Stovebolt.com Forums The Shop Area Driveline 46 1/2 ton front disc conversion

Bogart, Do you have a photo or information on the dual master cylinder bracket you fabricated for a 46? Thanks!

I've made an album with some photos of my homemade bracket. If you need clarification, ask away and I'll try to clarify. This is a long bed truck so I may have more room between the transmission crossmember and the master cylinder. If you don't have the room, I would suggest a remote fill compact m/c like this remote tandem master cylinder.
Here's the pictures. The setup works perfectly and I wouldn't change a thing.

Bogart - thank you for posting all the pictures. This will be a big help.

Bogart, I looked at he CPP Kit you referenced above. This kit does not contain a hub set. Not being 100% familiar with the 46 drum brakes, did you press the hub out of the drum to use for your truck? I looked at my drums and it appeared they are riveted in , so I am not sure if pressing the hubs out is even possible. CPP does make a kit with hubs, without saying more expensive, but at least there is an option.

When you look CPP hubs kit..........it comes with taper roller bearing. It recommended you should replace the stock ball bearing with roller bearing... so when you price the roller conversion costs the hubs kit starts to look better.

Ed,
As I recall, my drums were attached to my drums by swedged metal. I. E. metal that is smashed into place around the lug bolts to hold them in place. You can see the squiggly line around the lug bolts in these pictures.
Those are the swedged. swedged lug boltd

I'd never heard of a swedge before but to remove the drum from the hub a swedge cutter is used to cut out the metal around the lug bolt to a depth of about 1/8 inch deep. If you try to drive the lug bolts out without using the swedge cutter you'll ruin the hubs. Some machine shops have the swedge cutter. They are difficult to find on line but they are just like a hole saw. Come to think of it, I think I cut the lugs off since they'd be replaced and I drilled out the center before driving them out. Make sure you don't touch the hub holes because the new bolts have to fit in the hub very tightly. If in doubt, take it to a machine shop. If yours are just riveted then I think you can drill them out and the disks will stay in position once assembled without the rivets since they are smashed between the wheel and hub by the lug bolts /nuts.

With the hubs removed from the drums you can order the tapered bearings if you wish and have the old bearing races replaced with the tapered races and you are good to go. The CCP kit comes with new lug bolts that you can install in the old hub by sticking them through the hub, and using a stack of washers under the lug bolts, tighten the nuts to pull the lug bolts through the hub. It's a super tight fit so alternate from one lug to the others in a cross pattern until they are pulled into place.

One last thing. They recommend that once you have the hubs and disks mated, take them to be turned on a brake lathe to true them up. Mine were slightly out as measured with a dial indicator but I can't tell that they aren't perfect.

It sounds like a lot but it's all worth it and really not that difficult if I could do it.

I haven't done this to my '46 yet, but I did a disc conversion on a '67 Dodge pickup recently that had swedged lugs on the stock drums. I carefully ground off the heads of the lugs on the inside of the brake drum and pushed the studs out from behind because I didn't have a swedge cutter. The swedge is only on the threaded side of the stud, the inside is just a flat head.

Never heard of swedging either. Is swedging a word? Anyway, learned something new today. Thanks, this is why the Bolt is an amazing place to come to. And Showkey, I might have to agree with you on the bearings vs hub kit cost effectiveness.

From yourdictionary.com, third-person singular simple present swedges, present participle swedging, simple past and past participle swedged) To shape metal using a hammer or other force.

We learn about trucks and Grammer here!

In the case of the wheel studs, a more descriptive term would be knurled. Very common way for wheel studs to be fastened in place. The head in back is what secures them as well as the press fit of the knurled section inside the hole. They usually can be driven out from the front with a BFH. Typically doesn't hurt the hubs to drive them out. There's enough give in the knurling to let them come out without hurting the holes.

[on edit] Never heard of swedged wheel studs before, even though I restored a Model A Ford way back when. I recalled they had knurled studs as I described above. Just found this site that is a pretty good description. Swedged wheel Studs. I guess I learned something new today also.

I'm familiar with swedging back in my plumbing days as a kid when we used a swedge tool (basically a chunk of cylindrical steel with a tapered section) that we used to expand the end of a piece of brass sink drain tubing so it fit over another piece and we could solder the two together (cylindrical lap joint). Inserted the swedge, tapped it in a bit with a hammer, then tapped around the tubing to loosen it up and pulled the swedge out. Steel pipe welding reducers are also called swedges.