A Week of Vacation

August 30 - September 6, 2008



It's pretty sad, to me anyway, that I have to take a week of vacation time to spend a week at my own house. But that's what I did, so thats how I got here. The previous post (September 2) takes place during this period.

This video was taken hours before the "big" USF @ UCF game on September 6th. For some reason, I decided that the most fun time to roll my truck out of the garage would be when all my friends were at the house. By the time this video was taken, I had replaced the last remaining brake lines, installed the new master cylinder, filled and bled the lines and popped the new drums on. And, as you can see, I'm sporting four brand new tires. For the first time since I've owned the truck, I have four matching tires and four working brakes!

The remaining brake lines went on without too much hassle, except the last tee I went to install turned out to be stripped out on one side. A quick trip to the auto parts store remedied that, but set me back an hour. I hadn't bothered to install the anti rattle clips yet (and as of this writing, still haven't gotten around to it yet). Since then, a failed attempt to adjust the parking brake cable tension has led me to believe that the cables are seized in their sheathes at the back wheels. Other than those two items, the brakes are done!

I had some interesting comments during the event. Mostly in response to the noise. My girlfriend said, "I'm NOT riding with you in THAT."

...so, with the brakes out of the way, now what?

September 2, 2008

Well, the truck is proving to be a worthy adversary. I'm still working on it on the weekends, but I'm spending much less time on it than I could be, due to a voluntary rearrangement of priorities that are outside the scope of this blog. At any rate, Tropical Storm Fay gave me a good reason to hurry up and finish the shed. We got it together and loaded up with truck parts and lawn tools just in time for it not to get blown away. You know, by several inches of rain.

The storm gave me another day at home, so I cleaned out all the junk in the bed of the truck. This allowed me to weigh down the shed (and the trash can) with truck parts. I threw away years of trash, and looked at half of it and wondered why I had kept it so long. Of note, there was the rubber floor mat that I had taken from the parts truck nigh a decade ago, which due to improper storage had torn and broken and was no longer worth saving.

In addition to that, most of the weekend work has involved trying to pull that anchor pin out so I can finish that front right wheel, and working on running the new lines. The lines have been going in fairly well, though I think I may have gotten some air in the brake system. (That's a joke.) Mike and I have been cutting and flaring brake lines, and the back lines are done, as well as the long line leading to the back of the truck. Shockingly enough, today I was able to buy some clips to hold the lines in place at AutoZone. The real reason I was at the store, though, was to trade in the third breaker bar the truck claimed while we were trying the anchor pin again. They were out of stock of the 18" ones, so I traded it in towards a 24" one. This one looks pretty stout.

I came home and decided to re-evaluate my strategy. Obviously no mere breaker bar is going to break this one. I removed the anchor pin on the drivers side and examined it. I re-checked the cylinder to see if there was any way to rebuild it in place. The plan that came up with was one involving, brute force, cutting, and breaking. As usual. I decided to try to remove the old cylinder by breaking the loop off that was being held in by the anchor pin. This would accomplish three things- first, I'd be able to put the socket farther onto the bolt in my attempt to break it loose. Second, it would give me better access to the bolt threads, for direct application of lubricant. Third, and possibly most importantly, it would reduce the pressure on the bolt itself, which could make it easier to loosen.

I drilled into the loop from either side, them proceeded to hit the cylinder with a hammer until it broke off. Unfortunately, it didn't break where I had drilled, rather at the bottom of the loop. So the rest was driven out by drilling another hole at the top, and much beating with a hammer and chisel. As it turns out, this was what it took. The anchor pin has been removed (it came out rather easily), and now the brake can be rebuilt.

Oh, by the way, I missed my August 31st goal of having the brakes done, but I'm on vacation this week, so I expect to be finished before I have to go back to work.

Mid Week Update

I really got to thinking about it last night, and maybe getting the shed was a little premature. I mean, the plan was to get brakes and wheels on the truck, and then start worrying about the body. The opportune time to work on mechanical systems (engine, suspension, etc) is when the body is removed. So, the shed wouldn't be really necessary until I get brakes and wheels on (goal: by the end of August.) So maybe I was a few weeks early. It might set my goal back a bit. But now, what's done is done, and I've got to finish the shed and get it out of the garage!

