[Second Series]

I haven’t done much, but I did clear out some junk from the back and set a bench seat from a mini van behind the front seats. My son likes to sit in his truck. We sit in there and eat Hazelnuts from our tree and throw the shells through the hole in the floor. Our cat will come over and when I open the door, she jumps in and hangs out with us. My son can shift between 2nd and 3rd, although his feet don’t reach the pedals. He seems to be driving this project as he has requested that I open the passenger window. I’m still fighting with the screws to get in there. I do run the engine on the weekends if we have time, it usually fires right up when I prime the carb. Awhile ago I fixed the parking brake.
The 1955 second series suburban has a horizontal hand lever under the dash to the left of the steering wheel. This setup was used for many years, I used to have a ’62 panel with the same type, but that one never worked. The hand lever is connected to a rod with a clevis on the other end attached to a bell crank. I adjusted the front Clevis as much as It would and still have room to move. The end of the threaded shaft will bind with the crank if the gap is too small. The bell crank is connected to a cable, that goes through a hole in the cross member, to a pulley. The pulley must be disassembled to replace the cable, I removed the pulley bracket from the frame. The end of the cable has a ball that connects to a lever. The rear brake cables attach to the lever by clevis. I adjusted these as much as I could and still have room to move. The lever goes through a slot in a bracket. The slot determines the ultimate end points for lever movement. The replacement front cable is the correct length, but the threaded shaft is too long. With the brakes released, the lever rests at the end of the slot and the hand lever must be pulled as far as possible, but the brakes don’t seem to hold. My solution was to cut the threaded shaft to match the length of the old cable. I readjusted at the clevises and now the lever sits in the middle of the slot. The hand lever still doesn’t “feel” right. It is stiff and only clicks once, but the brakes hold. I personally prefer the other style of brake lever that mounts to the right of the transmission and comes up through the floor. My ’47 second series 1 ton originally had the floor lever going to a cable to the rear drums, but that had been removed when I got it. I put in a transmission from a dump truck that had the parking brake on the rear of the transmission. That lever feels right and works every time. There is a small amount of movement after I set it, I suppose from the u-joints settling.