Finally decided to get down with the program and fix my brakes: two weeks of rain will do that. Anyway, I used a small piece of 1.5mm alum. cut with some tin snips, bent to shape with pliers, BBQ'd and then dipped in oil (I was really bored). If you look at the pic you will see how it wraps around the brake arm and is set aprox. 1-2mm from the joint so it doesn't bind. The alum is close to flush at the bottom of the arm so it doesn't interfere with the diff. assembly. The rib of the arm was cut away using a knife so the alum. piece would sit flush. I would have put a screw through it but my dremel is still in Canada; so instead I scraped the alum. and nylon, glued them with Gorilla Super Glue and then pressed them together with pliers. This holds together well since there isn't a lot of tension on it. If I were racing I'd put a screw through it, though.
For the pin on the diff. cover, I used a very small screw and brass collar which came with a micro servo (I think). The flare on the collar is glued to the diff. cover and the screw is set directly into the nylon.....super easy.
The "return spring" is just a rubber band I marked for proper tension and glued together with the super glue and the ends were then cut off.
The band is always under tension; the alum plate keeps the brake arm in the neutral position as it is being pulled against the diff assembly. The band isn't so tight as to over-work the servo and the brakes always return to their proper position now.
This only took about 1 hour since I actually had to think about what I was doing (hopefully my wife is reading this
)
I win.
I just noticed that you can also see the spacers I used to shoehorn the steering servo in with (which I mentioned on a previous post).