bigragu

Well, finally slammed on the brakes yesterday in an emergency....1st time since I yanked out/bypassed the RWAL valve and dico'd the ABS system. Wow!!! is all I can say! Fishtailed, brakes smoked, smells of braking heavily...but I was safe and truck did stop

thrashingcows

Going to dig around on the truck today. I too have thought the Poly bushings might be causing some issues. I've actually been trying to find true rubber body mounts, something that could be made to work from another application.

Additional thoughts....

Was thinking about this today while working on the crewcab. I had the same kind of issue after I put the poly cab bushings in. Turned out the cab was sliding around due to the fact the the OEM bolt and nuts were bottoming out. SO although the nuts tightened up, they were not applying enough clamping force to hold the cab tight on the poly bushings.

I had to add a 3/8" spacer under each nut to give me enough additional thread to be able to torque them down to 60 ft/lbs as the FSM calls for. Have not had any cab bushing issues since.

thrashingcows

That is good news! Nice to know that the truck will brake in a known fashion. As opposed to "maybe" the ABS will work, or "maybe" there won't be enough brake pressure to stop in time.

MrFusion

How does the fluid look? Maybe a little rust contamination or crud clogged the hose. Could be water contamination icing up as well. Never heard of that but its a possibility. It doesn't usually get cold enough here for things like that to happen.

NJTman

Congratulations on owning a truck from the early 1900's....

bigragu

The brake fluid is brand spankin new from the MC all thu out the lines. How do I know that? Cause after I removed the RWAL valve it took me 2 quarts of DOT4 bf to finally get that thing bled out! Oh yeah, that emergency stop was with the 3" shoes and 1 1/8" wheel cylinders, if there is anyone contemplating upgrading their rear brakes. They saved me, mate( when saying that say it with the accent like the wallaby squash guy did back in the day. No, I'm not Aussie )

MrFusion

I've been considering the same rear brake conversion myself. Good to know it works. The RWAL on my 1995 Cummins truck was worthless. Actually it was dangerous.
I looked at rear disc but any way I do it is gonna cost $800 or so b/c I need a parking brake for inspection. My truck is 5 speed so a parking brake is pretty much a necessity.

NJTman

Just got back from having my truck alignment checked. The main focus was the fact that recently, my steering felt a little sloppy. After the time and effort I spent switching to a RR steering system, I would have thought I wouldn't ever be dealing with anything steering ever again. Wrong as usual.


So, a few weeks back, I siped my tires. I know some of you think that siping your own tires is a waste, but for me, it was a great experience. I got to see just how siping in tires affects the handling qualities, and tire grip of a tire. By siping my tires, I've gotten the best traction I've ever had with these Mud Terrains I have on the brick. Well worth it, I do believe.

On the negative side, when I siped the tires, again as said before, I began to notice the truck "wandering" on the highway. This ultimately was related to siping my tires, but not the root cause of it. By siping the tires, I made the tire tread more responsive to the road curvature and imperfections. This made the truck wander. Why ? Because my truck's front axle wasn't aligned properly. The "toe" was out a few degrees, and this morning I brought it to a heavy duty suspension spring shop that I have all my spring work done at. They let me wait while their techie put the truck on the rack, hooked up his laser gizmo's and went to town. It was easy for him, as I had new TRE's King pins, drag link and nothing was loose in the steering geometry. The TOE was out since I replaced the TRE's, and I should have done the alignment when I did them.

The truck tracks perfect again. I purposely looked for gullies, ruts, and other malformations in the road on the way back from the shop (40 minutes or so), and even with my hand off the wheel, it still tracked straight.

Get your TOE checked out, as gangrene can set in very quickly....

MrFusion

Yeah...I HATE it when my toes turn green!
Seriously though: I'm glad you TRACKED it down.
I thought you'd like the sipes on the Mud Terrains. I had Mud Kings on my old Ford truck (1977 F150 stepside with 35's and 9" of lift) and they were great in the muck but next to useless on snowy roads.

NJTman

That was my issue as well. The wet / or snow covered roads, the mud terrains were horrible. Blocking was too large to grip the road. Great on mud, as you said, but worthless (as you said) on wet roads.

Looking forwards to getting the most life out of these mudders.

MARF75

Correct me if I'm wrong but isn't TOE the only adjustment there is on these front axles??

NJTman

Yes and no.

Yes...its the standard, normal only adjustment. You can change caster or camber if u buy offset bushings for the upper king pin, or shim the leaf spring perch

thrashingcows

Well I decided I would getting the front end to ride a bit smoother with the help of the thread below and user sevnt300 and his findings. Those "smooth ride" parabolic springs I installed during the 4wd conversion really did not smooth anything out in the ride....actually I think it made it stiffer.

Well Sevnt300 over in this thread...https://www.dieseltruckresource.com/...301721/page10/ ....Post #138. He has a cummins long box crew as well with these springs was not happy with the ride either. He did a lot of R&D work to finally come up with a ride he was comfortable with.

So first I had to pull apart an old set of rear springs and find two leafs that would be 34" long and allow an even 17" on each side of the center hole. Think it was the 3rd leaf up from the bottom.

One side already had a hole for the spring clamp and was 17", the other required about 3" to be cut off. Then I had to tapper the tip.



I then went down to the shop that sold me the Smooth Ride springs...they are local....and picked up some new wear tips and spring clamps.



The rubbers that came with the new spring clamps would not work with their style, so i used some neoprene sheet I had to cut out some new ones that would.



Then I had to drill three 1/2" holes in each spring. One for the wear tip, and two for the new spring clamps to lock into. I positioned the spring clamps 6" back from the wear tips.



Tossed on some paint and got ready to do the swap.

thrashingcows

Did the spring prep last week in teh evenings. So decided since I had a couple days off I would tackle the swap today. Took about 5 hours from start to finish.

First was to get the sway bar end links off, and the shocks as well. Then remove the U-bolts. Once all the was off I could start to jack up the truck to give me enough clearance to loosen the retaining bolt in the center of the spring pack and remove the lower spring.



Ready to remove lower spring.



Here is a comparison of the second spring in this smooth ride set-up, and the new one that is going in.



Of the 3 wear tips on the lower springs only one was still in place and secure. The others had broken loose.

thrashingcows

Transferred the two plates from the original pack to the new spring and installed. Required a couple clamps to compress the spring so I could get the threads started on the center bolt. Then it was just snug everything up and make sure all the plates and springs stayed in alignment.



Then once both side were done I had to lower the truck back down and get everything to line up. Had to go back and forth taking a few inches out of each side to slowly lower it back down. Once the weight was on the springs I installed the spring clamps. Then finished re-installing everything. Only had to cut about 3/4" to 1" off the U-bolts to make up for the difference in spring pack thickness.

All done and ready to go.