I thought I would post this here. If somebody has already found an easier/better solution, please let me know before I finish mine.
Background: Bought a large 1-ton 1932(?) chassis off of craigslist for pretty cheap. Have dreams of a big late 1890's speedster project, but thing is it has mechanical brakes and all the orginal brake stuff is shot. Since I am not planning to use it for 1-ton work, I intend on swapping the rear with a later 6-lug truck rearend, so hydraulics will be easy for the rear. The front not so much.
I wanted to keep the straight axle. I thought about converting to a later axle, but the spring perch distances were too different. I read somewhere that '59 truck backing plates would work with '50-'54 car hubs for smaller truck axles. So I had a set of '54 brakes, and I bought a complete front axle of a '59 truck. With fingers crossed, I dove into it all. Here's what I found.
1. the car hubs really aren't that different than the truck hubs, so why use the car hubs?
2. The inner bearing cone on the '59 and '54 brakes (new departure #909552) are the same. Unfortunately the cones will not fit on the '32 spindle. The '32 cone is new departure #909524. The ID of the 909552 is too small to fit over the '32 spindles. And the OD of the 909524 is too large to work with the later hubs.
This was starting to be harder than I thought. I thought I might be able to hone the 99552 to fit, but that was a fool's errand. Worked on it forever before realizing that it would require turning on a lathe to take enough material away. I don't have a lathe. Then I got to thinking, "what about just swapping spindles to the '59 spindles?". After removing the two spindles and comparing them they seem to have the same angles and such, so maybe it would work and I could swap everything from the '59 over. The plan took a hard turn when I compared king pins. The '32 has a much larger diameter king pin and the notch for the retainer is in a different place. Also the '59 axle isn't as tall as the '32 at the ends where the king pin goes through
But then I mocked it up with the '59 spindle and '32 bearing. That seemed to solve the axle end issue. Started exploring the king pin issue. Here's what I found.... It appears that the king pin bores on the '32 and the '59 spindles are the same despite the king pins being different. This lead to the idea of using a new '32 king pin set with '59 spindles. The bushings should fit. So that is where I am at right now. I just found a king pin set on ebay and bought it. Should be here next week and I can test this theory. If it works out, I will likely swap to the conical bearing conversion that is available for the '59 at the same time.
Will let you all know how it goes. Again if anybody has a better way to skin this cat, I'd love to know.
Last edited by trump; 02/21/2015 8:19 PM.
