coW52Dodge

I hear you there and rather buy local as well, if given a choice. If it is made in the US, I don't mind paying more for it - it tends to be higher quality and prefer to keep the money here. Thanks again!

Thanks you for that link! I see they have the same 1058X numbers so they must be the ones I need. Appreciate the confirmation, PA.

I'd like to replace my wheel cylinders on my 1/2 ton pilothouse. The truck has 11" brakes in the back with two cylinders on each side, one top and one bottom. I prefer to not go the Dorman route: On replacing all of them not too crazy long ago, I found three are weeping and one is bleeding fluid. They are cheaper but clearly have an issue. I happened to have one of the old Dorman boxes and it tells me they cross to a WC1058X so it leads me to believe that the Raybestos WC10580 WC10581 WC10582 WC10583 are the cylinders I need. However, the vendor sites that have a 'vehicle compatibility check' tell me they won't fit the truck - maybe they all draw from the same database and they are all wrong? I just want to make sure. Could someone tell me what the part numbers are? Thanks! Rem

FWIW, I've seen old rubber hoses cause sticky brake problems like that on different cars. Something to check, in case the other far more likely suggestions are not the problem.

+1! That's class! Looks like some sort of Ironwood, maybe.

I think bare metal can show off craftsmanship, though. A couple of months ago, I was at a cruise at a vintage restoration place and one of the guys brought this beautiful totally-made-from-scratch sports car made out of aluminum. It looked like it was all one piece of sheetmetal or a huge piece of billet that he had machined out. That in itself is something else but, it just having clear coat but no filler, you could see that this thing was super straight with it being impossible to tell where one panel started and another began. That's how well the guy had welded them together. Just stunningly beautiful work.. He said that he would paint it at some point but for now just wanted to show off his work. He was absolutely right because that is an extremely difficult thing to do. Even if his body work isn't that good, to each his own. It is his truck.

Very nice - congratulations! One plus is that you don't need AC with a ride like that..

Even straight wire without being wound around air or a core has some inductance. It has a fair bit of current flowing so likely does create a bit of a field so taking the current away would create some back EMF. I agree that it may be like grabbing at straws a little but it was just a thought since so many people seem to be having issues with their switches. Maybe the old switches are rated at higher voltages so the problem wasn't prevalent. Voltages generated by back EMF can be significant. It would be interesting to measure it by hanging a scope on the switch to see what's going on. One may see some high frequency ringing of decent levels. As far as polarity, measure across the switch but with the brake not applied. With a positive ground and one side of the bulb being grounded, that's the side the bar would be attached to. Not sure if you can identify that wire on the switch so when you're measuring, whatever is more positive, that's what the 'silver bar' side hooks to. My switch has blade contacts, so you may be able to stick it in the wire contact side, before you attach it to the blade. Diodes like this are small, sub dollar so could be worth a try. It certainly won't harm anything.

Striking how many people have problems with switches so it has me wondering.. There's a fair bit of wire between the switch and the bulbs and am wondering whether it is long enough to introduce some inductance. Inductors, like those in relays, when you take the power off of them, want to sustain the current going through them and actually induce a significant voltage spike of reverse polarity in doing that. It can exceed the normal voltage easily by a factor of 10. This effect is called 'self inductance' and there is some of that effect in just wire as well. If just a regular piece of wire is long enough and the current going through it is high enough, it could be that you're seeing a similar spike on the switch contacts when it opens. That could eventually cause the contact to fail because it isn't rated at those voltages. I'm not saying this will solve it or that it even is the problem, but it is maybe worth a shot, if you're going though switches a lot: A common way to get rid of that spike is to put an electronic component called a diode across the contact. You can buy these things at radio shack and are often called "general purpose diode" with part numbers like 1N4001. They look like this: Measure the voltage across the switch while not braking and note which is more positive than the other. Hook the side with the silver bar (left on the picture) to the more positive side and the other side (right on the picture) to the more negative side of the switch. If your contacts now last, wire inductance may have been your problem.

