bkahler

Yes, the plunger needs to be shortened. I probably have a sketch somewhere, I'll see if I can find it.

The guy makes the cab look small!

That is probably the 110 freeway heading north. N Figueroa St is not a very long stretch of road. The 110 heads northeast from there to Pasadena passing the Dodger stadium along the way. 15 years ago I drove that stretch of road many times and I never saw any 55-57 Chevy's or Ford's on the road 😁

The choice of parts depends on which donor rear axle you choose to go with. I ended up using a Dana 44HD-A rear axle from a 1997 Jeep Grand Cherokee with 3.73 gearing and disc brakes. It was the first one I found that matched my criteria. Changes involved removing all of the old perch mounting hardware and adding new replacements. For the most part, after getting the new perches set up correctly it was a drop-in replacement. You can read about my rear axle conversion here.

The brake switch is installed in the brake line T under the drivers side frame rail. There originally was a T there but I replaced it with appropriate sized openings for the new brake lines.

Here's a picture of the MC installed with the adaptor plate and a picture of the plate I used as a pattern. The adaptor itself is 1/2" thick aluminum plate. The plate can't be any thicker as there would be a clearance issue. When bolted in place the backside of the MC is about 3/16" from the steering gearbox.

The adapter was to adapt the MC to the bell housing. It's nothing more than a 1/2" (or thicker) aluminum plate with the appropriate bolt patterns for the bell housing and the MC. I may have a copy of it laying around here somewhere.

There is no single source kit for disc brakes on the Pilothouse trucks. As for the rear axle, I doubt you will be able to find any direct conversion of the original Mopar rear differential assembly. I only made the rear conversion because my original ring gear was cracked in about 10 places. Sourcing an original type replacement was more effort that it would have been worth. The Jeep Wrangler conversion wasn't all that difficult and I was able to find a 3.73 that matched what was originally in my truck. The bonus is having a truck that stops on a dime with little effort

I have front (Rusty Hope) and rear (Jeep Wrangler) disc brakes on my B3 and I used a Dorman MC. Made a custom mounting plate/adaptor and it works just fine.

Why can't they build stylish vehicles anymore?

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder....

That's quite the car hauler. I like it

This past weekend I had a few hours to play around with the truck and I didn't really make any progress with the panel alignment problems. I think I can better articulate the issues now so maybe that will help As a preface, all of the bolts that would allow panel movement are loose. In the attached pictures you can see the front nose is not centered on the frame (as mentioned previously), the drivers side door gap is too small and the passenger side is probably a little large but unfortunately it tapers from top to bottom, getting smaller at the bottom. Something not shown in the pictures are the tops of the front fenders where they align with the middle curve of the door. On both fenders, when the L bracket bolts to the side of the cab (accessed from inside the cab) then fenders are not flush with the door skins. The fenders are recessed an 1/8" to 3/16". It's as if the L brackets need spacers installed. This spot is one of the few where there is no real adjustment other than up/down and forward/back. No in/out movement is allowed for. I would think this means the doors need to be moved inward at the top hinge, but if I do this then the doors don't fit the door openings properly. It seems to me that the fit of the fenders where they meet the doors is the key to getting everything else to fall into place. I believe I understand how to align the fenders up/down and forward/backward but the in/out has me baffled. Tips anyone?!

I wonder how fast that rig was when it was fully loaded

I don't have the running boards installed yet but I'm sure using the trolley jack with some wood to spread the load it should work. Thanks, I'll give it a try