1991 Toyota Deliboy

Nice cup holders, find your nearest Asian food store and get yourself some Pokari Sweat to put in there 😁

I hope that's not as dodgy as it sounds.

I managed to find time over the weekend to take apart the front brake system and rebuild the calipers.

Getting hold of the right rebuild kit was interesting. You can't just phone up a motor factors and ask for one for a Deliboy, because they'll laugh at you (my local mechanic found this out the hard way). In the end, I cross-referenced the Toyota part number for the piston and found that it was common with the mk3 Supra. Autodoc had the Supra kit in stock, so I ordered a pair.

I'd never rebuilt calipers before, so I prepared by watching a couple of Youtube videos. In the first one, an Englishman demonstrated that it's possible to swap the bits over without detaching the caliper from the car. After 5 minutes of being hunched over with my head in the wheelarch, I decided I wasn't going to take this route. The other video was made by an American with a fully-equipped workshop (2-post lift, hydraulic press, airlines, etc. etc.). I don't have none of that. It was more relevant, though, because he was working on a Corolla, which has a similar arrangement using a metal ring to hold the piston boot in place.

I worked on one caliper at a time, doing the mucky stuff (like draining the nasty rusty-brown brake fluid) in the garage and the tidying and reassembly on a sheet of cardboard on the kitchen table.

The pistons were rusty and pitted, so they had to go.



In addition to that, the calipers had a ring of swollen rusty material just outside the sealing channel. The rust on the pistons was catching on the rust on the caliper, and hey presto, brake binding. I used my cheap Dremel-alike to grind down the caliper rust, being very careful not to touch any polished surfaces. The new pistons were assembled with a new seal and boot and a smear of the supplied grease, and it all sort of went back together. Some of the supplied parts didn't fit, and the replacement bleed nipples had a hex on them smaller than any spanner I own, so I had to reuse some serviceable old parts. This wasn't a full caliper restoration by any means. You can tell that just by looking at it.



The next challenge was putting them back on the car. The driver side caliper and brake hose connection appeared to have been cross-threaded by a previous muppet, so it took a lot of attempts before I could reunite them properly. That got a bit emotional. The passenger side was a breeze in comparison. I added NOS Toyota brake pads, a smear of grease in the appropriate places and managed to bleed the system.

Did I do a good job? Too early to say. I've got some underseal to reapply inside the rear wheelarches before I can put the wheels back on and take it for test drive (being careful not to crash before I've left the street). If you don't hear from me again...

The part numbers vary a bit, but this appears to be the standard Toyota front brake caliper of the era. I just need to take care about piston size, slider size and brake hose fixing type (integrated or banjo bolt).

Nearly forgot to mention the underseal replacement in the rear wheelarch inners, which had previously been taken down to the metal by the oversized rear tyres. A quick spray of stonechip shield and a brushfull of rust-resistant underseal from a good old-fashioned tin soon had them looking ship-shape. The colour will be blended in by the careful application of Winter road grime. 

Yesterday was busier than expected. I dropped off the Deliboy with Victor the mechanic with a care package.



Due to the difficulty of relying on a motor factor to source parts, I've gathered them from various sources. The rear brake shoes and wheel cylinders were from eBay (fairly universal Toyota fitment, fortunately), as was the thermostat. The Temperature sender was from Autodoc, and the two belts had to come from Japan, because the European generic equivalents just don't fit.

Skinny Japanese belts in situ (the aircon belt is a generic European one, which is why it's much fatter). Might have to replace that one eventually if it starts to fray at the edges like the Power Steering one did.


I don't know if the thermostat was faulty, but I've no idea if it had been changed before, so it was worth picking one up just to be on the safe side. The more important component was the temperature sender, as the temp gauge in the instrument panel hasn't worked properly since I bought the van. It started off only climbing a maximum of a quarter of the way up the gauge, but recently it's struggled to climb off the bottom stop. My multimeter indicated something funny was happening with the sender resistance, but wasn't entirely conclusive. With the new sender installed, correct service has been resumed.



The rear brakes no longer bind, the handbrake is improved, and several years of slowing down service should now be guaranteed.

What I forgot to mention to Victor (despite scribbling it on the box) was the rusty hole in the front crossmember. He can weld it up, but it can wait a bit. It will be done before the next MOT, because it's close to both a front body mount and the jacking point for the onboard bottle jack.

While the van was away, the Parcelforce dude arrived with a long box from China, which contained the Hiace windscreen wiper mechanism. Some careful thought and measurement will be required before I can confirm how/if I can integrate some or all of this into the van.



While I was out at a parents evening, the postman turned up and brought my recycling bin in from the road for me, mainly so he could then put a parcel in it. It's also from China (Ali Express are my latest go-to source of bits and bobs), and contains the rev counter I paid peanuts for. Let's see if it works. If I have any issues, I might be knocking on the door of my neighbour who works in the electronics department of an F1 team...



The Deliboy engine will never reach 7000rpm, but I can set the shift light to something more sensible just to be on the safe side. 5000rpm should do the trick.

In the box, some simple instrutions were provided:



Also enclused was a double-sided English/Russian warranty card. The English side contains a picture of a happy woman popping up at random, and another woman driving a car. The Russian side is just a picture of a man reading a book to a bear. No stereotypes here, that's just what Russian men do.

My target is to get it mechanically optimised for the MOT in March, and add a couple of little garnishes along the way. There is a funky gearknob in the post (from China) as we speak. 

How long I hold onto the van really depends on the post-Covid world. If I'm expected in the office every day of the week and need to cover 12,000 commuting miles a year, I'll probably need to change it for something a bit more normal/cost effective. If I can continue mostly working from home, the van will stay. I only have space at home to accommodate 2 vehicles (one of which needs to be inside the garage), so compromises may need to be applied. It's possible that I could end up with an EV and a V8 saloon, which could balance things out nicely (but will mean no manual transmissions to play with). 

Anyway, I'll let you know 

If I know the car VIN I can look up the Toyota EPC and find the Toyota part number for the caliper, from that I can generate a list of all Toyota models that use that caliper

According to the EPC the front calipers are used on certain years of a couple of other models, the Town/Masterace in Japan and the Type F in Europe

CLICKY CLICKY 2

The front pads on the other hand are only listed for the Deliboy
hth
Jimi