Project Blind Confidence (1 Viewer)

[bfBird]

The next task was was to tackle the leaky clutch master. I thought it could be saved, but cylinder is scored so ordered a new Aisin.

Since I'm replacing the clutch master, I decided I'd fix the firewall as well. I pulled the pedal box and steering wheel to get to the back of the firewall. I was hoping to drive it for a little while before having to take it all apart, but I should have just taken it all out when I did the floors. It will give me a chance to clean all of the brackets and hardware up as well.

 

[bfBird]

I had a can of freeborn red that came with the car. Here's a pic before and after a light sand. A quick paint of the pedals, column, and pedal box then reassembly. It's looking much better. I should probably clean up the rest of the dust and dirt at some point.

 

[bfBird]

Once the clutch was sorted I was a horn away from being ready for inspection. I had to run a jumper wire over the rag joint to get connectivity to the horn buttons. It worked great after a little contact cleaner on the horn buttons. I couldn't live with the PO mod. My wheel needs some TLC though. I'll add that to the list. Inspection went well and I'm all legal.

After a while doing the rust repair/paint and being out of service, I took the 40 out for a ride. It was doing really well until I started to lose power. The engine was running fine, but didn't have any get up and go. I drove for about a 1/2 mile to somewhere I could park and takea look. Brakes were locked up tight and fronts were smoking a bit.

With a quick search I've either got a stuck caliper, bad brake hose, or my booster is adjusted too far out. It's definitely both sides on the front so that likely rules out a single caliper, but it could still be the main hose or booster.

Luckily, the brake pedal came back after ~45 minutes. I was picking up my daughter from dance class, and she was a really good sport about the whole thing.

Here are a few pics from being out and about.

 

[bfBird]

After a little back and forth with the pedal in the garage, my pedal is sticking during retract. I painted the booster when I had it off so I'm wondering if I got some overspray on the shaft that's keeping things from releasing freely. I decided to measure the booster stick out and clean up the overspray. The sickout was close, but shouldn't have been contacting when retracted. I've had a pretty hard pedal feel so I decided increase the distance a bit. I'm pretty sure I couldn't have changed this distance while it was off because the nut was super stuck. I'm just glad I haven't had to rebleed the brakes.

Everything reassembled and the pedal has some movement now before it builds pressure. It makes for a better feel. I didn't have time to test drive so we'll see.

I've also been cleaning up some other parts. I wish someone would have masked off the Toyota emblem before they painted. It's got a coat of beige and a coat of black on it. I thought it was all torn up and tarnished but some fine sandpaper is getting down to some original shine. Maybe they painted it black to keep it from reflecting then over sprayed it with beige during the repaint?

 

[bfBird]

Test results of booster adjustment..........another "rest period" to let things free up after loosing power. It was in less than 2 miles so it's probably not heat related. I limped to the store, and it was freed up again by the time I was out. I've also noticed a pretty good vibration above 30mph that needs sorting. Again I was able to make it home without incident, but I'm starting to tempt fate.

Disappointed, but I couldn't tell that the pedal was sticking anymore. I seemed to move freely, all the way back so I've started digging into brake lines. All my brake hoses are original 76s and have some wear so it's probably not a bad thing to replace them while I'm on the subject. I did some playing with pumping up the brakes when I got home. I was able release the pressure at the master cylinder when the pedal stiffened which I think rules out the hoses and calipers.

I'm back to the booster. I realized why the pedal felt like it was releasing. It's because the plunger had pulled out of the booster. The booster is still sticking, but spring is just pulling the plunger out. I must have pulled it out trying to get the pedal to release. I pulled off the master cylinder and could see the booster sticking again. It is, and I think I know why. I put some red hydraulic grease on the end of the master cylinder and some of that grease made it's way onto the booster shaft causing it to get caught up.

Cleaned/polished the booster output shaft and everything is smooth again. Fortunately or Unfortunately, I did notice a nice ridge on my passenger rotor. I don't think this is how you're meant to slot rotors. The pad has a matching raised area so it's likely been there for a while. I think I'm in new rotor territory.

 

[bfBird]

Looking at how much needs to come off to get to the rotors, I'm now in the knuckle refresh game. I've got a lot of grease build up around my knuckles, especially on the passenger side so it's probably time. I'm not sure when it was done last. I didn't get any good pics before I started tearing into them. Pulling things off wasn't too bad just dirty. The parts were filthy on the outside and greasy on the inside. The driver side grease was in good shape, but the passenger side was starting to see a mix and some wear on the birfield.

Middle pics are after couple days soaking in degreaser, some wire brushing, a hit with the power washer, and starting the rust work with rust remover and wire brush. I've run out of elbow grease.

I'm still definitely spending too much time on parts people probably won't ever see.

 

[RWBeringer4x4]

I did this when I did my disk brake conversion and every second of it was awful. I feel your pain! I cleaned all the knuckle and steering components and painted them just like you're doing. It took forever to get them clean enough to paint.

 

[bfBird]

I did this when I did my disk brake conversion and every second of it was awful. I feel your pain! I cleaned all the knuckle and steering components and painted them just like you're doing. It took forever to get them clean enough to paint.

The worst has been derusting the dust shields and the hubs. They both have lots of surface area with areas that power tools can't reach.

