Ulu

What it should say is that a correct camber adjustment cannot be acheived unless the control arms are properly assembled first.

I don't have the Scout in a good place to take photos. There were taken when I was moving the whole jumkyard around last summer. My dad bought this recap as a spare in Phoenix in 1972. It has never moved from the tire carrier since & still holds air. It's been in the sun every day for 42 years. I'll bet I could pop it pretty easily. ;-)

Joe has a '49? IIRC it's the same adjustments as the '47, but I've never done a '49 suspension. Are the late ones different? Anyhow, the caster and camber are adjusted with the upper cam bolt, and both caster and camber change as you spin the cam. You have to find a happy medium in the relative adjustments, because they are not independent adjustments. 180 degrees movement of the cam is the max camber movement possible, and that movement is achieved with one-half a thread movement forward or back, of the caster. If you turn the cam 360 degrees, the camber change is zero, but the caster moves one whole thread forward or back. While you're moving this cam, the steering arms move around too, changing the toe-in. It's like guitar tuning. You have to keep going back to turn the things you've already turned, until it all comes out at the same time. Normally, none of this should be changed until you've made sure the springs are all OK, and the rear axle is square and centered in the frame. (Sometimes called a thrust angle alignment or rear axle alignment.) You can't get a good thrust angle alignment if there's a sagging spring or worn silent block, and you can't get a good front end alignment until the rear is correct.

I was going to get those same ones, but I need them outdoors & so I wanted iron wheels. I bought them to move the Scout around because the rear brakes are frozen.

That phone recording was pretty amazing. I don't know what this originally cost to have done, but I know it wouldn't be worth my time to picket some small business. I'd feel I was throwing good money after bad. Here's the thing that keeps coming to my mind. When ever you paint something over any old paint you take a chance that it will fall off because over time paint sucks up contaminants and you don't know what they might be. Truck beds are the worst, because all kinds of junk gets spilled in them, and the paint in them never gets waxed to protect it from the elements. If I was spraying bedliners in used trucks for a living, I couldn't possibly warrant my work unless I was stripping the metal bare. I've met several painters who feel the same.

Both of my bumpers are straight, but have peeling chrome with nasty rust like this: I can strip this, but what do I do with the chrome gunk once it's stripped off? I've stripped a couple tiny chrome objects, but I don't want to make a bunch of toxic metal waste. I will be sending these out I think.

The steam can make the brakes drag, making more steam. But the steam is compressible while brake fluid is not. That's why water in the system will cause the pedal to fade dramatically. When you push the pedal, the steam compresses and the fluid doesn't see full pedal pressure at all.

Don't say that! He said he "drove it out to Stone Mountain"... I remember buying a used car for my daughter, and I warned her not to drive it in the mountains. She was unfamiliar with the car & I hadn't changed the brake fluid yet. Sure enough she did it & she boiled the fluid & lost her brakes. She ran the car up on a stone wall that kept her from a very steep drop off The General's Highway. Heat from the shoes and drums is connected by a path of solid steel, right to the brake fluid. You think it's not gonna get hot? Boiling brake fluid is more common in humid climates though, because it's a function of water contamination. Here it's so dry it rarely happens, but that car probably hadn't had the fluid changed in over 10 years. 2 years is the recommended life of brake fluid. If you have the master cyl under the floorboards and the cap gasket is missing, you can get a lot of moisture in the system. I'm not sure this is the problem--maybe his master cyl is weak/sticky, but I wouldn't discount the possibility until I'd bled out the system in a glass jar & checked for water. I suppose his initial setup could be way off, so the shoes aren't making a good square contact. And thus rapid wear of the small surface that is making contact would require frequent adjustment. It is a bit tricky to set up these brakes. I made a simple gauge to do mine after seeing the photo of the official factory tool, and that makes it a breeze.

