Friday night I got to work on the truck again. I added the high pressure line that goes from the steering box to the hydroboost, installed the flow control switch in the low pressure side of the booster and ran the return hose back to the power steering pump. At last the steering brake booster system was closed up!
With the belt off I filled the reservoir and used my drill to spin the pump to prime things. The front axle was up on jack stands from when I replaced the solenoid so I was able to turn the column by grabbing the shaft with my right hand while spinning the pump with the drill in my left hand. I was able to prime the system without ever sucking in any air, it worked great!
I scrounged around and found my gallon of brake fluid and prepared to fill the master cylinder. When I pulled the cap and looked in I could see beads of hydraulic fluid floating on what was left of the brake fluid. Great they mixed the fluids on this part of the system too!
repeat
So... now I need to replace the master cylinder and the flex hoses that are near it. I don't think any hydraulic fluid made it down to the calipers. They make several different masters so I checked and this one uses a 1.75 inch bore:
I did not have a chance to source the parts yet to fix that problem yet.
So this concludes the saga of the frustrating vacation. I really (REALLY) thought that I would be able to have the thing almost put back together at the end of a week of vacation. Instead I finished two tasks that I would have assumed would have taken less than two hours combined.
FOOTNOTE:
Thanksgiving was great, I spent it with two of my brothers and my sister-in-law. We had a great meal and a great visit. This afternoon I went out and started poking around with running down a wire and hooked up power to do some testing. As I tested various circuits I hit the starter and it spun, so I decided to go ahead and fire it up. I had to bypass the missing oil cooler and had to prime it but it fired and sounded as good as I remembered. That really gave me a much better outlook on things.
Happy (late) Thanksgiving everyone!
-Richard