George, taint got into the starter and generator yet, all is well there so far, but that day will come I’m sure. Dad taught me how to turn a commutator and I still have his old growler in the shop. Bearings and bushings are a shoe in and as long as the windings all check out good we’re home free. Oh, and a box of 10 would be fine, or I would even take a dozen or two so when the next one comes along I won’t have to go through this exercise.
Fred, as I said, mine are 1 3/8” also on the 3604. I ordered 1.370” +/- .004” x 1/16” wall brass tubing from McMaster last night and have drawn up a fixture and scrounged up the material to position the cylinders in the Bridgeport mill for boring and drilling. I’ll face of the sleeves on the lathe, press them in and hone them to 1.3750” so that solves the question of “how much over size you can go”. Now the only problem is finding cups.
A Sunnen hone is not necessary to hone a wheel cylinder a few thousands of an inch. I’ve honed many in past years with wheel cylinder hone in a drill and never had a problem. I keep the hone and cylinder in a kerosene bath and keep it moving. Now if you have to hog out a bunch like .015”or .020”your probably gonna get some taper, but then again you’re probably gonna be standing there for an hour to do it, and go through a couple of sets of stones. If ya gotta take that much out to clean it up you should replace/re-sleeve it. People often misuse a hone as a boring tool, it is a finishing tool and should only be used to clean up or final finish a surface. If you have deep pitting, as I do in these Huck cylinders, then honing just taint gonna do the job. I’m already .005” over on the bore and still have some pitting, that’s why I’m gonna re-sleeve them.
I’ve been reading a lot at the rebuilders sites on re-sleeving wheel cylinders and the brass is the just as compatible as the SS, and much easier to work with.
The pistons in the Huck cylinders are not rocket science as they say, they’re simply an Aluminum plug with one side bored out, an after supper project. I do agree that corrosion does need to be addressed and I have anodized small Aluminum parts before using a storage battery and sulfuric acid bath so that’s not a problem either. You can even stain them Red if you want to!!! So out of the lathe and into the bath for the new pistons.
Hard chrome and centerless grinding? Naw, the pistons that were in there look like they were cast right to size, no machine marks on any of the 4 sets I took out. I found the clearance specification to be .002” to .004”, no need to grind that. The pistons in the Huck brakes run dry in the cylinders and there is no rubber dust/water seal so it is no wonder there are problems with them after 50+ years. From what I can figure, if you run a truck with them through a puddle that’s up to the axles your gonna get water in the outer bore of the cylinder, that would account for the rust and oxidation that had the pistons seized up in all 4 cylinders. I had to drive the pistons out with a wood punch. And can you believe it, people were driving this truck in city traffic when I bought it! I honestly don’t know how it was stopping because I found not one cylinder that was working and all of the pivot points on the brake shoe links were froze up also, had to drive them all out with a brass hammer.
Now if I can only find those 1 3/8” cups
Denny Graham
