look like cleaned up and spread out.


On the back of the car, the whole driven axle assembly needs to get yanked out to rebuild the brakes. We used a puller to remove the retaining ring and bearing.

One of the brake spiders must have been replaced at some point, because it was different that the others. Notice the one in the middle of the photo:


That's also the only one marked with a part number, so it might make it easier to find the right parts for the rebuild kit from the store.

See more photos of the project at:
MobileMe Gallery

[Daox]

Did you get the job done? Or, are you still searching for parts?

[bennelson]

We only had so much daylight, and the local parts store didn't have the right rebuild kits, so we did what we could without them.

Next time I am over there, we will get everything put back together.

Besides the rebuild kits, I also need a pair of bearings for the drive axle, and these goofy-looking seals. I will need to go to a golf-cart place for those.

[Ryland]

Auto part store can special order the bearing and press it all together, other then that you need to order stuff from EVperformance.com, about $200 in parts to replace the wheel bearing properly on a single side, the ring that holds the wheel bearing in place gets drilled and chiseled off, not pressed off, new retaining ring is about $75, the seal is also a special part that the auto part store does not have.
I spent almost a month trying to find parts including a number of golf cart shops around here.

[bennelson]

The ring that held in the bearing pulled off nice and clean.
No need to use destructive cutting tools!

It's too bad that so many of these parts are hard to find now!

I'm still checking with a couple of golf cart places on parts.

[Ryland]

At least my Dana rear end is basically a smaller version of an older Ford rear end and the service manual for those is what told me to cut that ring off, that retaining ring is also all that keeps your axle in place while going around corners.
If you do find a golf cart shop that has parts let me know details about who they order from.

[dawnit]

I know about where you can get parts but this web site does not allow this so I'm done trying to help here

[Ryland]

Originally Posted by dawnit

I know about where you can get parts but this web site does not allow this so I'm done trying to help here

And where would that be?

[dawnit]

[QUOTE=Ryland;261265]And where would that be?[/QUOTE
I'm not allowed to post links so google

evperformance

[Ryland]

EV Performance is where I've gotten most of my parts from when I replaced my wheel bearing two years ago, I'm pretty sure Ben ended up ordering his wheel bearing seals from them as well, their shop manual is pretty good although not perfect.
I had hopes that maybe you had another source for parts as EV Performance doesn't have tires, the front half of the hand brake cable, leaf springs, bumpers, battery covers, or a hand full of other parts that tend to wear out.