HC rear brake arrangments

[HC]

Does anyone know, a 1971 HC Girling type rear brake arrangment was an original fitment?
My viva is fitted with a lockheed front brake arrangment and girling arrangment at the rear.

anyone helps

[pbottomley]

It wouldnt supprise me if you found different makes on the left and right !! let alone front a rear.

[HC]

My viva HC is equipped with lockheed master cyl without servo, front lockheed drum brakes and rear girling type arrangment.
I wonder if someone had replaced the rear brakes to girling type, cause the workshop manual gives that Viva HC has only lockheed brakes, 1 wheelcylinder with double pistons (lockheed) at the rear.

Regards,
Chris Long MALTA

[droopsnoot]

Paul's right - I'd heard that at some points in the production run, the line used whatever they had available at the time, and both Lockheed and Girling parts mixed on a car is quite common. I also heard that there were no records kept, so there's no way to know from the chassis number what is correct and what is not.

[pbottomley]

having worked in the past in vehicle production, its done all the time to keep a line running, sometimes they do the weirdest things to just keep a line running. Its cost more to stop a line than to fix the damage!

many moons ago when I was in luton we have a fleet of 200 + V6 vectras that had been fitted with the wrong engines, and we had the task of changing all the cam shafts to bodge the cars right. They knew the engines were wrong but in order to keep the lines running they built the cars with wrong engines and then sub contracted the fix out to a third party.

Now its not to hard to imagine in the dark past, building the cars wrong (e.g. not to design), and not bothering to do the remidy work, offer them on the cheap to a dealer and as said not keep paperwork!! This is why we have TQM, ISO 9001 etc these days, to create a paperwork path to make accountability should issue apear in the future.

[pbottomley]

I just remembred some funny examples of quality build form the Luton factories, in the late 1990's:

Fuel tanks filled with wrong fuel

No oil in gearboxs and or engines

No rotor arms (and the best ones, wrong rotor arms in dist, with no rev limit switch! drop valve time)

It was a scream at Millbrook to try and drive randomly selected cars from the line and do a quality assurance drive on them.

Turn key drive away bang, engine dead!

Turn key drive away smash into a tree no brake fluid, pipes not fitted correctly!

Vauxhall what a car!

[griffonmark]

You've just brought back memories of my previous life as a vehicle assessor. In the late 1980's a much sought after radio was the Philips 400 as fitted to a lot of Vauxhalls, Cavaliers, Astras etc. I dealt with thousands of thefts and one day was called to the premises of Syd Abrams in Manchester whose compound had been broken into. I was intstructed by GM's GM Acceptance who insured predelivery Vauxhalls to inspect the broken into brand new vehicles. They hadn't even been PDI'd and had no reg plates. One of them was a silver Astra and while I checked the stuffed doorlock and hole in the dash I noticed poor paintwork on the roof. Closer inspection revealed it had a new roof fitted. I often wondered what poor punter ended up with that car. And then there's all the 1987 silver Astras that turned green....

One of my colleagues had to inspect Fiats as they landed at the docks and deal with any transport damage. One day there was a dockers strike. All the cars were parked so close together you couldn't open the doors and had to climb out of the windows. The dockers got real bored so decided to play football. Their pitch was the roof of the cars. That's why hundreds of Mirafioris ended up with vinyl roofs. The rest had dockers' boot prints.