Home Forums General Discussion Technical Questions Seating brake linings

Anyone had any luck using sand paper on a brake drum and sanding new linings in a "flossing" motion to seat them? We have always done estops and sanded the high spots by hand but this can take a LONG time. new equipment generally doesn't have this problem,but old equipment does. Especially when retaining a machine on mod where it no longer stops on the brake. We often have to upgrade lining material to help with ETS. In this instance brake stand has been shimmed but lining contact is not great even after dozens of estops and sandingby hand. Just looking if someone has better method.i talked to an old timer and he said they would put balanced load in a car and take the brake arms off @mid rise, glue sand paper on the drum and then rotate the machine by hand.... Sounds like a good idea but maybe not up to today's safety standards.

The green gripper material usually was what we would put on during Mod. Usually a few e-stops and hand sanding dis the trick. Ive also heard of using grip tape, like from a skate board, on the drum to sand them in.

I had a mech that use to use a 3 or 4" belt sander to get the lining pretty damn close. He put on the brakes, e stop land the cat drop the arms sand the spots put the arms back up and do it again till he was happy. Then he would try the 125%. I saw him do that on 4 cars and that guy nailed it in 2-3 shots each.

Flossing the sandpaper over the drum didn't work out too great. It would probably be OK for smaller linings (these are 4.250x7.5") but on these one it ended up taking too much material from the top of the lining. I think back in the day when the elevator would stop on the brake this method would have got it "good enough" and over time it would eventually seat in to 100%. I ended up chasing my tail for most of the day and went back to hand sanding. I will try the belt sander next time, sounds like it might make things quicker if you're careful.