This weekend I was able to get some work done on the truck again - the weather played nice too. A friend and I were able to replace the freshly installed and broken motor mount in record time (~15 minutes) as well as come up with a plan on how we are going to chain the motor down. The Atlas brings all sorts of driveline torque that needs to be limited.
From there we decided that after last weekend at AVF, it was time to fix my brakes. Most of the time I was standing on the pedal on neutral going down hills - not good at all. Awhile back I purchased a MC for a 75 F250 as they have dual piston front calipers - I was thinking it would improve my braking over the factor drum/drum MC currently in the truck.
I've got my brakes ground to clear my 15" wheels, some how I lost a brake pad and the result was the caliper sliding over and overextending the pistons, causing a leak. So off came the caliper to be torn down, cleaned and reassembled. After carefully cleaned and reassembly the caliper was reinstalled, new pads as well. Time for bleeding - except the bleeder screw promptly broke off, these calipers are not even a year old.
Out came the drill and easy outs, the hammer and a mapp gas torch. I was able to cleanly remove the bleeder, but a sleeve came out with it. This is a rebuilt caliper, so it looks like it was drilled out, sleeved and a smaller bleeder was installed (the bleeder on this side is smaller the the exact caliper on the other side) The adapter is nowhere to be found, not in any system and no size found in the large bleeder selection the store had. We were stuck and had to get the truck out of the garage - I put a vise grips on the flex line by that caliper and gravity bled the rears. I've never been happy with the way my disk brakes have worked in the rear, but with the front line pinched off at one of the calipers I could stop on a dime, it was insane the how well the rears work. I parked it for another day of wrenching to get my brakes back together.
Running out of options my brother came up with the idea of sealing a 7/16-20 bolt to the face of the caliper. I filed down the caliper surface around the bleeder hole until it was flat (there was a low spot) and we used a bronze washer and a 7/16-20 grade 8 bolt and tightened it down. Without the washer the caliper would gravity bleed with the bolt tightly torque down, with the washer it doesn't leak a drop.
On to the bleeding - we bled the fronts and re-bled the rears and with that caliper in place I've got even worse braking, the truck stops in 4lo, but not very well at all. I'm thinking there may be a problem with either the H-block or that caliper. When I push on the brake pedal the caliper moves in and out, it doesn't seat and stay in one place like my father's D60 and the same year D60 in my tow rig. It's interesting how I had awesome brakes with that caliper pinched off and everything got worse when I added it... I want to bypass the prop valve and see how things work, it's possibly it won't bleed properly with that in place. I've never touched it before in any of my bleeding brakes, maybe that is where the problem lies.
Gluten for more punishment after being frustrated with my brakes I thought it would be a good time to install a 4 barrel intake and carb. The old intake came off the motor without any issues, besides prying if off the heads with a giant pry bar. The new intake was placed on and immediately we noticed a heater hose fitting was going to interfere with the dual fuel lines on the Holley double pumper I had. The fitting stripped out after a few rotations trying to remove it and we had to pry it out of the boss on the intake. The steel fitting stripped and left the threads in the alum intake - ?:? Out came a chisel and some delicate pounding we got most of the steel out and with some time and RTV, we threaded the new one in and so far it is holding water pressure. Without any tuning, timing or re-jetting (it was on a juiced 454 for awhile) it ran good and has a bit more power. I've got a feeling my 30 spline outers on the D60 may be tested shortly here...
Pics to follow - I'm going to try and reroute my brake lines around the prop valve and see what happens, but first I'm going to vise grip that caliper again and see how my braking improves. I don't think my passenger side moves with the brake pedal, I'm thinking that is why the pedal has so much travel and poor braking performance.