 

[RWBeringer4x4]

The worst has been derusting the dust shields and the hubs. They both have lots of surface area with areas that power tools can't reach.

Sandpaper and Dremel wire wheels, unfortunately, were what it boiled down to.

 

[bfBird]

Waiting on parts to show up and for the weather to warm up a bit for paint. Luckily there's more I can clean and strip. I started cleaning the balls but decided I might as well go for the whole diff. I was contemplating pulling the diff, but I didn't want to buy new U bolts.

 

[RWBeringer4x4]

This project is heading the exact same route mine did! Just pull the axles and be done with it. Fresh paint on an axle looks nice!

 

[bfBird]

This project is heading the exact same route mine did! Just pull the axles and be done with it. Fresh paint on an axle looks nice!

Anything I should check while the axle shafts are out? I wasn't planning on pulling the center section out if it wasn't mandatory.

 

[RWBeringer4x4]

Anything I should check while the axle shafts are out? I wasn't planning on pulling the center section out if it wasn't mandatory.

theres not really much to check without pulling the center section out! Just look for any real apparent twist or damage to the splines, but there’s not a whole lot going on between the knuckles and the diff - so if the shaft looks good that’s about all you’ll know.

I wound up pulling the center section to reseal it - I replaced the pinion seal and the axle seal, and inspected the gears to make sure nothing was obviously damaged or developing a weird wear pattern. I didn’t do the yellow grease/contact paint stuff but I reset all the bearing preloads. That’s a little risky since you probably have a shimmed spacer on the pinion (not a crush spacer). I had to carefully file a few thousands off my shim to get the preload a little less loose. In hindsight I probably shouldn’t have bothered since everything seemed to be working ok and nothing appeared to be wearing too badly.

 

[bfBird]

The magnetic drain plug with some decent sized shavings on it. I ran my finger around the bottom of the case and pulled up some sludge. Ugh, I guess I'll pull it.

I roughed it up with some sand paper, cleaned, and sprayed with some rust converter. I just hit the seams and crevasses that are/could still be holding some rust.

I guess the bright side is that I get to use my new M12 fuel 1/2 impact.

 

[RWBeringer4x4]

I found some shavings in mine too, (which, coincidentally, is why I pulled it to inspect). Everything looked OK inside so I wouldn't panic. Plus, this is the front diff, right? Depending on your plans for the truck, that's arguable WAY less critical than the rear. Generally, the front diffs are pretty healthy - since the trucks usually only spend a small fraction of their time in 4WD. Can't hurt to check it out to be sure, but unless it's been thoroughly thrashed offroad, I wouldn't expect a catastrophe.

 

[bfBird]

I found some shavings in mine too, (which, coincidentally, is why I pulled it to inspect). Everything looked OK inside so I wouldn't panic. Plus, this is the front diff, right? Depending on your plans for the truck, that's arguable WAY less critical than the rear. Generally, the front diffs are pretty healthy - since the trucks usually only spend a small fraction of their time in 4WD. Can't hurt to check it out to be sure, but unless it's been thoroughly thrashed offroad, I wouldn't expect a catastrophe.

I guess it will only cost me some silicone to take a look at it....if I don't get smashed pulling it out. If you don't hear from me tomorrow, I'm stuck under a front diff.

 

[bfBird]

For those of you that are interested, I'm still alive, but only because the weather was too nice. It's been too cold to paint out of the garage, and the cruiser won't move out of the way so I haven't been able to paint the knuckle components. Yesterday was the clear skys and high temp day or a while so I did the tedious masking and started spraying. I'm using brake caliper paint since all of this stuff will likely be covered by brake dust.

I started prepping the dust shields for paint and had to take a second to admire how clean they are. You can scroll up a few posts and see how gross they were. The above pic is after degreasing a power washing so that was all rust. I also did that all by hand, and I still can't grip things without remembering.

I've got a few more parts to finish up for paint today. I think it will be warm enough, but I also ran out of paint so I couldn't finish yesterday. It will be super frustrating if I have to redo all of the cleaning efforts by painting at "close enough" temps.

 

[bfBird]

The diff is apart, and I'm going through it. Removal was less daunting than I had imagined. I used a jack and a block of wood to balance it. Fortunately and unfortunately it spins really freely so no bearing preload. It also has some major backlash at .05 mm.

I guess the "it will only cost me silicone" wasn't quite right since it has a crush spacer. New solid spacer ordered.

I did get to make a tool to turn the backlash adjusters.

 

[RWBeringer4x4]

I still have a tool that looks very similar to that kicking around the garage!

I took a bit of slop out of mine but won’t worry too much about the bearing preload. It’s a used bearing - they all break in and the preload gets reduced pretty quickly. I believe the FSM even lists “used” bearing preload specs for this reason. Once you’ve worn in the bearing, setting it back to “new” preload is actually too tight.

 

[bfBird]

Thanks for the info! I'm struggling on the backlash. I can dial it in at a single location, but checking around the ring is giving a pretty large range. When the "tightest" spot at min spec .006" the max is somewhere around .015". Moving the ring side bearing closer decreases my min and brings the larger gaps closer.

Do I just need more bearing preload to straighten it up? In some digging I saw 100+ fl-lbs on the bearing adjusters to get the proper preload. I definitely did not grunt down on them that hard.