Does your car have the original cross shaft assembly for the service brakes? My early Tudor does and I decided to keep the car original. If you have the equalizer system and have ever spent time lying on your back looking at the cross shaft rod with the yoke around the part commonly called the 'dog bone' you may have realized that if it became disconnected, you would have no service brakes. Because of this possibility this system was later replaced in November 1928, with the one piece Cross Shaft, that remained in production until the end.
On the original system two stops were punched out of the centre cross frame to keep the yoke connected. With reference to the yellow covered Model A Service Bulletins book, page 8 fig. 412 deals with the adjustment of this early system and then page 73 fig. 582 mentions a squeak at these points so the stops were removed. Instead it recommends installing a new brake pedal to cross shaft rod 5/32” longer, to provide a new limiting stop to keep the yoke in place. This was fine if there was no wear in the parts. It was a serious safety problem.
In a service letter dated Sept. 10th Ford issued the only known Model A recall. It concerned installing a small bracket called a Brake Cross Shaft Stop A-2476 to the centre frame cross member, to prevent the cross shaft coming apart. You may have read the excellent article in the May/June 1996 Restorer by Dr. Jack Richard, he figures there were 250,000 vehicles in operation with this serious problem, so they needed to fix it very quickly.
When a car came in for any service work part A-2476 was to be fitted free of charge. No mention of this in the Service Bulletins.
My Tudor didn't have this new part, and I was sure I would never find one. What to do? To provide a new stop I decided to lengthen the rod. I removed it and carefully filed the extension round and tapped a 5/16” NC thread on it, then screwed on a 1 and 1/8” coupling nut using Loctite. Connecting the rod on the pedal I now found it was a little too long, but after grinding a 1/16” off the nut I now had a nice .035” clearance at the cross member, and a new limiting point to prevent the yoke coming apart when the brake pedal was released.
I hope you didn't drop off while reading this rather “long winded” article, but if you have the old system it's worth checking out. My Tudor has 14,000 miles on it now, and no failures.