I've also bid on a gas tank on ebay. It might not work, as it's for a '72, but it looks as though it could be modified to fit. I figure it's worth a shot, for the price, and if not, I can get my money back out of it and the Sumter Auto Swap.

I've had some title issues. I have a "salvage-rebuildable" title, but to register it, I need a "Rebuilt" title. To do this, I need to get the truck inspected, show before and after pictures, pictures of the accident, and show receipts for all major components I have replaced. This last one is difficult, since the body panels came off the 2nd parts truck, and of course we got rid of that 9 years ago. I did, recently, find the title for the parts truck, so I think I can use that. Now, just for fun, do I put the truck in bare minimum legal condition, get it inspected and back on the road, or actually keep it in the garage and finish?

Oh, be sure to check out the Facebook albums I've linked this page to, over on the right side of the page.

August 10, 2008

Whis weekend was really, really busy. Throughout the previous week, I'm making the most of my time in voluntary exile by hitting the auto parts stores to scrounge up the remaining brake parts. Given the nature of my location, I still had to come back to Sanford for a few finishing touches. I do, now, have all of the parts necessary to put the system back together. I still need to pick up some clips to hold the steel lines on.

Last weekend, I had a brilliant idea. No, seriously, this isn't one of my "brilliant ideas," this was actually a GOOD idea. I decided to buy a shed! I can put all the parts currently sitting in the bed of the truck, plus the gangbox, plus any parts I have yet to take off into the shed! Not only that, I can put my lawn tools in the shed and use the space gained to build a workbench! The hard part was convincing my landlord to let me put one in. I had to go with a really small one, a 6' x 8', to convince them to let me have one, but it's certainly better than no shed at all!

A great deal of Saturday morning (after going to Napa) involved the procurement and assembly of the shed. Mike and I got the floor frame together and Erik did a lot of heckling, but we stopped because Mike and I had a BBQ to go to. The shed, conveniently fitting inside the garage, will have to wait until next weekend.

Back to the subject at hand, the truck. That blasted anchor pin that I couldn't remove last weekend? The one I need to pull to replace the last wheel cylinder to finish the right front brake? I borrowed a rather hefty Dewalt electric impact wrench with a real set of impact sockets from work. That failed. Tried putting the open end wrench I borrowed on it, with a jack underneath. I stopped because I'm worried that we might irreparably damage the bolt by rounding it off or something before we get it out. I bought a can of PB blaster, and hopefully Mike will soak it down and beat it with a hammer every night. That might be enough.

August 3rd, 2008

With the absence of necassary tools to remove that stubborn anchor pin, I was forced to switch gears a little to keep the progress moving. There's not much left of the old brake system by now, except the steel brake lines, so guess what came out next. There's a lot of dirt and orange sand mixed with grease on the underside. It looks as though there may have been a few leaks both up front at the engine and in the rear at the differential. Add that to the flaking rust spreading in different places o the underside and you get a regular rainstorm of grit falling on your face while you're trying to work underneath.

The rear hose connects to the main steel line coming front the front at a support for the bed. Someone in the past decided it was too much trouble to access the hose, so they cut out part of the support and peeled it back. I straightened it as much as I could and managed to fight all of the lines off the truck and into the driveway. I'll pick up a new rear hose this week.

August 2nd, 2008

Today was the first real day of progress in a long time. The day started with a dismantled front left brake and an untouched front right brake. First thing I did was reassemble the one. I pulled the other drum off, of course, as a reference. The reassembly went rather smoothly once I got rolling with it. I had to clean and re-use some old components, mainly levers and arms and such.



