I have had my truck for the better part of ten years now and have done almost everything drive train wise in it but within the last 3 years it hasn't been my daily driver anymore and kinda just became a beater/work truck. the thing is essentially falling apart. its easier to mention what works right than what doesn't. i finally decided it was time to actually have rear brakes again, i went to pull the line off the wheel cylinder and it broke so i figured its time to put some work into this thing and i am gonna redo all the lines and brakes and start fresh. I ran into an odd one though, my splitter on my rear hose has 3/8-24 thread on both sides of the block instead of the normal ford dumbness of having 3/8-24 on the driver side and 7/16-20 on the other. the clips holding the hose in and the line running to the right rear tire look stock so did ford actually do a normal hose at one point or did someone before me think ford was dumb and found a brake hose with both fittings the same size.

 

On both my '81 and '86, both fittings are the same size. Both had factory lines yet.

 

ok, then why are all the aftermarket hoses using the splitter style of the newer trucks with the mixed fitting sizes?

 

When I worked in parts, I had a lot of customers complain about this. I think it depends on what brand you get. Some may be more universal to fit a wider range of trucks.

I would rather have the correct hose, whether it be with two different fittings or the same. Doesn't matter to me as the line usually needs to be cut to get the correct length, then fittings can be swapped to the correct ones. I also have a stockpile of fittings from when parting out trucks. It pays to save them.

 

My 81 has the different-sized fittings, I think I just installed a reducer in the big hole.

 

yeah i used the adapter in the larger port on the new hose, I got one of the 8 inch line fitting adapters for up at the splitter. made up all my lines from the splitter back to the hose and put everything together on the driver side. had a dumb moment and could not remember which shoe went where, couldn't remember if the shoe with less material went toward the front of the vehicle or toward the rear.

 

Shoe with less lining goes to the front.

 

yeah i remembered then, just couldn't believe i had to think about something like that before i did it. i guess after not really touching this thing in 3 years its taking me a bit for it to come back to me. I find it funny now that people are restoring these trucks and looking at them as classics. i bought it 10 years ago and never planned on keeping it long and after almost ten years and getting more than my fair share of use out of it I pretty much had wrote the thing off and was gonna scrap it but my 4 year old fell in love with it and wont let me get rid of it. then i stopped at the gas station one day after hauling a load of scrap and a teenager started commenting on it and liked it. made me think maybe i should save this old thing. so with that i guess i am back to this forum and will start posting here like i did years ago and maybe even do some build threads and projects.