I went and priced some parts at the junkyard. I was quoted $300 without haggling.

This includes the booster, master cylinder, prop valve, spindles, and arms.

The condition of the replacable parts is junk. I would be getting them soley for cores.

Is this a good price? I could probably buy an entire truck for that much and strip what I need off of it. Then junk it.

 

HM: Find yourself a junk truck. '73 - '79 is best generally speaking. You may want to look at a '70 - '72, if you are interested in the rear end, and it has everything else you want (except, of course, it probably won't have disc brakes. They were only an option prior to '73.) Wait for one with the options you want, say, for example, the engine you want to rebuild one day, and/or the transmission set up you want, and use that one for spare parts.
Sell what you don't want or cannot use just like I did, and often, many of us have made our money back.
Good luck!

 

I was very lucky in purchasing my truck...it has 4 wheel disc brakes on it. Not sure from what because I haven't actually checked into it...was just pretty siked I wouldn't have to do the conversion

 

9" disk?

that would be nice to find under the truck.

 

You have a 65 or 66 with twin Ibeam, based on you other posts, right?

I paid $200 for what you are describing. When you say "replaceable parts" what do you mean? I take that to mean calipers and master cylinder. In my case, the calipers turned out to be ok, the master did not look very nice, so I replaced it.

I would ask for some sort of guarantee that the rotors still have some metal left and the power booster works. The prop valve should work of course, and the spindles darn well ought to be OK. The calipers and master are basically core units, but you may get lucky. The core charge is dirt cheap on these items, so don't over pay.

You don't NEED the axels and the radius arms -- you can use your old ones. But, there are folks who prefer to do a swap of the axel and radius arm as a unit. Its a heavy bugger, but doing it that way can save you the trouble of king pins, reaming etc. etc. But there are also folks that encountered compatability problems in 65 and 66 when trying to put the whole axel/radius/spindle unit on from later trucks. I do not know why that occured for them.

It is completely true that patiently or dilligently waiting/finding a parts truck will save you BUCKS. But you will need a place to store it, perhaps also need the ability to go get it etc. You have PS already (from different post) -- so you don't really need to worry about that. And your 302 is no slouch of an engine, assuming its OK. So your parts truck might not be contributing much except the brakes. Transporting, messing around with, storing and then finally disposing of a parts truck can be a hassle.

Finally, HAVE THEM THROW IN THE BRAKE LIGHT SWITCH, BRAKE HOSE BRACKETS OFF THE FRAME AND IF POSSIBLE THE BRAKE PEDAL AS WELL!!!

When it comes time to work out the brake lights and brake lines, you'll know why I said this. If you can talk em into it, get the axels too.

later....

 

If you have a place to park another truck, go that route. The Junk Yard will nickel and dime you to death. Consider that eventually you will want to do power steering , fuel tank in the back and wider rear brakes. Look for a 79 with the options you need and move your sheet metal. Seems like a huge project at first, but is actually easier than doing these improvement one at a time. Cheaper too!