Loose front pad ona 1945 #4T

[Surpmil]

It's funny they didn't mount the rear pads with the bearing surfaces vertical rather than horizontal. Had they done so, the rear pads if properly set up would have also taken a considerable portion of the recoil forces and probably eliminated all such problems with the front pads shooting loose or shearing their spigots.

The simplest way to make them would have been turned out of a disc on a lathe so that the bearing surfaces of the pad would be curved to match the radius of the distance between the two pads. That would have allowed vertical adjustment without the need to meddle with the bearing surfaces of either rear pad or bracket leg.

The brackets could have been machined to match, and a simple steel "stop-block" screwed and soldered to a suitable flat machined on the inside rear leg of the brackets above the bearing surfaces so at to set vertical alignment. Adjusting same would then involve only removing the stop-block and replacing with a larger one or lapping down its height as required.

Of course making the front spigot 50-100% larger would also have probably solved the problem.