At the flip of a coin, Mike and I decided to work on the wheel hubs. The front left had already been separated from the drum with the proper application of brute force some weeks previous. The inner bearing seemed fine, but the outer bearing race had some pitting. I really have no idea how this happened. I had already purchased a new bearing/race assembly, so it was a simple matter to install that. Or so I thought. I was able to drive in the new race flush with the outer rim of the hub, but tapping around the edges with a hammer on a screwdriver was a bit to subtle to drive it all the way in. I muddled around the garage a bit, looking for some other solution. I needed something about the same size as the old bearing to drive in, to apply somewhat equal pressure all the way around. After a few laps around, I came upon the solution, right there on my workbench! I simply used the old race to drive in the new, and then drove the old back out. Then it was a simple matter to drop the hub back in the wheel and call it done.


Moving on to the second hub, it was still rather firmly attached to the brake drum. I figured it was simply a matter of applying the proper brute force, as mentioned in the previous example. Not so, says the truck. This drum/hub assembly differed from the other. There were three pins driven through to hold it together that the other side lacked. We only noticed this after pounding repeatedly on the hub, trying to drive it free, and the drum showed signs of deformation. We ground, we chiseled, we ground some more, we beat it some more, and we were successful! The remains of th pins were simply ground flush with the hub flange, rather than us attempting to drive them all the way out. Came out rather well.

The bearings in this second hub checked out fine, so I reassembled it and moved onto the last remaining old brake. The shoes and hardware came off without a hitch. The anchor pin (the nut in the middle of the top in the picture) was removed from the other wheel by, again, brute force. The same approach was also taken to this bolt, which was undoubtedly last tightened over 40 years ago by someone at GM. Unfortunately, perhaps due to a lack of application of penetrating oil beforehand, or chaos theory, or just plain dumb luck, this one would not come loose. I broke my ½" breaker bar (using a cheater) where the head joins the shaft. I then proceeded to break Erik's ½" Craftsman breaker bar by twisting the square end off. I need to get this bolt off, as it holds the (leaking) cylinder on. The cylinder can't be rebuilt in place, as there are raised portions of the backer plate on either end of the cylinder which would prevent me from removing the internals.

The next step, once this final brake is rebuilt, is to replace all the old steel and rubber lines.




This image has been reproduced without permission from the Haynes Repair Manual for the Chevrolet Camaro, 1982-1992 models. The parts are nearly identical.

Six Months of Brakes

Once the truck was up on blocks, I decided to do the brakes, starting with the left rear. I had always suspected foul play in this one, as a previous post had mentioned, because the truck always used to pull to the right when the brakes were applied. The greater the pressure applied on the brakes, the greater the pull. Slamming on the brakes once had actually caused my truck to lurch off the road on two wheels once. Ah, memories.

I'd post a picture of the brake drum of the offending wheel, but I gave it to a scrap guy before I thought of that. I'll attempt to describe to you this surprising feat of things wearing out and breaking. Imagine a brake drum as a short, heavy pot. This pot slides over the rest of the brake mechanism, bottom side away from the car. The wheel then mounts up against the bottom of this pot. Get the picture? The car stops when the brake mechanism inside the pot (or drum) applies pressure to the inner wall of the rim of the drum. The friction is what slows the car.

Now imagine what it would look like if the sides of the pot were to break loose from the bottom. You would only have the flat bottom and the ring like piece that was the sides. Now imagine this side piece cracked across in one place, to form a tightly closed C shape. That's pretty much what happened. This C shaped ring was forced by the brake mechanism to open up (making the crack wider) until it was bigger around than the flat bottom it broke off from. It then dropped down over that flat bottom until it was no longer in contact with the mechanism, and then it clamped down tightly as the C tried to close back into a ring.

The end result was a very odd looking brake drum. It took me a while to figure out why it looked like it did. This drum was removed and disposed of. I'd like to backtrack for a moment to my first experience with drum brakes. The left rear brake on my Camaro was leaking fluid some years ago. My dad, with his years of experience with cars, took one look at it, and then proceeded to remove all of the components of the mechanism with surprising speed. I don't remember what was said at this point, but whatever it was irritated my father to the point where he went back inside, leaving me with a pile of levers and springs and things and no clue how to assemble them, since I wasn't the one that took it apart. Between my Haynes manual, Nick's dad, and taking the other wheel off to look, I learned the hard way how they go together.

