This is one of the sloppier pair of rear brake shoes we have seen. The shoes shown have been well-coated with differential oil, and obviously, are not going to do much braking in this condition. New shoes, new axle seals, gaskets and an o ring are in order. We have a wet brake rehab kit available in our catalog to address this common problem.

This is one of the most routine failures we have seen on Spridgets, it seems like about 75% of the cars that come through our shop have this issue, not always as ugly as this one, but often leaking. If you are unfamiliar, axle are sandwiched over the rear hub and differential oil often leaks out of this union and ruins the rear brake shoes.

So how do you minimize the likelihood of this leak recurring?

We use the correct gasket and o-ring, a new seal and we make sure the axle fits flat with the hub so that there are good mating surfaces. The secret sauce we add is gasket shellac, to help fill any voids in the gasket. We don’t recommend RTV/silicone/thick sealant because it seems to add too much material, and can actually make leaks more likely to recur.

I bet there are several dozen opinions out there about how to do this best, but whatever it takes to keep the faces sealed is OK by us. We’ll keep using the shellac unless we find that it stops working.

One other suggestion… lug nuts help hold this whole sandwich together, so when you remove a wheel you should put a lug nut back on opposite the drum screw to help hold the stack together during service. Otherwise, the oil can start to run out, thus damaging the gasket and inviting leaks later.

One of the other chronic maintenance needs on early Sprites is the radius arm bushings. These routinely fail. I fear that rubber ain’t what it used to be and so we seem to change these as often as axle seals (as shown in the post above).

One chronic source of failure is tightening these in the air and then lowering your car such that the bushings experience high torque loads and can perish prematurely.

But even when tightened on the ground, the rubber seems to decay a lot faster than we would like.

Over the years, we have seen creative solutions. This one shown is a sold plastic arm that had to be build out of frustration, since it looks like it would last forever. A more elegant but similarly rigid solution is a heim jointed adjustable and rigid steel arm. These will also last forever, but I notice an immediate harsh ride quality as a result and we therefore remove these immediately.

Quarter elliptical Sprites require all the rubber damping they can get to provide some level of nominal comfort demanded by modern customers. In the 70s we expected less. Now that we have all aged (just a little bit), a tad of comfort is critical, otherwise people tend to leave their Sprites in the garage and take something else.

If your rear axle is clunking on forward to reverse transitions, you need new radius arm bushings. Check them next time you are in your rear wheel arches, and see if they are cracked or torn. We have rubber bushings you can press in, or, if you prefer to just put in the complete arm with the new bushings pre-loaded, we sell those too!