Project Petey

[mormetl]

Nice progress Jamie! I like your paint stand, you must have spent a fortune on that thing!! Definitely staying tuned to see how that Aussie works out for you. Keep up the good work and look forward to a full weekend report on Sunday. Later.

[Red_SC]

Originally Posted by mormetl

I like your paint stand, you must have spent a fortune on that thing!!

Naw man- you just have to have friends like John- it belongs to him!

[mormetl]

Originally Posted by Red_SC

Naw man- you just have to have friends like John- it belongs to him!

Lucky Devil !!

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Friday night I poured some boiling water down the front axle tubes to clean them out. This would have worked better had the carrier been out and had the axle been closer to the stove, but it still got a lot of the crud out of there. Then, I put in a new pinion seal like Gary Billings did in his writeup, and put on a new gasket.

Saturday I didn't have all day to work on it, as I worked in the morning and had to go clean up some at the rental house. I did put the front spring packs back together and back on the Scout. For some reason I've always disliked the fact that the front right spring plate is different from the others- it always seemed kinda ghetto to me. So, I put a normal spring plate on the drill press and opened up the holes a little.





With that back together, I slung the whole mess back under the truck. Looks good to have it back under there! Don't worry, Petey doesn't leak quite that bad. We had a hard rain Friday night, and my roof leaks bad, so the puddle is rainwater mixed with the oil that came out of the tcase when I took the front yoke off.





I am going to have to do something different with my steering. John gave me a 4" drop pitman arm, because I need one with a smaller swing. It's way too close to the spring, though, so I'm going to have to find a Wagoneer pitman arm.





I flexed it out a little with a bottle jack just to see how everything was going to move in relation to each other. I need to get an idea how I'm going to do the shocks. Measured at the bumpstop bracket on the frame, the driver side is up 2" and the passenger down 4". As a safety note, this is NOT a safe thing to do when the vehicle is not sitting on it's tires.




Then, I worked on my knuckles some. I started by installing the Sky Manufacturing hi steer arms, using all new hardware. I used a pipe wrench to get the old studs out of the driver side knuckle.





I couldn't find whether anyone used a thread locker on the steering arm studs, but I didn't figure it would hurt anything. Since I may have to get the arms back off at some point, I used blue loctite and put the nuts on as tight as my impact wrench would turn them.

I ended up with an oddball set of flattop knuckles, not the standard Chevy knuckles. This set came out of a half ton International truck, but I have yet to hear of another set like them. They have six studs like a Chevy, not the standard International eight. The odd thing is, the studs are canted like Chevy drum brake knuckles, but they are shaped like Chevy disk brake knuckles, so a caliper has clearance to fit. No problem, the Ebayer I bought them from had already had a set of Chevy caliper stands redrilled to fit the knuckles. I did have to clearance the one knuckle in a couple of places with a die grinder, indicated by the red arrows. The PO had already done the other knuckle.





And painted- looking beautiful in black.

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OK, I've been slack keeping this updated. Things have been so hectic around here that I've barely had time to work on the thing, much less keep the thread updated. I've been taking pics the whole time, so I'll try to update it some.

Next, I got the rear axle ready to go. First, I installed the Aussie Locker and buttoned it back up. I'll reserve a full writeup on that for later, but I will say that it was very painless, even with me taking my time to make sure everything was just right. When I received the kit it was missing a package of small pins and springs. I contacted the company, and they got one to me via Priority Mail right away with no hassle.






Next, I replaced the pinion seal. First, I removed the pinion nut and tapped the yoke off. An impact wrench removed it fairly easily.




Next, I used a small punch to make a small hole in the seal.




Then I put a screw into the hole I made. The screw should be larger than the hole to get a good bite.




Then, the new seal with a very thin layer of permatex on it. It's not nearly as thick as it looks.






Then, just tap the new seal into place. I used a screwdriver down in the groove to make sure I didn't bend the thin metal lip of the seal.




Put the yoke back on and tighten the pinion nut. I used an impact wrench again to put it on. I'm not sure what the torque value should be, but since the Dana 44 doesn't use a crush sleeve it's not quite as critical to get a specific value. For best results you should always use the correct torque values, though.

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Next, I took the old rear shocks loose. They were helper shocks with coilover springs on them.




This is a shot with the rear axle in place with it wearing my former paint stands for tires.




I ordered some 1" spacers from PartsMike to raise my steering arms to clear the springs. I'm glad I ordered the extended height arms to start with, it took both the extra-high arms and the risers to get enough clearance.




I then put in a Wagoneer pitman arm to fix my pitman arm clearance problem. It's a little high now, but I think I can make it work. I ordered a reamer to open it up big enough for a standard 1/2 ton TRE, but when I got the pitman arm in I found it had been already reamed out. I'm sure I'll find it useful in the future, though.




Next, I started reassembling the front axle. The Chevy stub shafts are significantly stronger than the old IH stubs.




After installing new joints and putting the shafts in, I put in small bearing spindles from a '75 Chevy.

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After a new set of Timken bearings, Ford hubs and rotor, and Warn Premium locking hubs, the whole thing looked something like this.




Next I made up my new tierod and draglink. I used 1 1/4" x 1/8" tubing from Online Metals and weld-in bungs from Ruff Stuff Specialties.

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Next I started on the shock mounts. I bought Ford shock mounts for an F250, but they were a litter higher than I wanted. I ended up cutting them down, and then cutting a slot out so I could put the same bend into them that they originally had. You can see the difference between the modified mount and the stock mount.

[Jeff Joyce]

what caliper bracket and calipers will you end up using? (in other words, from what vehicle?)

BTW, those rotors and locking hubs sure are purdy!

-Jeff

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The calipers and brackets are off a '75 1/2 ton Chevy truck. The brackets had to be redrilled to fit the oddball flattop knuckles, but normally wouldn't. The knuckles are from some International 1/2 ton truck and have a 'canted' bolt pattern like Chevy drum brake knuckles, but the cut-out in the side to clear a disk brake caliper.

Normally, these are the parts you'd use for the Chevy/Ford conversion:

'75 Chevrolet 1/2 ton:
Flattop knuckles
Small bearing spindles
Bearings and seals
Calipers and brackets
Stub shaft

'79 Ford F150:
Rotors
Inner hub

Locking hubs are the same part for either application.

I'm probably forgetting some parts, but that's the gist of it.

Brake lines are another issue, the best solution that I've found is IH Only North. He can custom make you anything you want, although unfortunately I didn't go that direction. My dad offered to get them made by a friend of his, and I ended up not saving anything and not having as nice lines. He did save me a good deal of money in some other areas, though.