When I get photos from my phone, I'll give you what I've got on the e-brake fabrication. It is designed by Joe Engleman of Engleman Engineering in Independence, Mo. Joe is great, and helped me immensely with setting up the rear suspension. The disk is attached to the universal flange coming off the pinion. The manual caliper is attached to brackets that are secured on the nose of the differential housing and the bolts that attach the diff. housing to the axle housing. I'm cutting the 1/4-inch brackets with a hacksaw, a grinder, a drill press, a Dremel with wafer discs, a cold chisel and a BFH. No plasma cutter, no machinist's lathe, not even an acetylene torch. I'll use my mig welder to put it all together and share photos as I assemble.
Hot Rodding at its best Osage! Coming up with a solution where none currently exists. I've wondered if there was a way to make an e-brake work off of the third memeber pinion flange. I know there are kits out there for 9-inch rear ends but wasn't sure how to adapt one to fit the rear under this F4. Kudos to you for working to engineer one! I'm like you, no special tools and working out of my 21x21 garage and with a frame that measures 17 feet it doesn't give me much room in front or back.
So I took the front axle to a local diesel shop to see about getting the new kingpins fitted and I was quoted $500 for the job!! Yikes! Thankfully the diesel shop gave me the name of a machine shop in Pensacola that could do the job too. Called them and was quoted $175. Looks like I'll be driving to Pensacola tomorrow! Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Car City Auto and Machine in Pensacola, FL did a fantastic job on fitting the kingpins. Super nice guys too! I'm not sure how they reamed the bushings to fit the pins but somewhere along the process they bead blasted the spindles which was really nice. Got them nice and clean and ready for paint! I painted the spindles and axle last Friday and let them dry all weekend. Last night I mounted the axle and then installed the spindles and new kingpins. It's so exciting seeing the truck's chassis coming back together. The only problem I discovered after I mounted up the spindles is I didn't get full paint coverage on the steering arms. I tried my best to make sure I was getting paint on them but obviously I didn't. Any suggestions on how to correct this? I'm still a novice when it comes to painting.
LOL!! True wisdom right there. That's why I like the HAMB, it's filled with a bunch of nutty car guys like me. HOTFR8, BrerHair: I'll pickup a can of gloss black spray paint and touch it up. I would think a good scuffing with a red scotch pad should suffice to rough up the surface? I'll cover up the areas I don't want to mess up.
I touched up the areas with some paint tonight. Thank goodness for rough surfaces I guess. I ended spraying some paint into a cup and then brushing some paint on. Looks great and you can't tell I even had to fix it! I also installed the backing plates and began cleaning up the brake components. I bought new wheel cylinders and they arrived today so all I need to do is paint the brake components and install them. Slowly but surely. Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
My latest update. I have the brakes installed now. Even though the wheel cylinders were all fairly new they were all rusted inside from sitting for so long so I bought new ones. The brake shoes were all in good condition so I cleaned and painted them along with all of the brake hardware. All of the components look so pretty right now, too bad it won't take long before they are covered in brake dust. I also made a drag link. Some of my pictures wouldn't upload so I'll have to repost an old picture. As you can see from this link, the drag link had been modified previously. Someone cut the original end off that mounted to the original pitman arm and welded on a more modern adjuster sleeve and tie rod end. What I did was purchase another modern adjuster sleeve and tie rod end to make my own drag link. Since both tie rods were right hand threads, I took the two adjuster sleeves (the new one and the one welded to the original drag link), cut off the left handed thread portions and then welded the two right handed thread sections together. I realize this means that in order to adjust it I can't just turn the adjuster sleeve, but such is life. I think the "new" drag link turned out pretty good and once it's adjusted it should need much work after that.
Thank you Eric. I agree, I love the installation phase! Really puts a boost in your morale as the fruits of your labor finally come together.
More progress on the '48. I primed all of the drums with high build primer and sanded them down before taking them to a friend's body shop to paint them. I wanted to use a factory Ford color that was close to University of Alabama's crimson red. Unfortunately the only color chips I found for the old Ford colors were scans of original paint chips and it's just hard to match those up to modern color chips. In the end I went for '48 Pheasant Red. It is more maroon than it is crimson so it's not an exact match to Alabama's color but it still looks good. In fact, I'm in love with the maroon and can hardly wait to see the body in this color. Anyway, tell me what you think! To paint the drums and to minimize the masking, I cut some plywood the same diameter of the drums and in order to place the axle in position for priming/painting I drilled a hole in the middle of the plywood and stacked up 4 cement blocks to place the drums on. The setup worked perfect and my friend joked with me over "engineering" the "paint stands". Hey if it works don't knock it!!
A '48 Pheasant is a rare bird indeed; very few exist today. I'm not sure who names paint colors but Pheasant red is certainly an interesting name.
Your attention to details is amazing Dave . I don't know how you have the patience !! Good job , Andy..
Thank you Andy! It sure is exciting to finally see it come together. I'm enjoying watching your build too! keep up the great work!
So I'm in a bit of a quandary. Over the past two evenings I was able to install the brake drums. While installing each drum I adjusted the fore and aft brake shoes up just until they started dragging on the drums. All went well until the last drum, right rear, I turned the adjuster for the front brake shoe all the way around and the shoe never dragged on the drum. The rear shoe I was able to adjust it to drag. So now what? Posted using the Full Custom H.A.M.B. App!
Have the brake drums been turned too many times? Most times you can only turn the brake drums .060-.100" on trucks. If you can find a brake relining shop you can have oversize shoes made... Best thing is to use standard size drums.
I'm not sure how many times in the history of the truck the drums were turned but I did have them turned and a good bit of material was removed. It's just weird that the back shoe adjusted up but the front did not.
Pull your drum and work the adjusters through their range to see if everything is moving and making contact. Might be some minor thing that needs a bit of persuasion. Or it could be a bad flux capacitor...
Ugh, the thought of removing that "10,000 lb" drum does not bring joy and excitment to me but such is life. You should have seen me installing it, you'd have laughed.....a lot. It was the right rear drum and the end of the axle is maybe 2 feet from the wall. And of course I have lots of stuff lining the wall which I had to rearrange just to be able walk back there. So I cradled the drum, carefully manuvered myself between the frame and wall and when I got to where I needed to be I leaned my back against the wall and just slide down it into a sitting position and heaved the drum into place. After that I had to have drink! haha I should have some time tonight to do some investigating. Hopfully it will be just an easy adjustment fix. Crossing my fingers it isn't the flux capacitor, my Mr. Fusion broke!
So I pulled the drum out just enough to see the brake shoes. I turned both the top and bottom adjusters through their cycle and they are functioning like they are supposed to but at their highest adjustment the face of the shoe lining is roughly .028 to .030 away from the face of the drum.
The Jalopy Journal
