Once again no updates on the truck, but I have been very busy. We decided that we were going to attend the Hot Rod Power Tour with my dad's car and my buddies 54 Ford with a cummins. I got the car about 4 weeks ahead of the departure date to do some prep work that my dad did not make time to do over the winter. I had a lot on the list....some small things, some larger things, and some things that didn't go as planned. First up was brakes, the car since he put it together has never had good brakes. After some research I learned that it needed around 18" of vacuum to run power brakes, so I bought a gauge and tested it. The car had 10". I decided the way to fix this was to replace the power brakes with a manual master cylinder after watching them do exactly this on Hot Rod Garage. At the same time I removed the drum brakes and installed discs off a 1995 Camaro on the rear axle (thank you GM for not changing the housing ends). This whole process took way longer than it should have, and it's still not completely done...but it was better than what it had. After 6-7 calls to the Wilwood tech help line, we think we have the remaining problem attributed to the DOT5 brake fluid that dad used in the car. That'll get flushed out and replaced with DOT3 as soon as I feel like working on brakes again....so that might be a little while. DOT5 compresses, whereas DOT3 does not, leaving you with a squishy brake pedal which does nothing for your confidence that your car will actually stop in a panic situation.
On to the pics...
Out with the old:
In with the new, much cleaner:
Rear discs:
Horns in case I couldn't stop:
Driving 3000 miles, better not chance it without a spare. Decided why not use a space-saver spare from a 2002 Camaro, this was checking the fitment:
And there has been a banging sound in the front for a little while now that we hadn't been able to chase down. I found it, ball joint was loose in the control arm. This should hold it until he gets some new control arms!
Some new fan shroud mounts:
And radiator overflow/recovery tank:
And lastly installed the tailpipes:
This was completed about 7pm Friday night. 8am the next morning was departure time for Madison, WI.