Thread: 53 Is back from the Body Shop

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Very cool on the E-Brake.

I'd still add trailer brakes if you're hauling the heavy UTV. It's surprising how much a loaded trailer can push, and it tends to lift the rear of the truck in a hard stop, too!

Originally Posted by rspears

Very cool on the E-Brake.

I'd still add trailer brakes if you're hauling the heavy UTV. It's surprising how much a loaded trailer can push, and it tends to lift the rear of the truck in a hard stop, too!

Especially when you take in consideration angles of the trailer and the load pivot point.

Seth, I put one of those on a drive line at the rear diff pinion of a manual truck once. It worked great but years later the actuator stopped working and the owner couldn't find a similar replacement. Make sure the one you selected is a common unit.

These old trucks are much lighter than the new ones, I would think a trailer could push it around. In my young stupid days I towed a heavy v-drive boat with my 77 toyota truck, I hit the brakes hard for a red light and went right through it, so lucky that me or someone else wasn't hurt towing that thing (towed it a number of times, didn't learn anything, no trailer brakes)

Yeah, you deduct all the weight for the modern conveniences, insulation, and 100 miles of wiring and computers and the old cars are fairly light. The manual for my 49 Plymouth coupe showed the original weight as 2850lbs.

I got my E Brake installed and it works great, in about 2-3 seconds I can really feel it grabbing. I'm pretty happy how it turned out.

Nice work! That will be something I bet you wished you did a long while ago.

Nice! Emergency brake can be a life saver.

So this might be a novice question but I'm going to ask it anyway. I replaced Rita's poly a arm bushings with pressed in rubber bushings because I got tired of fighting the squeaks. It seems to me, and I've never noticed it before, but the front end bounces too much or floats after hitting rough spots on the road. I replaced the shocks, which did not help, I'm wondering if I need a stiffer shock, which there doesn't seem to be a lot of options, or if I have to preload the sway bar, or if the rubber bushings make it bounce too much, I don't know? Any thoughts ? I would like to get this taken care of before we start road tripping again, and Roger,I still haven't fixed my drive shaft angle lol

I'd be surprised that the rubber bushings would have enough "give" for you to feel that much difference, but if it was OK with Poly and bouncy with rubber that must be the case. I've not had reason to try it yet, but I saw a neat trick to stop the squeaks in poly bushings - Teflon tape, the stuff used for threads to prevent leaks!! Here's a YouTube video showing the process, and the guy says that he put poly in a Honda 5 years ago and has never had a squeak!! Link - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UbgEvh-rSl4
I don't know of a "fix" for the pinion angle other than adjustment!!

Thanks for the link, I should say have not adjusted my pinion angle since we got home from Florida. I don't remember for sure, but I'm sure I've tried the Teflon trick, I bet I've tried half a dozen different tricks.

Did you tighten the bushing bolts down unloaded? That could create some tension with it back on the ground. Can you get KYB's for your truck? They made a huge difference on my 67 Camaro, much sportier.

I think I got it fixed. When I took my sway bar off to put in the bushings, if I remember right I had a bit of a pre load on the sway bar. When I put it back on I made sure it had 0 pre load on it which may have been a mistake because the sway bar bushings and linkage are a little sloppy. I put a little preload back on it tonight, and it seems much better. Before It seemed like it was bouncing crooked, like one side was bouncing more than the other, which makes sense if the sway bar was not kicking in right away. V8nutz, that's a very good info on the KYB shocks, I have a set in my Summit shopping cart, just in case I could not find anything else.

Sway bar should have zero effect on making the ride bouncey. It does nothing when driving in a straight line. And making one side more bouncey would say to me that that side has components in a bind.

It seemed a lot better, maybe it was just in my head.

Well, I think the sway bar fix it was mostly in my head. I ordered KYB gas adjust shocks or whatever they're called and put them in tonight. I don't know what kind of witchcraft they got going on inside those shocks but it is day and night different. It rides more smooth and more stiff at the same time somehow, and the extra bouncing is completely gone. I drove it about 10 miles away to the bouncing bridge of death and it handled it just fine. It was money well spent!