Brake Backing Plates

November 9, 2020

Alright, work continues. 

OK, if I'm honest, 'work' consists mostly of hanging out in the garage, staring at stuff and shifting a few things around. It's not that I'm lazy, per se, but that these things need time, careful thought and deliberation. You can't just pick up the hobby of restoring crusty old trucks without a substantial investment in learning and changing your thinking. I've said before and I'll say again, this kind of thing is entirely new to me. It's likely I'll end up either in a tree, on fire or with permanent lung damage if the whole truck doesn't manage to fall apart first time I try to drive it. 

IF I even get the thing finished. 

Whatever. I dug a box of parts out of the basement, where they've been languishing for the past few years curating an excellent collection of spiders, and took a look. 

This is one of my brake backing plates. Looks OK, I thought. I can strip some paint, clean 'em up, repaint and away we go.

Removal of the wheel cylinder was straightforward. Just two bolts! The brake pad stand-off pins (or whatever they're for) as you can see went similarly well. I'm not sure if I'll ever get the locknut off of the little threaded parts, but we'll look at that later. 

However, I ran into a snag. I can't get the adjuster plates / parts off. It seems to me that since there are bolts going through to the adjusters, you *should* be able to take them off.  Right? Otherwise why would there be bolts there? I even looked in my shop manual and the adjuster mechanism definitely comes off in the diagram. But, after some effort with a hammer and a block of wood, nothing wanted to move. OK, guess I'll leave that for later, too.

Of much greater concern, I think, is the state of the wheel cylinder mounting point:

Are there supposed to be nuts basically tack-welded into place at the top of the plates? Surely not. Could someone have used the wrong wheel cylinders and just made new 'mounts' for them to fit? 

Here's what the wheel cylinders look like:

I guess they look normal. I should really take a look at the wheel cylinders I have purchased as replacements, though, and see if they're the same size. I wonder what these are from? They look to be in decent shape, outside of a little surface rust. 

Looking at them, then, with the recalcitrant adjuster mechanism and welded-on nuts I suspect that these backing plates are kaput.

Well, let's keep going through the parts box I brought up. It contains wheel flanges, axles / halfshafts, some bolts... Outside of the missing consumable parts I have, it should be everything I need to bolt on to the rear axle.

I took a look a the stub axles off the truck and they're... probably no good:

I realize I can replace the distance pieces, so the grooves in the one that's visible can be repaired. However, the stub axles themselves are looking a little munched up. Not on the bearing surfaces, mind, but sufficiently munched up elsewhere that they might not be worth keeping. I have some spares from one of the other axles I bought, anyway, that are in better shape internally. I'll probably clean those other ones up and attempt to work with them going forward. No yellow paint to remove, at least. 

Also, if you'll remember from my last post, I munged up my differential input flange when I hammered the mud shield back on to it. I pulled another input flange off of one of my spare diffs. Unfortunately, it's pretty pitted. I'm not sure it's serviceable. 

Really beginning to regret not replacing those jaws in the vise with something made of aluminum. Not having done so, and not paying very close attention when refitting this part leads to another thing to add to the parts list.