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I finally got an hour to work on the '55 after finishing a rear main seal on a Jeep sooner than expected. So I slapped new points and a condenser in there, hooked up a temporary can of fresh gas, purged the fuel lines and pump, poured some gas down the carb, and she lit right up! I even eyeballed the points, and had the coil hooked up with jumpers.

When it fired up I was sitting in the seat with my neighbor by the front bumper. He hollered at me to shut it down, and pointed behind me. The bed was 1/2 raised, and I was about to dump a load of rotten wood on my Pathfinder! I didn't even know it was engaged.

I think my clutch may be dragging a bit too, cause once disengaged, we can't engage the PTO without grinding it. I'm guessing the tranny gears may do the same thing. Perhaps I need to adjust a linkage?

Either way, I'm pretty stoked. I was hearing some clunking, but I think it may be the fact that the harmonic balancer has some play in it. It just rotates back and forth on the crank. So I won't be getting the timing dialed in any time soon...

I've got some short video clips. I'm pretty sure the motor sounds smoother in the second video, even though the truck only ran for about four minutes.


Walk-around with truck idling

Bed being exercised

whoohoo!! Hey, the clutch on my 55 will grab and not disengage if I start it in neutral. If I start it in gear, it seems fine and then I can shift to neutral and back into gear, there may be some junk on it. Yours may have the same issue, maybe some oil or something leaked on it and is making it real sticky?

That makes a lot of sense. It's been in neutral since I've had it, so it's never been forced to slip. I'll give slipping it a shot.

The clutch disc is likely rusted/stuck to the flywheel or the pressure plate. Pretty common on old stuff that's been left to sit up for a long time. Sometimes they get stuck pretty tight, too. In the past what I have had to do to un-stick them is start up in gear (usually reverse) and drive the vehicle into something solid like a tree with the clutch pedal pushed in. This will usually crack it loose. I usually do this in reverse to take advantage of the lower ratio and also use the frame horn or rear bumper to make the contact with to avoid damage to any sheet metal.

Happens a lot in old farm equipment. There can be 2 reasons: Clutch plate rusted to the pressure plate or clutch material deteriorating and swelling up.
The first can be broken loose by starting the engine in gear and driving it around with the clutch in until it brakes free. Chose the Highest gear you can start it in (2nd gear slightly down hill)then on and off the gas to brake it loose. Also can be done by towing or pushing it, clutch in, with another truck until it brakes loose.
If it is the second reason, nothing to do but take it apart and replace everything.

Drop the sheet metal cover at the bottom of the bellhousing, have someone hold the clutch pedal to the floor, and push a stiff putty knife or gasket scraper between the clutch disc and the flywheel.
Jerry

Thanks for the tips guys, but I had it worked out already. I just started it in gear with the clutch pushed in. All other times I'd started it had been in neutral. It bound up and stalled for a brief moment, then busted loose and fired right up.

I also got my gas pedal linkage unjammed, and made an adjustment to the parking brake so I could maneuver the truck into the garage. I had to cut down the headache rack, but then she fit (just barely). I don't know if I can use it on the lift though, the frame is quite narrow! My lift arms might be too short. I'd like to figure out where the center of mass is too. Kind of a tricky rig to lift.

I know need to figure out why the brake pedal is rubbing on the floorboard. Is the position of the master cylinder adjustable on the frame? Like, with slotted mounting holes or something? Either my MC is too far forward, or the cab is too far backward. The rod going through the floor is rubbing the sheet metal pretty bad. That arm doesn't seem to be adjustable in any way; perhaps I need to bend the rod that attaches the pedal to the arm.


Squeezing through the door
In the garage
In the garage 2

That cover isn't there. On the bright side, it's easy to see my throwout bearing.

If your brake pedal is rubbing it is most likely that the cab has shifted if the floorboards are weak or rubber bushings have failed.

Paul, as kb3csw said, your cab has probably shifted. There are no adjustments to move the master cylinder or pedal. I would trim the floor. Way cool your clutch is freed up!

