Brakes: Check

After a couple of weeks of fits and starts, I focused on the front brakes of the Scout Saturday morning. I’ve been held up to date by incorrect or missing directions on how to disassemble the locking hubs on the front axle, the roemoval of which is required for getting the rotor assembly off the truck. All of the various service manuals talk about a particular snap ring that needs to come out before pulling the hub assembly out (at the risk of dropping a handful of roller bearings all over the driveway, a terrifying thought) but I could not identify or find this snap ring anywhere. Finally, I decided to chance it and gingerly pulled the hub assembly off—and found that there was no snap ring and that the inner gears came off with the outer assembly.

With this out of the way, it was easy to remove the caliper, pull the rotor/hub assembly off, and pounded the studs out from the back side of the old rotors. With a hammer and socket extension I pounded the studs into the new rotor assembly, and put everything back on the truck. The driver’s side went just as easily, although the locking hub mechanism there didn’t have the same washer/snapring holding the gears to the outer assembly. Looking it over, I don’t think that makes a difference, so I put it back the way I found it (it’s worked just fine for 17 years) and buttoned up the wheels.

Out on the road, the brakes feel very good: they’re even and don’t immediately pull to the left side, which is a huge improvement. There’s a noticable difference in the pedal feel—before, the brakes were very close to the top of the pedal, where now there’s more throw before they engage—but I like that. It’s going to take a little getting used to, but I’m really happy I tackled this and did it myself.

In other news, I posted four new designs to the Threadless store. I’ve been sitting on the two Scout 800 designs for a year or more, for reasons I can’t remember. The Slowflake design is in honor of Brian’s Scout project, and the Dugan’s Beer bottlecap is for myself. I’m noodling with some new ideas for Slowflake after the EV conversion, at which time I’ll create another design.

 

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Project Slowflake: Day Five

Here’s the fifth video in the Project Slowflake series, where I went over to Brian’s for two days to hook up the battery to the power pack with the aftermarket wiring harness, and test it out to see if it would run. When we sorted that out, we cracked the battery pack open and pulled the wiring harness apart from there. With that done, we made a bunch of measurements and started planning out how to organize the batteries in the truck.

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Weekend Update

I got the driveshaft back for the Travelall on Thursday. They wound up completely rebuilding what I brought them: they put a new yoke on either side of a larger driveshaft and connected that to the original slip shaft from my truck. The old driveshaft was 2 1/2″ in diameter and this new one is 3″ so there’s some extra beef. I hit it with some self-etching primer and black paint on Friday afternoon and let it cure in the sunlight. Saturday morning, after running some errands, I crawled under the truck and put it back in. This was straightforward, and when it was done I took her for a run around the block. I wound her up as fast as I could close to the house and it looks and feels like the vibration is gone—which is excellent news. I felt so good about it, I took the truck out three times over the weekend to run errands.

Then I put the Scout up on jack stands and started tearing into the hub on the passenger side in order to swap the rotors. All of the videos that I have seen talk about taking the faceplate off, then pulling a snap ring out before removing the outer section of the housing. None of the videos show exactly where that snap ring is, and I don’t see it on my hub anywhere. I pulled the driver’s side off to see if I was missing something, but that looks exactly the same as the passenger side. My spare hub is a completely different design, so I can’t use that as a baseline. So I put the whole thing back together to cogitate on it a little longer.

Doing some organizing in the garage during the weekend, I went looking for some weatherstripping and stumbled on something I forgot I had: a used speedometer cable from the green truck. As soon as I saw it, I wanted to slap myself in the head, because it would only make sense that I would save something like this. Brand new, these cables are $60, so this was a great find. I cleaned the grease off it, filled it with silicon spray and put it in the truck. The needle hops around a bit, but it’s working, and the odometer spins, which is great news, because now I can track gas usage again.

Another quick thing I looked at were the locks on the lockbox under the rear seat in Darth. I’ve had these finger-tight since I put them in, and now that the truck is on the road I need some secure storage. Both sides have needed adjustment since I put them in. The driver’s side needs a new slot to be cut into the side of the box for proper alignment with the key, and the passenger side needs a longer catch made for the lock mechanism. I think I’m going to draw up a design and have SendCutSend cut me two new ones instead of trying to cut and fabricate one here. Along with that, I have two modifications to make to the C-series cupholder I designed—I want to increase the diameter of the cup cutouts by at least 1/2″ to allow for some rubber bumpers around the edge, add a little more height to the gusset at the bottom, and have them cut the two bolt holes for the seat hoop. So I’ll gang those two orders up and maybe save a little on shipping.

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Weekend Update  |  Posted in Brakes, Repairs, Travelall

Wednesday Musings

Back at work, I’m sitting through some training sessions for new operations software and multitasking while they go through stuff I’ll never need to know, so I’ll list out some updates here while I’m thinking about them.

I dropped the driveshaft for Darth off at a shop in Baltimore on Monday. The quote to fix it is a bit more than I was expecting, but I’m not going to find one of these just laying around a junkyard, so you gotta do what you gotta do. The shop caters to the large trucks in this area and the guy I talked to was sitting in front of an industrial lathe the size of my car, which gave me a good vibe.

