Saturday, September 30, 2017

Rusted/Broken Front Brake Bleeders creating a major hassle

Things were going pretty well. Engine is running great and all driveline mechanicals appear to be working. Bummer is that I cant go anywhere because the brakes are out. I ordered new rubber lines for the front brakes since one was covered with electrical tape and prolly leaking.
When going to install the front rubber lines I noticed the front brake bleeders are rusted and sheared off.
This put a major damper on my project and is creating a big learning curve for me, as I don't know jack about axles/hubs/etc.
So now I am learning about the FC170 front axles/driveline.
A great suggestion from the Forward Forum to get the FC service manual has me heading in the right direction.
Looks like I am going to have to take off/apart the entire front wheel drive assemblies to get the hub/drum off so I can replace the wheel brake cylinders (since they will have new unrusted brake bleeders on them). That pretty much sucks if you ask me. Simple thing like rusted brake bleeders is going to cause alot of work and additional time before I can be on the road. But since I can't drive it without brakes, I really don't have a choice.
I have Warn M2 manual locking hubs on the front axles of the FC.  Best I can tell from online research is that these hubs are very early versions made by Warn when they were just getting the company  going in the late 50's, early 60"s. Not much info on them on the web. 
I have been soaking the entire front hub/wheel assembly in PB blaster and I went ahead and unbolted the Warn hub today. There are 6-9/16 inch bolts on the face of the Warn M2 locker. Getting the bolts off wasn't too bad.
The manual locker did have a little oil in it and I don't know if that oil is leaking past the axle seal or was put there on purpose to lube the little pins in the Warn M2 locker?
No gaskets were placed on the locker faces (which are supposed to be there according to the factory Warn specification) and the washers that are supposed to be tabbed to lock the Warn hub bolts in place were substituted by regular washers by the previous owner. Surprisingly to me, it wasn't leaking oil through to the outside, so I guess that wasn't too bad.
Removing the locking hub body reveals the axle and the interior factory locking nuts. The previous owner had been doing the chisel thing I read about online to get the interior nuts off the inside assembly. Not cool.
Since I don't have the proper interior axle nut socket either (and there were already divets in  the nut from the previous chisel method) I tried to get the interior nuts off with the amatuer chisel method and got them off-whatever. 
I am going to order the right socket so I can tension the bearing assembly properly when I do the final reinstallation.
So now the entire drum/hub assembly seems loose and I could have prolly pulled the whole thing off.
Chickened out cause I don't understand how the bearings are in the housing and how the oil seal works, so I'm at a stop for now.











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