Thanks for all the advise. obviously these days money is a good motivator to try to salvage american made OEM parts, if possible. I am with ttodd on taking time and patience with old parts to make the salvagable, And I want to thank ttodd for calling me young lad!!!! I'm new to the site, but have been working with these 55-59 chevy trucks for 30+ years. Just now and then you run into an odd situation that you need a little help with. Guess this case is closed, (are you ready for this one), my daughter works at a elderly care facility and when I picked her up I had one of the wheel cylinders with trying to gett the bleeder screw off while i waited for her, a really, really old timer came up and told me he was a mechanic for 70 years and he knew how to get the bleeded screw loose, I told him I was all ears, he said take the 4 wheel cylinders off, strip them down to only the cylinder and the stuck screw, throw all 4 of the wheel cylinders into a stainless steel bowl and pour Coke cola on them until they were covered, and leave it for a day or two. Yup you guessed it, they all loosened up and came off. He also said not to use heat, it will screw up the rubber if you heat while on the truck with the wheel cylinder still assembled. He said the acidity of the soda eats the excess metal away, and the syrup creeps into all the crevaces and loosens stuff up. crazy huh! I want to thank everyone for chiming in on helping this young lad with the brakes. i try whenever possible to reconstruct and re-use old oem parts, but I know when to throw in the towel and buy new.
