The Stovebolt Site Forums The Shop Area Engine Shop Clutch & Brake pedal shaft bushings

Is there some trick to getting the clutch & brake
pedal shaft bushings to fit over the shaft? I
bought a set of bushings from Jim Carter and
they are pretty thick. So I've been trying to
hone it out with a 1" Flex-Hone(has the abrasive
balls)and have worn out the tool. The bushing
opening is still to small. Before I buy another
one I thought that maybe I'm missing something
on how to install these bushings? I even thought
of turning down the shaft or is there a company
that sells the bushings the correct size so that
I don't have to hone it out? Anyone been thru
this before?

I also bought a set of bushings to rebush the the pedals. Before if pressed outthe old ones I was looking at the existing ones and noticed many differences. No hole for the grease and no scored lines for the grease to lube the shaft. I talked to Bob Adler about this and he said that he has never been able to get the new bushings in with out crushing them. They are a very poor fit and if you could get them in they would have to be reamed to fit the shaft. He said if the pedals are a very poor (sloppy) fit he just looks for another used set that fit better. Mine were not to bad so I left them as they were. Robin Wise

I would mic your cluch/brake shaft and then take the pedals to a machine shop and have them ream the bushings to fit.

I recently installed these brake and clutch shaft bushings on my '54 GMC and it was quite a job. I was able to insert the bushings into there respective pedal assemblies without much problem. I then marked the one bushing through the grease fitting hole and removed bushing with a bushing installation tool,so that I could drill the grease hole in the bushing. Once the bushing is installed back in the pedal assemblies they need to be reamed out with a bushing reamers until they just fit over the shaft. This is much easier said than done. The hand reamer set I was using was an antique set that my wifes grandfather bought probably before my truck was even built. I thought I have these bushings reamed out in a jiffy. Both bushings took me 6 or 7 hours to do. First problem I had was the bushings tended to spin inside the pedal assemblies, so the first thing I had to do was again remove the bushings strike the inner surface with a punch at 12, 3, 6, 9 O-Clock positions on both sides and reinstall the bushings with a bushing installation tool. That worked well for the bushing w/o the grease fitting hole. For the bushing with the grease fitting hole I had to insert the proper sized tap into the grease fitting hole of the pedal assembly and just into the hole of the bushing I had drilled out earier to keep it from spinning inside of the pedal assembly while I reamed it out. The reaming process was painfully slow, only able to remove ~1/64" with each pass (if that). One pass of the reamer took at least 30 turns to pass the reamer (~10") through the bushing. Then you readjust the reamer and run her through the process again and again and again........and again. I had to use two different size reamers to get to the right size for the shaft. When I first started I was saying I love these reamers this is slick, later that day as it getting dark and I thought my wrists were going to break I had another opinion about these @#$%& REAMERS! But they worked fine and the job is now behind me, so what if it took all day to ream two bushings and took me a week before I was able to use my wrists again due to tendonitus. My recommendation is to either live with your old bushings if they are not too bad or pay a machine shop $20-$30 dollars to do it for you. Good luck with your project.

Thanks guys, I decided to take it to a
machine shop. They said they would do it for
$25. After working on them for several hours
and reading the great time Jim had, it was an
easy decision.

51jimmy,
Though one always want to save $$, going to a machine shop can sometimes save you tons of wasted hours, aggrivation & the possibility of you accidently ruining something. Throwing the machine shop these little $25-30 jobs is a way to get your foot into their door for when you need them to do a big job.

I was thinking about doing my bushings until I read this thread and will now consider a machine shop after I take everything apart and assess the situation.

I took my assembly to a machine shop. The machinist showed me that the original bushing was steel with a brass insert. The new bushings are just brass and they replace only the brass, which is very thin. In addition, they are the type made out of pressed powder, I think that they are called sintered. He also explained to me that they do not have a lot of strength when made out of that material. He may remove the shaft and turn it down as a solution.

Bushings...what a [censored]. I would guess that the shafts get worn funky too. Nice new round bushing with a trapezoidal shaft..shafts are a [censored] too!


Stuart

Wow, a question I asked back in Nov. of 2003 and still getting resonses. I had forgotten about this one. I hope you guys found it useful. Cecil............

Yes it was a very useful discussion. I just had to add some more details for others who will go through this.

Just found this post while looking for a "how to" on the pedal bushings. Mine have developed 'the squeak that lets the neighbors know you're leaving the house', and I ordered bushings some months back for later replacement. Although some other guys had mentioned a while back that I should 'just let it squeak' and "I like the way my old truck sounds when the pedals squeak", I thought, "Nah! I'll go ahead and change them! The shot of grease in the fitting doesn't seem to help any, so how hard can a couple of bushings in a removable assembly be??" Well, this post has answered that question for me, and I believe I'll just leave those new bushings in their bag and let the old truck squeak away. Thanks for this post. Another good thing about these trucks (and this forum) is that it doesn't matter how old the posts are, the trucks and their quirks are always older, so NO post is ever too old!