Thanks, Joey!

 

Brake System Rebuild - Day I & II

Sigh. Moral is low in the F100 camp.

After getting the clutch fixed the truck was ready to drive, and I quickly realized how bad the brakes were. The master cylinder was also leaking through the push-rod into the cab every time you pumped the brakes. I decided, yesterday, that I was going to replace the master cylinder, as the truck came with a new one that the previous owner never installed.



That went fairly well. I bled the master cylinder and all was good....until I tried to bleed the rest of the system. Every single nipple was rusted and stripped. This meant I had to disassemble the ENTIRE brake system and install new wheel cylinders on all four corners. I instantly knew this was going to be a massive undertaking because I would assuredly be replacing other bits while I was in that deep.

The fronts were a thing I'd never seen before. I had to disassemble the wheel bearing/spindle to get the drum off. Neat? What I found, inside, came as no surprise. It was dirty, rusty, and old.



I ended up having to reuse all the hardware and shoes, as no one in town had replacement parts. I also twisted/snapped the pass-side hard-line at the fitting into the hose. It was just too far gone to save. After two days of work I had the front done, minus the hard-line that I'll have to rebuild.

A buddy came over and had started to help me with the rear. They were far worse off than the fronts. No shoe pad left, missing hardware bits, tons of dirt and rust, and the driver's side hard-line fell off when we were trying to pull the drum. It was a sight to behold. I placed my online order with Advance Auto and got most of the bits I need. They didn't have one of the rear self-adjusting kits, so I'll have to source that elsewhere. I'll also be making the hard-line from scratch for the rear that broke.

Tomorrow is my birthday (St. Patrick's Day) so I wont be able to finish the brakes up until later in the week. The fuel tank will be done, so I'll need to setup that system as well. Hopefully I can get everything squared away by the end of next weekend and be driving this truck!

 

Oh, I almost forgot. Nubs got his second eye back, over the weekend.

One of my buddies, who's a huge International Scout guy, threatened to install an old scout headlamp. I couldn't let that happen...

 

New Process finished my fuel tank. Here she is all purdy, rust free, and non-smelly.

 

Got the rear drums buttoned up last night. Took me a few hours to clean everything up and reassemble.



Tonight, I tried to make a replacement rear line for the driver's side. I'm not a brake-line professional...so that didn't work out. I noticed the rear hose was completely shot so tried to take it out of the truck. No luck. It's rusted on completely. I'll probably have to replace all the hard-line in the truck, at this rate. I'll cut the hard-line right before the hose and replace the rear hose tomorrow. I'll also give www.inlinetube.com a call and see if they can send me all the stainless steel for the truck. I may try to go ahead with the dual reservoir swap.

 

nice progress! things are shaping up quickly and once it is running you can always keep fixing things while you drive it...the best of both worlds

Adam

 

Nearly have the brakes done. Decided to just make my own temp lines until I can get some stainless ordered. I only see one small leak in the rear that I may have to redo. The system bled fine but still have a very spongy pedal. I'll go through and bleed again tomorrow.

Really exciting! Should be driving this weekend if all works out.

 

It's been a few weeks since I last touched the truck. I finished replacing the rotten brake lines and couldn't get the master cylinder to bleed correctly. I let it sit for a week or two and then bought a replacement master from Autozone. That master also didn't work. Had Autozone replace it with another reman and that one finally worked. It worked so well, in fact, that it blew the only remaining original line. Exploded. BOOM. It was impressive and disheartening all at the same time. Imagine if that had happened while on the road?

Fast forward to today. I have 12 feet of new line and a few more bottle of fluid ready to go. I'm going to make a new run from the front to the back and that will completely finish the brake rebuild.

I also ordered the bits to to get the fuel tank in the cab. Thanks Dennis Carpenter crew! Those should be here later this week or next week.

 

Finally got the stupid brake line off the truck. What a disaster.