From: welty@cabot.balltown.cma.COM (richard welty)
Subject: Re: Rear brake trouble Alfa Romeo Giulietta
Keywords: Alfa, brakes
Organization: New York State Institute for Sebastian Cabot Studies
Date: Thu, 30 Jul 1992 19:47:48 GMT

In article <eur.711971721@dutncp8> eur@dutncp2.tn.tudelft.nl (Eur van Andel) writes:

>I bought two Alfa Romeo Giulietta's for $300 and have some trouble.

>As you may or may not know, the rear disc brakes on an Alfa Romeo are
>near the gearbox/clutch in the back. My brake pads are worn, and I'd
>like to replace them.

i presume from this that you're talking about the ``new Giulietta'',
as the 750/101 series Giuliettas wouldn't be going for $300 in any
market i know of.  besides that, the 750 and 101 series cars didn't
have disc brakes; they had large, pretty finned aluminum drums.

>SS is a small bolt to adjust the inner cylinder for the handbrake.

>II is an imbus (inner hexagonal) bolt with a nut NN on it to fasten it.
>It is supposed to be for adjusting the handbrake on the outer cylinder.

>The trouble is: I can put the new brake pad in on the inside, but not in 
>the outside. However I turn the nut or imbus bolt, the outside cylinder
>ceeps coming to the disk, and no amount of force can move it back.

the setup is nearly identical to that on my Alfa Milano (Alfa 75 in
europe.)  the direction that you turn the adjusters on the brake calipers
tends to be non-obvious and non-symetrical on these cars (they are italian,
after all.)  i cannot remember the details, but if you can adjust one
caliper, then when you go to adjust the other caliper, one of the
adjusters turns in the same direction as the matching one on the
first caliper, and the other turns in the opposite direction from the
matching one on the first.  also, it takes a bit of turning before
there is enough space.

try putting the old pad back in.  spin the halfshaft.  try turning the
adjuster down until the pad grabs the rotor.  then you know that you
have to turn the adjustor the other way to get the pad to fit.  if the
pad never grabs the rotor, then you should gradually be able to grab
the pad and wiggle it more and more as the adjustor goes out, then
you're turning it the right way to begin with.

>I can't seem to remove the brake either, because of nut nn.
>This is the nut which tightens the brake to the gearbox, but if I turn it 
>it comes against the disc and that's it. There is too little space
>between the disc and the bolt out of the gearbox to remove the nut.

you have to drop the disc out to pull the caliper; this is a tedious
job.  it may be easy and boring, or, if the bolts holding the
halfshafts to the discs are frozen, it may be difficult and throughly
obnoxious.  i'd try and deal with the adjustors in place before removing
the caliper.  i've changed the pads on the rear end of my 75 and a
friends GTV-6, and believe me, it isn't impossible, just nasty.
the price you pay for inboard rear brakes is difficult pad and rotor
replacement.  sigh.

>Has anyone removed such a brake succesfully? My manual says:
>remove nuts, remove claw.  :-(

[``to assemble, reverse the disassembly procedure'']

>The disc is bolted to the gearbox-axle with six imbus bolts, and you can
>guess how corroded they are :-<

right.  you need to soak them throughly and repeatedly with some sort
of penetrating oil if you want to loosen them, and then get an appropriate
Allen head socket (what you are calling imbus we call allen head in the
US) and a very long breaker bar.  if you use heat, then you may end up
having to repack the CVs and replace the CV boots.

cheers,
  richard
-- 
richard welty                            518-393-7228
welty@cabot.balltown.cma.com
  ``if you can read this, mario, you're too close''
    -- bumper sticker seen on a CART safety truck
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