Figbuck Posted October 9, 2016 Report Share Posted October 9, 2016 I just turned over 255K miles on my truck. It has been my reliable servant for close to 44 years. I have beat on it, crashed it, been crashed into, blowed it up and put it back together a bunch of times. For years I hated the drum brakes. Yeah I could make them work OK, but somehow I always towed trailers to cut fire-wood, dump runs and hauling motorcycles to the track or dirt bikes to the hills. Here is a shot on Interstate 5 by Shasta in January. I hauled job boxes with my carpenter tools 800 miles to work on my crazy friend's house at Half Moon Bay. A couple years ago Mike Klotz swapped the front drums to discs for me. It was like having a new truck. I will have to find oics of that. So, the old Datsun suffered a catastrophic accident due to brain fade from lengthy illness... and some figbuck stupidity too. Short version: A back wheel came off and destroyed the adjusters and the backing plate. I came extremely close to selling it. It sat in the carport for three weeks before I could even go out to look at the damage. The weather sucked, it was wet, cold, windy and the carport is dusty dirty with a big oil slick in the middle, plus our landlord gives you stink eye if you even pop the hood. huckfur It took me a while to hatch some kind of plan to fix it. it really sucked not have a vehicle. Since I was 15 years old I have always had trucks and bikes... but I have never been this flat fucking broke before either. Thanks to Jason Pope (Beebani) for helping me out and Rick-Rat for his help and emotional support. Thanks to my Ex for loaning me her car to run for parts and for my parts counter guy at Baxter's who used to drive 510s back in the day, and convinced me to hit the Pick 'n Pull. A shot of the buck-moblie on jacks with the axles removed. Wired the wheels so it looked believable. I kinda got spoiled blasting around in the Sentra. Love the CVT and the sound system is great!! A woodworker guy I know let me work on the axles in his shop. Nice to have space, lights, benches, tools, bathroom... uh, fridge for cold beers, you know. Here is the roached back plate. haha. Yeah, I can laugh about it now... so once you disco the brake lines and the Parking Brake cables and unbolt the axle assemblies, they pull straight our of the splines in the diff. There are stacks of shims that came off all stuck together for me. I have heard that they can rust, crack and come out in pieces. You have to keep track of the shims left and right. Like most of this job the hassle was cleaning parts. I took emery cloth to them, took them all apart and greased them on reassembly. Next press or hammer out the bolts on the bearing housing and clean them up for reuse. Remove all the drum hydraulics, adjusters. Next I used a die grinder to cut through the thinnist part of the backing plate towards two bolt holes in the middle. I just couldn't get the wheel in there to finish the cut. I was too lazy to get a Sawzall out so I put a fine metal blade in a vice-grip and cut throught the back of the bolt holes quickly. The I wiggled the scrap back and forth until it snapped off. Not too bad. You can see I made a little diaper to keep metal out of the bearings. I still had to clip some more off the bolt holes to get the plate around the bearing housing, but now i could get the grinder wheel in there to make the little snips. After a bunch more cleaning and scraping, i poured Marvel Mystery oil into the bearing races. I could have gone into new bearings, but not this time. I filled it, and spun the hub around for a few minutes like four or five times, until the dirt was gone and the oil rinsed clean. You can believe how much better the bearing spun when the got clean!! Crazy dirty. Mmmmm... Next of all I looked at the Pick 'n Pull web page and there was only one Isuzu in the Vancouver yard and none in the other three yards. It was a Trooper, '91 i think. It had only been there for a few days, so I figured that it hadn't been stripped yet and drove the Sentra up there. One of the back wheels was a really nice American Racing wheel that had a locking lug on it so they could get it off. The other side was off, so I got the easy side off to know what to do then barely wiggle the other caliper off the disc and out behind the wheel with sixteenths of clearance. Whew, lucky! I pulled them apart, cleaned them with acid wash and rinse, then painted them up. I got calipers with decent pads, good hydraulic lines and the parking brake assemblies for about a hundred bucks. I wanted to buy all this stuff new, but with out a core to replace al these parts would have been about $380. The rotors looked good too but I couldn't get the one wheel off and new were $25 of so. In the mean time pack some grease in the clean bearings. Stick the shims back on and pack some more grease in there... Next, bolt the Beebani bracket on using the supplied bolts. Oh yeah, I sanded and detailed the sharp edges form the cutting process, acid prepped and painted them. Then put the rotors on... So, I want to run so 225s on the Pathfinder wheels. I got 205s on there now and only about 5/8" or 3/4" clearance to the springs from the sidewalls, so I decided to run a 1/4" spacer after doing some calculatin'. I got .25in longer studs, beat the old ones out with a big hammer and the new ones back in ratsun-style. Unfortunately the trick aluminum spacers I got aren't oiced. duh Connected the brake lines back up. Had to coil a bit of excess up, but the fittings worked together. Last of all I had to trim the parking braked cable housings shorter... The accordian dust and moisture boots were torched and they are impossible to buy from the dealer or auto parts store generic. I realized that you can get all kinds of trick stuff for bicycles that would work. but by that time I was out of patience chasing around, and just put the shit together. i can see how water would get in the housing and rust the cable with out these boots. I'm going to pull them off again and finish making a couple brackets to keep the cables off the frame and springs. I will slop some goop on the joints and then get boots for the adjustment side of the housings. You can see the groove they are supposed to fit into. It's pretty ratsun and maybe I will spring for some new generic Parking brake cables. but for now i cleaned and olied the parking braked adjuster and made a simple turnbuckle style adjuster for the passenger side as shown below... Then I used cable shackles to connect the isuzu cables to the hand brake yoke. I whill have to take oics of how it turned out. The parking brake works great now. About $500 cash when all was said and done. OK! Four wheel disc brakes... badd-ass. So much fun to blast in the hills. 4 Quote Link to comment
datzenmike Posted October 10, 2016 Report Share Posted October 10, 2016 One door closes..... another opens. End result.... the figtruck is vastly improved. 2 Quote Link to comment
q-tip Posted October 21, 2016 Report Share Posted October 21, 2016 Nice write up man! Quote Link to comment
]2eDeYe Posted October 21, 2016 Report Share Posted October 21, 2016 Nice repair/upgrade. I may have a lower rear bedskirt that you can have if yours is mangled, will have to check my pile :) Quote Link to comment
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