this is mostly for the benefit of those who were at the BBQ and have a
bit of background on my project. for those out of the loop, I'm in the
midst of swapping a D60 rear (which may actually be a Sterling 10.25")
and D44HD front under my '98 CC.
-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-x-
so guess what I didn't come back from Olean with. you get two guesses
and the first doesn't count.
that's right, Brakes!
the guy at the counter got bad info for his supplier for one of them,
and had the exact same thing in hand that I looked at at Auto Zone:
piston side only. The other guy he talked to supposedly knew exactly
what I was talking about, and has the parts, but the hadn't yet
arrived. There was also one truck in the lot that seemed to have the
right brakes on it, but I could only feel behind the wheels to see that
it was a twin piston setup, not *see* that is was the correct twin
piston setup, since the suspension was fully compressed under the
weight of the Nissan on top of the cab. The fact that it had the
smaller hubs makes me wonder if it might have smaller brakes - though I
don't think that was an option when looking up brakes for my axle, and
this was a late 70s/ early 80s F250. So even if his supplier is
talking out of his ass, there should be some parts in the yard to
complete my order, which he's going to UPS up here to Jon's hopefully
tomorrow, and then it'll be here I guess friday? damn....
I also found another style of twin piston caliper, marked as having
come from an '87 Ford, that uses the same style retainer, and looks
like very similar pistons, but is one cast piece like a caliper should
be =) I'm tempted to go pick one up to see if it is the right piece,
but hopefully I'll have a nearly complete '78 setup the end of this
week, and then I won't have to worry about that.
I also had to wait while they torched off the coil buckets - after
saying "whoops we don't have those" followed by me finding some
suitable ones of a twisted up 70s 2wd Ford. Seems like a pretty
fawking incompetent operation down there to me. At least they had the
right driveshaft right away....
I just finished taking the rivets out of the coil buckets, and getting
the hunks of frame off them, and I seem to have burned the piss out of
my left forearm with the grinding sparks. I wonder if there was some
weird stuff on there, since I've never really been bothered by grinding
in short sleeves before.... I guess those leather sleeves are for more
than just looks =)
So now I'm left with fabbing my trans mount crossmember, deciding where
I want my coil buckets, and fabbing up their mount. I don't want to do
anything to the axle until I know I've got brakes for it, so coil and
shock mounts on there will have to wait, and I don't want to start on
the back until the front is at least nearly done, so anything back
there is out too.
waiting on:
front brake calipers
need:
front coils
link material (1.75 or 2" x 1/4" wall DOM) and appropriate heim joints
tires
driveshaft work
shocks
todo:
build & mount trans crossmember
mount front coil buckets
decide on amount of lift (bucket position, spring height/ hangar
location, shackle length)
design steering drag link
-- Mike Maskalans <http://mike.tepidcola.com/dodge/> '84 RamCharger Daily Driver '98 Dakota under the knife mobile.612.618.4652 home.585.935.7129 fax.360.364.3930
This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sun Aug 01 2004 - 00:46:15 EDT