It is hard to say what the voltage across the battery will be while it is charging with modern chargers because they tend to be designed to be constant current sources with some smarts built in. The 'smarts' often does things like checking the battery's health while charging. With most modern constant current source chargers, if you set a smart charger to charge with 4 Amps, it basically drives its voltage up until it measures 4 Amps. Remember your high school physics classes where they discussed ohms law: E=IR where voltage(E) equals I(current) times R(resistance)? The resistance is the internal resistance of the battery. Let's assume that's 2 ohms. If you drive 4 Amps through that, you'll see a terminal voltage of 8 Volts. (2 x 4). It is nothing to worry about: 8 volts is of course higher than your normal operating voltage of 6V but it takes 8V to make 4A flow through a battery that has an internal resistance of 2 ohms. Remember, it is the current that makes the battery charge. As the battery is charging, its internal resistance chances some so the terminal voltage will likely changes as well, causing the voltage to change along with it. That's why it is impossible to predict what the terminal voltage is during the charging process. All that is perfectly okay and it will continue to charge as long as the voltage on the terminals exceeds 6V. Smart chargers 'know' when a battery is fully charged and then stop charging with the full 4 Amps and switch to a 'trickle' mode, where they send a brief current pulse through the battery once in a while - that keeps it charged, healthy and ready to go at all times. I have a couple of inexpensive chargers (Harbor freight and Sears) that all work that way so suspect your Sears charger operates the same way. I'd make sure the battery looks healthy, with no swelling, leaking and such. Follow Merle's suggestion checking and adding to the level, if that's necessary. Make sure the battery's voltage is about 6V. I'd put it in the truck, leave a light on for a bit to let it drain down. It doesn't have to go down all the way but you just want to see if it can take a decent load for period of time without going dead. Maybe run a head light for an hour or so. Then disconnect the ground and try to recharge it again, monitoring that it doesn't get hot. If that behaves normally, you're likely good to go. Edit: please note that the internal resistance is usually a lot lower than 2 ohms - if it was, you could only ever get 6/2=3Amp out of a battery and we know that the max output current is much higher than that. Just used that number because it illustrates the behavior well.

A battery is charged by sending a current through it at some predetermined level, usually 10 percent of its capacity. When you charge it at that level for 10 hours, you end up with a fully charged battery. If you charge at 20%, it will take 5 hours, 50 percent for two hours, etc. Of course, levels like 50 percent are likely not safe. because they can only take but so much current going through it for a given time without heating up. Ten percent a safe level and 5% (2 amps, in your case) is perfectly safe but you charged at that level for too long of a time. The maximum current that can go through it is determined by the battery's internal resistance. Dumb chargers just limit the current by putting a resistor in series with the charge but the smarter chargers are current limited in that they only allow a max current to flow. In your case that is 2 Amps. You did run it at that level for a time longer than normal so more current was allowed to flow while the battery was already charged. That level could have caused a dangerous condition to exists because it releases more than normal levels of hydrogen gas in the process. It could also damage the battery. A battery rated for 6V can't retain a 12V potential so that shouldn't be a problem. Long story short, I'd discharge that battery safely by loading it with a 6V lightbulb for a while and then just carefully recharge it. Keep your eye on it while it is doing that and make sure it doesn't get hot. Maybe recharge it outside or in an area where it can vent well. If it takes about 10 hours to recharge that battery, it should be okay. Edit: Merle's absolutely right about checking the fluid level.

Agree there. The simple red/green/yellow crimps are never very good. Soldering is very good. I use that most of the time as well for one-sies/two-sies wires, along with shrink tubing to protect it. When connecting a small tree of wires, I usually use the interconnects that crimp onto a wire to then slide and lock into a teflon connector body that can be disconnected at will. Those things are crimped and can't be soldered. With some dielectric grease on the connections, they are pretty much impervious to anything.

On the stuff you're not going to see, I used two coats of RustBullet. I pulled the bed off and painted the rear frame, all the braces, bars, etc before putting the bed back on. I replaced my strips with stainless steel. My originals were too far gone. You can get non-stainless strips and just paint them too.

That's a learning tool. It teaches you that it makes very unreliable wire crimps and you'll soon be looking for a replacement with ratcheting and click/stop action.

I ended up buying a nice, heavy, solid stainless shift ball off ebay. It has a half inch coarse thread and it works great. It has a nice weighted feel to it now. My shifter has some serious bling now.