Yeah, I was wondering about this. How tall are the stock rear mounts supposed to be? I had a 78 Silverado that had mounts that were about 1" tall at the rear of the cab. The doors were far from smooth when closing. I found out eventually that the mounts were supposed to be 3", and we're severely squished! New ones made a big difference.

Anyway, the rears on the '55 are probably still a couple inches. I didn't see any rubber at the middle mount at the rear of the wheel opening, however, and thought it was strange. Should it be steel on steel here? Seems wrong...

The front cab cushion is very thin (anti-squeak), it's the same as used on the pickups.

The rear cab mount cushions are 1-1/2" thick, two are required on each side, one above the cab mount bracket and one below.

Mike B

That makes sense. In that case, I think my body mounts are fine. I suppose the whole floor may be sagging then. It's reasonable, considering the fact that it looks like a cheese grater. I'll just pry the edge of the hole out of the way and call it good for now.

Hi Paul, yup it's a snug fit into the garage. I also have a Volvo in our shop, a (V-90).
Your truck appears to be a 1957, but great to see the large backlite.
Have you considered replacing the complete floor and running board asy.to eliminate the swiss cheese holes. The rest of your truck looks quite sound. My running boards are thin and a complete floor may be the way to go.It will test my welding skills.
Great looking Chevy. Howie

Howie,

I've thought about doing the floor assembly, but I wouldn't be able to stop there. The driver's door is sagging, and the material the lower hinge is attached to is severely weakened and half gone. Also, the top edge of the windshield frame is rotted out on the inside. That seems like a difficult spot to patch.

The truck really is a '55, it just has the wrong hood and grille on it. The cab is also from a 1/2 ton, but was the correct year. It's really mashed together. The frame is correct and original, though. I may continue the tradition by doing a frame swap, however.

you can get the whole inner cab roof panel, a lot of them I have looked at are rusted pretty bad above the windshield. My 58 is rusted through on both the inside and outside panels! Too bad they don't screw on like the same year Suburban! It would be nice to remove some screws, toss the old one, get rid of rust, and repaint everything, then screw a new one on place! I may think about doing that when I build my extended cab, not sure what I will find once I pull it all apart but definitely thinking about trying to make the inside piece screw in!

Interesting. So is there a pinch welded seam embedded in the windshield rubber then? I'm not big on body work, but might be able to pull that off. Who has the best price on those? What about the door hinge area?

You would be WAY ahead to find a better cab. By the time you buy the patch panels to fix above the windshield, the floor, the hinge pockets and cab corners you could have bought a good cab or a complete truck as a donor.

Mike B

americanclassic.com has the patch panels. Look under patch panels - cab and you will find them all. As Mike B said, you might be better off to find a better cab. The inner roof panel is 375 plus shipping. (although stovebolt members get a 10% discount on parts!)

http://www.americanclassic.com/images/CAB-12.jpg

I think I might just patch the floors with generic sheet metal, and try to find a way to fortify the hinge mounts. My cab is decent in all of the highly visible areas, so I might just see how long I can get it to last.

if just repairing holes in a non-structural area, you might also glass it. I bought a roll end of glass mat years ago, about 12" wide and 12-14" diameter roll, I am still working on it, good stuff, I used it on the pass side kick panel on my 58 to cover over where the vent and fresh air intake for the heater was (not going to use this cab long term, and the vent box had been full of all manner of evil and was rusted out completely.)

I do have a fair amount of fiberglass experience, I used to work on the big wind turbine blades. I may give that a shot.

For now, I just want it up and running. I got the parking brake adjusted, freed, and lubed. The ratchet mechanism doesn't work, but pulling the lever gives me a way to stop the truck. I've putted around the driveway a bit.

I replaced the heater hoses (one broke when I looked at it wrong) with some fresh Gates hose. I can't get the fuel tank to drain, the line seems limp and collapsed--probably clogged to. I may have to just cut the line open and poke something through. I've been running her on an "auxiliary" tank under the hood. The carb gets better every time; I think the fresh gas is cleaning it out slowly. It'll need a rebuild though, it's a hard start when cold. I think the bowl drains out while sitting. A single shot of ether gets it every time.

