Got the actual brake equipment installed today. Tuesday (the shop's closed tomorrow and Monday, damnit) I"ll be rigging the ebrake and removing the LSPV and return line. Anyway, I wasn't happy with how TSM's brackets have the caliper positioned. With Add-A-Leafs like I've got, the bottom caliper pin will not clear the leaf spring for installation. I had to seperate the axle from the spring one side at a time and raise the axle (the truck's sitting on jackstands holding the frame) so that I could get the bottom pin onto the bracket. Major pain in the ASS. I'm not looking forward to the first time I've got to change out the pads. I'm thinking of having a different set of brackets made by the local machine shop that'll angle the caliper more so that say you're looking at the left wheel, it'll be sitting at about the 1:30 position instead of the 3:00 position that it's sitting at now. Same for the right side of course.
According to TSM's instructions, you have to remove the caliper from the bracket to bleed it. This isn't true, as the bleeder orifice is plumbed into the cylinder at what is right now the absolute top (and will still be the top if I rotate the calipers forward a bit). The ebrake bracket makes the bleeder impossible to reach when the caliper is installed if you don't have an offset wrench, like these:
So far though, it's all coming together. Had a few quirks to figure out, but I'm gettin there. I picked up some various rigging supplies from West Marine (heavy duty stuff, it all cost me just under 100 bucks) to rig up the ebrake cable with. My plan is to link the two cables that connect to the calipers together, and have them pulled taut by the cable coming off the handle via a small snatch block. This will allow the caliper cables to be drawn from slightly different locations on the cables to account for variations in pad wear. The caliper cables will be spliced together with swages that are able to withstand 1500 (yes, 3/4 ton) lbs of stress before coming undone. If anyone's curious, my snatch block has a working load of 990 lbs. and was also tested to 1500 lbs.
According to TSM's instructions, you have to remove the caliper from the bracket to bleed it. This isn't true, as the bleeder orifice is plumbed into the cylinder at what is right now the absolute top (and will still be the top if I rotate the calipers forward a bit). The ebrake bracket makes the bleeder impossible to reach when the caliper is installed if you don't have an offset wrench, like these:
So far though, it's all coming together. Had a few quirks to figure out, but I'm gettin there. I picked up some various rigging supplies from West Marine (heavy duty stuff, it all cost me just under 100 bucks) to rig up the ebrake cable with. My plan is to link the two cables that connect to the calipers together, and have them pulled taut by the cable coming off the handle via a small snatch block. This will allow the caliper cables to be drawn from slightly different locations on the cables to account for variations in pad wear. The caliper cables will be spliced together with swages that are able to withstand 1500 (yes, 3/4 ton) lbs of stress before coming undone. If anyone's curious, my snatch block has a working load of 990 lbs. and was also tested to 1500 lbs.