When I pulled the rear brake drums off the truck I was surprised to see that, despite a 25 year difference between the cars, the brakes were virtually identical. I had both drums off at the same time, experience, and no book. I did manage to remove all the hardware and replace it all, replacing the old springs and, well, a piece I lost. The springs and levers and things and brake shoes (the part that rubs on the inside of the drum) all go on at the same time.

Update

All right, so I suppose I'm running a little behind on the updates. But, I'm running way behind on progress, too.

I'll start by explaining the photograph posted in early October. Sparing the sob story of how I got there, I've rented a house in Sanford, complete with two car garage. It took some time, but I've gotten everything to fit in there and even have a little room left over to work. Renting the house, of course, was a lot easier than getting the truck there. My *ahem* brilliant plan of insuring, registering, and driving the truck the 18 miles crashed and burned spectacularly. I'll save that for later.


ON THE MOVE
I moved in at the beginning of October, and the truck got here from Jen's a few weeks later. She has been complaining for months about a rectangle in her back yard where there is no grass. I have not yet been able to convince her that it doesn't exist, but eventually the summer rains will take care of that.

This time to move it I rented a car hauler from U-haul. Despite the idea mentioned above about driving it, once I decided to tow it, there was no sense in taking a chance with the old tires by leaving them on the ground. A few cans of fix-a-flat got the tires up enough to get the truck out of the backyard, after taking the fence back down and using all but 4" of space between J's house and the neighbor's A/C unit. I hauled the thing to my house with my new'07 Toyota Tacoma with the V-6 towing package and a 6,500 reese hitch. Just for safety, I stuck to back roads and never went more than 35. Hayden was following me just in case. One never knows what *might* happen.

DETIREMENT AND THAT'S THE BRAKES
This brings us up to speed to the above photograph. I cannot tell you how excited I was to finally have a garage! After getting a few things arranged in there, a plan for how to proceed came forth- get new tires so I can roll it out once in a while. I had the old tires pulled off the rims at a nearby shop and left them outside my house by the curb for our city's Cleanup day. They didn't come on the appointed day, so I moved them back up by the house to await the next trash day. They mysteriously disappeared the next Saturday. I began wire brushing the rims and have discovered a dilemma- what color should they be? I really like the look of the black rims with the chrome rings, But now the truck will have white bumpers, so they won't match. Chrome rims aren't in the budget right now. I decided to just prime them and figure it out later. If you have any suggestions, please feel free to comment on this post.

Now that the truck was up on blocks in the garage, it came to my attention that the brakes needed work, and now would be an opportune time to do that. Now, even when I was driving the truck every day (back in the late '90's) I was having problems with the brakes. The truck pulled to the right every time I stepped on them, and the harder I braked, the harder it pulled. Back then I eventually decided that the left rear brake wasn't working. Also back then the right front drum actually broke apart on me coming down the highway. In modern times, I decided that I would replace all the drums. The afore mentioned left rear was sporting not only a broken drum, but a seized cylinder. All right, new drums and cylinders all around. Might was well do the shoes and hardware, too. In removing the seized cylinder, I twisted the steel brake line. New brake lines. I opened the master cylinder and it was dry and rusted badly inside. All right, whole new brake system from one end to the other. Might was well do it now. It was at this point I experienced another delay.


ADDING YEARS TO THE PROJECT
This blog is not the venue for my opinions on things very far outside my truck. Three weeks after I moved into my house, my company decided to move me to a 2 year project in south Florida, 5 hours away from home. This was after I had been told that I was to be in the office for a few years. This means the obvious destruction of my goal mentioned in the first post of having it done by spring of '09. I am not happy about it. Now, I come back up most weekends, and many times, I don't even get to work on the truck. I have been working on the brakes for the better part of six months now, so it's hard to give a timeline of what happened when. Immediately after having moved to south Florida, my truck was broken into and my camera stolen, which explains the general lack of pictures in this post. (No, I haven't bought a new one yet.) My efforts to get transferred out of that hell-hole have failed. So much for progress. I also had to drop out of the welding class I was taking at the local community college.

In my next post I will attempt to recount how working on the brakes has gone.