I filled up the dry brake fluid reservoir and tried to bleed the brakes with my Mityvac. I failed. I was by myself, which isn't fun, and it was raining. The reservoir is tiny! I kept sucking air. Oh well, I had some actual pedal feel after pumping it 4X at some point. That was encouraging. I got some really nasty fluid out of there, and it's all clear now. It's a start; I'll do better if I can get some assistance. I may look into building a pressure bleeder, as using a vacuum bleeder sucks!😂

Speaking of which, I only saw one bleeder on the hydrovac, on the very top near the line fitting. Didn't I read that there were two? How about the master? Or is it just a dirt-simple master that requires no bleeding?

Does anyone know what threads the filler cap has? I'd like to rig up a bigger reservoir to it, with enough pressure to bleed properly.

Mine has 1.25" threads.

Ed

yes, there are 2 bleeders on top of the hydrovac unit, nothing on the master cylinder. My front wheel cylinders were frozen up. I am sure once I got pressure in them, they wold have moved but, the brake return springs may not have had enough pull to retract the springs, they were that bad. My steel lines looked fine from the outside but once I got them off, they were paper thin.

I would at a bare minimum, pop the wheel cylinders off and put kits in them. It also does not take that much longer to replace the steel and rubber brake lines. 8-9K pounds rolling down the road with no brakes can do a lot of damage!

Hmm, I wonder if there's anything at the hardware store that would screw into it. If I can get something to serve as an adapter to those threads, I can weld/epoxy/etc something together to make a pressure bleeder. I just don't have a lathe, so the threads are the hard part.

I really only want to get it going enough to see if the hydrovac works currently. If it doesn't, I'll just swap in a more modern booster and dual circuit MC. I'm not putting the truck to use until I run some fresh copper-nickel lines anyway. I'll probably have to get some parts numbers for those wheel cylinder kits at some point. It would be nice to at least see what the walls look like while I'm in there.

got it, that makes sense! I made a pressure bleeder out of a plastic weed sprayer from Lowes. It works great! You do need an extra master cylinder cap though to put a fitting on (or tap yours and replace the fitting with a plug).

The 1.24" cap thread probably not a hdwe store item. Just drill and tap existing cap.

Ed

I might just have to do that. Unfortunately, there's not much left of the plastic threads on my cap. It's challenging enough getting it screwed on, adding a necessary o-ring would make it impossible. I guess I'll be looking for a better cap.

Paul,

If you remove the hydrovac, post it in a Part For Sale ad with a few pictures.

Good luck,

I know it's been a while, but I've been doing some shopping for brake parts. Should I assume that I have a 1-1/4" MC? Is there an easy way to check?

I think I'm leaning toward swapping a dual circuit MC from some other application. It would be cheaper, easier to source parts for, etc. I'll have to either add 10 psi residual valves, or try to find a drum/drum application. I contacted the Dorman "tech support" asking if they had some sort of parametric search, and they were less than helpful.

Does anyone know a good site that would let you browse MCs and show you their strokes and bores?

On my '54 2 Ton I made the bracket and used the M/C from a mid 70's Chevy one ton van,leaving room to add a booster if desired. I bought an adjustable proportioning valve on eBay for about $35.00;it took some driving and adjusting to tune it in,but it works fine. It stops well enough I won't need a booster unless I run it fully loaded all the time.
Speed

Well I went ahead and did some bleeding on the stock system with the assistance of my father in law. I can actually get a firm pedal after 3-4 pumps. It stays firm and doesn't bleed off, so my wheel cylinders might still be good. It looks like someone replaced all the rubber lines, they look practically new.

Next week I'll be taking down three large Doug firs on our property. That's going to produce a LOT of limbs, and there's a place that will take them about 1/4 mile down the road. I don't want to know how many trips with the Silverado this would take, plus dumping them would be a lot nicer than unloading by hand.

In preparation, I finally got the old gas pumped out, replaced the fuel lines, and fired her up. She seemed to run pretty decent today. I'll try adjusting the brake shoes and see if that helps. I might have to bleed the hydrovac too. After that, some fresh stake sides would make this thing basically usable. Hopefully she'll be ready in time for her first big job!

Hydrovac requires bleeding in a specific order, check manual.

