[FC] rear wheel cyld position/ update

[Keith Hammett]

The long weekend allowed some time for me to do a bit of work on the
rampside again.  Several months ago I removed the rear suspension,
including the crossmember, for repairs and painting.  I had asked where
to get the rubber bumpers/bushing and was informed that the East Coast
vender had them.  I ordered a set and as soon as I had the crossmember
done they were installed.  The bushings fit nicely, and were pretty easy
to install.  A little tip is to use new bolts (grade 8) when doing this,
the old bolts were no longer long enough (the exposed threads were
rusted away) to pull the assembly back into place.  

 

Once the crossmember, springs, a arm and other hardware were back in
place I moved on to the next task of cleaning and greasing the rear
bearings.  I must say that I was not looking forward to this job after
all the talk about how to do it and be careful of this and that.  They
came apart (as much as possible while still on the axel) pretty easy.
Some thinner run through them and the majority of the 40 year old grease
was gone.  At this point I set them aside and came back to them several
days later, lets face it this is not an exciting thing to do.  I then
ran more thinner through them until I could not see any more grease
coming out of them.  Next came the brake clean to blast anything else
out, nothing came out so I decided they were clean.  Hooked up the
grease needle to the grease gun and inserted grease into the bearings,
this went rather easy (at least easier than giving a 20 month old
medicine that she doesn't want to swallow).  Really it wasn't that bad
of a job, which made me wonder what I missed in the process, so I double
checked myself and made sure I didn't miss anything.  Once everything
was back together I cleaned any grease that was left exposed on the axel
and then painted them.

 

In my excitement about getting to put them back on I hurried up and was
getting as much done as I could before getting back under the truck.  I
grabbed the axel and installed the yoke.  Gathered up the necessary
hardware to bolt everything together and headed out to the truck.
Luckily before I got under it I looked at the axel and remembered how
fun it was to remove those yokes with the a-arm on the axel...Oh cr*^, I
just put them on and didn't put the axel through the a-arm.  This time
they were easier to remove, not only that but no time was wasted on
making the c-channel to pull them.  Once I was passed this everything
went pretty smooth.  Still need to replace the transmission dip stick
tube, small crack in the tube creates a big mess...  I found the crack
while putting the u-joints in, amazing what grease will hide.  I assume
that a '65 car tube is the same as the '62 truck tube?

 

While installing the nicely painted backing plate (I already had the new
wheel cylinder installed with brake hose) I noticed that the brake hose
does not look right pointing to the front.  Looked in the assembly
manual and could not really decide which way it is supposed to go.  So
the question is does the hose point to the front or rear of the truck?
This is where I stopped partly because of this question, but really to
push my little one on the swing.

 

Keith Hammett

Member Corvanatics and CORSA

 

PS  I hope everything goes well for the Tulsa group with the Great
Plains Roundup.  Wish I could be there.