Big weekend of work over here. We’re heading out to camp next weekend and there were a few things I hadn’t done over the winter … no time like the last minute!
Saturday: adjusted valve lash. Some were tight and other’s loose. I went to the spec for my Delta can - 0.014 on all 12 valves. I had done that when I first ran the new engine last year, but then went to 0.016 - bigger clearance meant the valves had less duration, which meant less overlap, which meant about one more inch of mercury on the vac gauge. 014 feels like the motor is very slightly more reticent down low in the rpm range but then wakes up around 2000rpm. 016 felt like it had a little more oomph down low, and still woke up around 2k, so I’ll probably go back to that some time this summer.
Also did an oil change and and adjusted the idle on the carb a touch.
Sunday: Finally got my rear shackles sorted out. I got this big plates from
@Fyffer but couldn’t find appropriate pins for them. I ended up having
@Tancruiser make them for me from my drawing and they fit perfectly. For the anti-inversion pin I used a hardened bolt with a section of stainless steel tube as a spacer. New bushings too of course. These are 3/4” taller than the previous ones (which were meant for a 40 and didn’t fit, pinched the bushings, limited movement) and they level the rear of the truck perfectly with my shackle reversal up front.
Surprisingly I couldn’t find a shackle pin like that for sale anywhere. The shouldered, double-sided design (fatter in the middle, skinnier on the outsides) means you can’t overtighten the nuts - they push the shackle plates into the shoulder and stop. The width is just right where the plates snug against the bushings a little bit but not too much.
The truck rides so much better in the back now that the shackles can move. My old ones had to be overtightened to work and that pinched the bushings. They didn’t move at all and 90% of the rear suspension movement was just the springs flexing up and down. WAY better like this.
Monday (holiday): rear brakes. After my last rodeo with the original drums and aftermarket shoes I had the dreaded endlessly overtightening brake situation that some other people have experienced. At some point when you pull the parking brake the shoes are adjusted to their optimal position and they stop tightening - the parking brake lever stops grabbing more teeth and spinning the star wheel adjuster. But with the overtightening issue, the lever would spin the adjuster forever. I just gave up and lived with it. The drums I removed were grooved pretty badly, although the truck stopped well.
I replaced both the shoes and the drums with Toyota parts and followed the FSM for install so we’ll see if that makes a difference. I did notice a couple things …
On the shoe pins (where the parking brake and adjuster levers go), the differences were less than I thought. The aftermarket does have ever-so-slightly more chamfer going from the larger diameter to the small. Both of my aftermarket pins were loose too. Probably explains the rattling noise I’ve heard for a couple years now.
The adjuster spans across both shoes and has forked ends that slip into grooves on each shoe. The groove on the aftermarket shoes is shallower than the groove on the Toyota shoes, which would make the adjuster wheel sit about 1mm further over. This is in relation to the pin. Maybe that makes a difference in the angle of attack of the adjuster lever and how many teeth it grabs. Not sure.
Below is the back side of the aftermarket shoe with the parking brake lever on the front side which will help show depth on the groove below my thumb.
Toyota shoe below:
So what’s the ultimate cause of the overtightening issue? I still don’t know.
Inside the drums I also installed new parking brake cables - the short ones that take the bell crank motion and pull the shoe. I also put in a brand new Toyota main parking brake cable - from the handle to the bell cranks. That was a bit of a chore getting all the rusty undercarriage bolts out, and trying to free the handle end. Fit is good except for where it bolts to the rear axle:
This works for now, but I’m going to make a small bracket to translate the horizontal axle bolt holes to the vertical parking brake bolt holes. This part supersession is all we have now, so we have to make it work .