The next big thing I want to tackle are the front brakes on Peer Pressure. I can’t find a shop around here who will touch her— I keep hearing, “We don’t work on anything over 20 years old,” which makes me nervous for the 19-year-old CR-V in our driveway, but I digress: I’m gonna have to figure this out myself. There are YouTube videos, of course, in varying degrees of quality, for removal and installation, and I’ll have to study these for a while before attempting this myself. I think the only thing I’d really need is a large 2-1/16″ socket to take the big retainer nuts off, and I found one on Amazon for $14 which will be here Friday.

Something I’ve been curious about ever since I got the new PT Cruiser seats is a little switch on the driver’s side. I’ve never known what this thing could be, so I did a little sleuthing this morning and found that the seat height is adjustable.

Which makes me wonder if it’s locked in a higher position than normal. I’m gonna put 12 volts to the switch and see if it will go down at all.

 

Posted on   |   by bill   |   Leave a Comment on Wednesday Musings  |  Posted in Repairs, Seats

Braked

Well, this weekend was a journey. Mostly a good one; a lot of good stuff got accomplished, and I spent a bunch of time with friends, but it wasn’t without its challenges.

We had a workday scheduled at Brian’s place in the country to work on Heavy D, Bennett’s long-sidelined pickup waiting for welding repairs, a windshield install, and re-assembly of the front clip. The last time I was out there I’d bent and formed a complicated section of metal to weld to the front of the firewall but Brian’s commercial welder was too strong to work the sheet metal without blowing through it. We were also going to help Brian move his pickup around and place the bed on the frame to free up space, and see what other stuff we could get up to.

My plan was to drive Darth Haul out there for her first short-distance trip, so I worked on the engine timing and fuel system on Thursday. I was having issues with the fuel pump pulling debris from the saddle tank up into the pickup and clogging it, so I rigged the boat tank up with a length of hose and put it on the passenger floor. After loading up my tools, welder, and welding bin, I hit the road at about 9 and took my time getting out there. Brian’s place is about 20 miles away, and I took back roads to avoid any high-speed sections. The truck did very well! Shifting is smooth, the engine is strong, and the brakes worked well. I noticed a vibration at 40mph and heard some rubbing in back, which foreshadowed later events.

At Brian’s house, I helped he and Bennett to clean out Mr. Hanky, because our friends Chad and Liz were coming down from Pittsburgh to possibly buy it. Bennett has had it up for sale since Nats in order to free up cash and space for a cleaner Scout, and they’ve been in the market for another project for a while. They arrived at 11 and he showed Chad the truck while we caught up with Liz. By 1PM the deal was done, and we helped them load the trucks up with a pile of extra parts. It was bittersweet to see Hanky drive away, but it’s great to see him going to a good home—it reminds me so much of selling Chewbacca to Carolyn to give to Brian—I know they’re going to do a great job reviving him.

After moving Brian’s pickup and freeing up a bunch of floor space, we had pizza delivered for a late lunch and then set to work on Heavy D. The first big task was to re-install the windshield, and luckily the rubber was designed exactly like what I put in Peer Pressure, so I knew how to align it in the channel. Between the four of us and with judicious use of glass cleaner, we got it in place and then used plastic putty spreaders to guide the edges into the channels, then fold the locking flap over.

With that done, I set my welder up and put the patch in place, ground it down, and got it ready for paint while Brian and Bennett started hanging fenders. Within about an hour we had the truck put mostly back together and ready for a test fire. The carb was mad at being ignored for a year, and didn’t want to run properly, so Bennett will have to go back and diagnose that. By 5PM we wound down and set course for home. I took Bennett back to his place, but noticed the truck working harder as we drove. Stopping for gas I found all four wheels hot to the touch, which told us the brakes were dragging. By the time we got to his house the passenger rear was smoking slightly. We pulled the wheels off and cooled them down with a hose, then banged the drums off with a hammer. The pads were all the way extended, which meant that the system wasn’t releasing pressure. It was getting dark, so he gave me the keys to his CR-V and I drove that home after parking Darth in his driveway.

The next morning I got there at 9 with all of my brake tools and fluids, and we started troubleshooting the system. After tearing apart and rebuilding the rear drums three times, we tested the master cylinder upstream and verified it wasn’t the lines above either axle. So we disconnected and bench bled the master until it looked clear, then connected everything back up to test. It looked like the brakes were grabbing and releasing, and a test drive verified this. While under the truck I also noticed a huge dent in the driveshaft, which explains the vibrations above 40MPH.

I packed up my tools, extended my sincere gratitude for Bennett’s knowledge and time, and set course for home. She ran well and didn’t feel like she was struggling the farther we went. The brakes and clutch felt good, and I got her home with no problems. The wheels were hot when I checked them after parking it, but not scalding as they had been before. It may take another bench bleed to really kick the issue, but for now, I’m happy she’s back in the driveway.

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