Today's objective, while I was at work and had access to the lathe and the milling machine, was to fabricate the parts for the (equalizer) Z-bar.

Making the arms.












Original Z-bar on the left. Arms (temporarily) slid onto the DOM (Drawn Over Mandrel) seamless tubing on the right --very thick wall.



I had to bore out the I.D. of the tube, in the lathe, in order for the spherical bearings to fit into the ends of the tube. The bore is shouldered at each end so the bearings can't just freely slide along the entire span inside.





The arms still have to be welded to the tube but, this is the basic configuration of what it will look like.

 

Just in case you're still going to use the 3/4" felt washers on either side of that Z-bar, they were part number 358979-S. The companies below show 2 or more in stock.


xHaven Ford

(620) 465-2252




xMorlan-Shell Ford

417-256-3193





xDon'S Truck Sales

3196352751





xHarbin Motor Company, Inc. (shows 25 of them)

256-574-1819

 

Those bearings in the pedal brackets must make it like a paddle shift in comparison to those oem nylon POS bushings.

 

That's the hope here. The clutch action will hopefully be much more precise and should be many times smoother than with the antiquated factory pedal/linkage setup.

 

Frame pivot bracket for the Z-bar with its stock nylon bushing in place.



Spherical bearing installed in place of the nylon bushing.



.....I'll have to figure out a means to retain the spherical bearing to the stud, since the width of the bearing covers the groove where the original C-clip went to retain the old nylon bushing.










.....working on the linkage rods. I got a set of stainless steel, PTFE lined, Heim joints and some 6061-T6 solid aluminum rods (light weight, strong and won't rust). The rods are designed specifically for clutch linkage applications. Since the Heim joints are made of stainless steel, they won't rust or corrode either. The PTFE liners in the Heim joints are self-lubricating and should also help isolate noise and vibration from being transmitted through the linkages and into the cab.




I'll have to cut the rods to length and rethread one end of them but, these are the basic parts that will make up the components for the new and improved mechanical clutch linkage setup for the '72 F100 they'll be going in.

 

Could you machine down the inner race of the bearing so that the c-clip slot is visible?

 

The inner portion of the spherical bearing pivots. If I tried to machine it down, as soon as the tool bit hit it, it would do this and that would be no good. Plus, I prefer not to cut on the bearings.



If the pivot pin was bolted into the frame bracket, it would be a simple matter of unbolting it, putting the pin in the lathe and trim this shoulder back a few thousands (where the awl is pointing), to expose the retaining clip groove, when the spherical bearing is installed.



Naturally, the solution isn't that simple since the pin is splined and pressed into the bracket. If the pin was pressed out and machined, it would never be as tight as it is now when pressing it back into the frame bracket --short of having to weld the pin to the back side.



One possibility is to drill and tap the center of the pin for a short pan head Allen screw, with an arbor shim under the head, to retain the spherical bearing on the pin.



Another possible solution may be to press the existing pin out, take a pivot pin that would normally screw into the side of the engine block, machine the shoulders on it and bolt it into the bracket.

 

If the inner part of the bearing doesn't have to move, you could apply Green Locktite (Bearing & Sleeve retainer) onto the shaft and install the bearing. Once it cures (overnight?) it will stay there. You will have to heat it with high heat to remove it

 

The bottom two of the pics I grabbed was my 1st thought. Ford basic number 7A535. But they are way too long. A lot of machining then rethreading. So I came up with a idea from left field. Note in the upper pic the splined end is poking past the bracket about the same amount you need the clip groove to be farther away from the bracket. Like the pin just needs to be shifted back out of the bracket a bit. So if you have the means, consider pressing the pin back out the amount you need to slide the clip on. Then weld the pin on both sides of the bracket.

 

I decided rather than cutting/modifying on a stock frame pivot bracket that there's nothing wrong with, I would try, instead, to just fabricated a new frame bracket from scratch.

The raw materials: Angle iron, 1/4" thick gussets and a 1.00" diameter piece of shaft stock.







The start of turning the 1.00" shaft down to 5/8" where the spherical bearing will go.

 

Cool stuff Steve, I'm digging this thread..

 

Thanks, Gavin. It would probably help matters tremendously if I actually had any sort of formal machining instruction. I don't. It's mostly a matter of trying things and figuring out what works and what doesn't or, what to do and what not to do. The lathe and the milling machine are strictly manual and don't have any CNC digital readout displays on them either so, that makes repeatability more difficult --at least for me anyway.

This is a good example of testing things on a scrap piece (the short piece of DOM tube off to the right --in photos below) before milling on the actual tube itself. I wanted to be sure I could transfer what I had in my mind to the tube and make it come out right before cutting on the piece of tubing that would actually be used for the Z-bar. At $31 bucks and some change for a 12" piece of DOM tubing, you don't want any "uh-oh's".

 

You may have already thought of this but if not......Keep in mind that as the engine and/or frame twists under torque, the Zbar will tilt and the length between the pivot points will increase. It can not be firmly mounted on both sides. The stock nylon bushings are actually a pretty elegant solution to this problem as they both twist and slide.

 

I think Steve already considered that. Note the top pic in post #22 and how the bearings can move.

 

The original design allows the the zbar to move in three ways: rotate(actuate the clutch), tilt(allows for different angles between frame and engine) and move laterally(the nylon bushing can float in and out in the bore of the zbar).

The last one is necessary because the engine bracket and frame bracket going to get further apart as the angle of the zbar increases.

At least it seems to me??? I'm not an engineer!