Ed

Will do. I remembered that it did, I just didn't have the manual on me. We did manage to get all the old nasty fluid out, so it's a start. I'll just have to buy another quart of fluid so I can do it for real.

On another note, I finally got all the debris and mud out of the bed, then pressure washed the deck. I think the wood is sound enough to do the task at hand, so that's a relief.

https://goo.gl/photos/CmbMRsg5RLcChbcPA

https://goo.gl/photos/uuyoxNxXM25NNGSh8

Well I built a pressure bleeder. I made a big mess, since my MC cap doesn't have a gasket, and the threads are thrashed. There's only about one good thread left holding that plastic cap on, so I figured trying to cram a gasket in there wouldn't go so well.

Aside from a steady drip from the MC cap, the pressure bleeder worked pretty well. I got a little more air out of the system, I feel like it's well bled now.

I also took a try at adjusting the brakes. All of the adjusters in the rear were backed all the way off! I got the driver's side dialed in, but the adjusters seem seized on the passenger side. So it looks like I'll have to pull it all apart. That'll be another project for another day.

The other odd part is the 1/4" gap between the seized adjuster and the shoe. There's a lot of slack in there, but at least adjusting the driver's side has gotten me from 4 pedal pumps down to 2. Once I take up all the slack, the pedal feels nice and firm. It doesn't feel spongy at all.

I think all I'll need to do is get things all freed up and greased properly. Pulling the drum could reveal more things, of course.

sounds like good progress! My first attempt with the MC cap had a steady drip as well, I just threw a pile of sawdust under it and kept going! Last time though, I got it to seal up quite well.

Thanks. I think I'll have better success next time. I found a new cap at Napa, #UP4073. With new threads, I should be able to use an o-ring or gasket of some sort.

I got the drum/hub assembly off and checked on the brake adjusters. They were seized up nice and tight. I started with a hammer and a dull cold chisel (after a good soaking of liquid wrench). I ended up busting off a couple teeth from the adjuster, so I decided to stop and do something smarter and more methodical.

As it turns out, removing the shoes made enough room for me to fit a wrench on the adjuster star. A 12-point 1-1/16" fit OK--I think a 26mm would have been better, but I already had the standard wrenches out. With the wrench, I was able to wiggle the adjuster back and forth until the penetrant worked in a little further, and I eventually got them out. All cleaned up with some anti-seize, and I was in business.

I also figured out after consulting the manual that the shoe springs were NOT installed correctly. This explained why the shoe and adjuster had a 1/4" gap before I got started, and the shoe was not being kept tight to the adjuster properly.

The bad news is, I still have a lot of pedal play. All the drums are adjusted, but it still takes 1-1/2 pedal strokes, then it's firm as can be. I've bled this thing to death, and am getting sick of it. It really doesn't quite feel like air in the system anyway. It doesn't get progressively firmer as I pump the pedal, like it usually does when you're compressing air bubbles. Instead, it has absolutely no pedal resistance for the first stroke-and-a-half, then it suddenly has a firm pedal.

I'm half tempted to bypass the hydrovac unit. I understand MCs and vacuum boosters and how they work internally, but I'm not familiar with the hydrovac. I don't trust it either. I'm not real crazy about the idea of an extra cylinder in the system anyway.

I really wish the brakes would have been road worthy after the drum adjustments, because I have a nice big load of limbs to dump 1/4 mile away!

Oh, and to add insult to injury...
It wasn't until I was putting the drum/hub/bearings back together that I felt relative movement between the drum and hub. I have slide-off drums, but I took everything off in one piece! And that sucker was heavy! I could have sworn that I read the hubs won't slide off somewhere. I guess I got it wrong.

Here are some pics of the brakes coming apart. I know I could've made use of them before I got started...
Brake pics

Testing the Hydrovac is easy...on the first engine start of the day pump your brakes up and hold with medium foot pressure, then start the engine. As you build vacuum you'll feel the brake pedal fade away slightly as the Hydrovac applies pressure to the system...it's working!

Since you intend to load and use your truck, I'd keep the Hydrovac and make sure it's working. It adds about 1,000 pounds of additional pressure to the system making it so every stop isn't a PANIC stop!

Mike B