I changed my silent-block bushings on the car. I took the bolts out, let the axle down a little, then did one side at a time, using a big steel pipe nipple with a thick washer tack-welded on one end, a big greasy bolt and nut, and an old socket. Anyhow, one big wrench and an air impact gun rattled it right out. I just drew the socket through the spring eye, pulling the block into a pipe stub . Reverse the whole business and pull the new one in.

The pitting is pretty bad, plus that one looks stretched to me, but that's a forged bolt. They're not as uniform as a bolt where just the head is forged. When you re-use a bolt you don't know if that bolt has ever been over-torqued.

You can unbolt the muffler completely to test this, if you think it's clogging up. That can and does happen.

If you have a hard pedal then 100 miles later it gets soft it sounds like moisture in the system. When you drive the car it heats up and expands into steam. When you step on the pedal the steam just compresses and the shoes don't move enough. Suddenly the brakes get soft and very weak. If it's just air in the lines without much moisture, the pedal would always be soft. If it's just adjustment the pedal would always be firm and low. It can always be a combination of the things though. My suggestion is to back-bleed the brakes. This will usually force air and moisture out of the master cylinder all over the floor. A catch pan is suggested.

Rusty muffler syndrome. They can look fine on the outside and be crumbling on the inside. One day a whole baffle tube will let go and you'll think the tailpipe just fell off the car when the noise level jumps up.

I had one build like plyroadking shows above. It cost me $300 in 1985. Worth every penny, and the whole thing was less that the cost of an OEM pair of trunnion joints with cups and gaiters.

Yeah, you're not going to get an exact angle by measurement and calculation. A direct reading gage is the way to go. I just have a cheap magnetic gage from Master Mechanic but it works. you put it on the end of the hub after removing the dust cup. But if you ignore tire squat and have the wheels as straight ahead as possible, you can get a pretty close answer by measurement.

I wonder how all those chips got in my old hammers? ;-) Anyhow, I think a ball-pein is too round. I hit mine with a deep socket turned backwards. BTW, my ground strap was attached at the same location as Don shows above.

Headbolts usually stretch though the top couple threads (the un-engaged threads) and you can detect this if you measure the threads with a dial caliper. The thread diameter will literally shrink. The pitch will increase.

Tell me how tall the tire is, then it's a simple calculation.

I personally would sand the whole bed before spraying this stuff. I think it may have peeled because it was applied over old chalking paint.

I've sandblasted a few things. I got to run a 600 HP blaster once, after-hours at a local steel fab co. I sandblasted the Scout chassis back in 1973. Even with a 100 HP compressor it took all day, used a lot of sand and air, and I had to shovel up all the sand when I was done. Electrolytic de-rusting has its drawbacks, but it's happening right now while I'm at work. It's slow, particularly outdoors in cold weather, but it's also relentless. There's not much cleanup, and I'm not buying gas or sand. I'm using less current than one 100 watt light bulb. The chassis of Edith is getting sandblasted, but I'll hire it out. Right now I'm de-rusting the wheels for the trailer I'll build, to get the chassis to that blaster.

Nice brake there! I scored two heavy duty car dollies last night for $10 each. They're dirty, but otherwise quite serviceable. I guess you don't put many miles on these things.

OK, I got the third tank up. It's the 55 gal barrel in the foreground. This was an orange juice barrel (free from a friend) before I sliced the top off with a skilsaw. You can also see the 32 gal blue drum in the background, and the 27 gal tan bin on the bench. They're all about 3/4 full & running 24/7. I have these hooked in parallel, to one 12v charger and it pulls 4 to 6 amps depending on the temperature and how clean the anodes are. <EDIT> Hah! Lots of junk in that photo. That big lump under the silver cloth is my buffing wheel. Under the bench are my old blue toy chest, which is 53 years old now. The silver one it sits on is on casters, so I can roll these around. My dad built this in 1964 as a footlocker, from GI plywood he scored, while stationed near Dong Ha Vietnam. He was a forward traffic controller at some tiny radar station.

I've always used a light sealant like Permatex, but if you use an epoxy like JB Weld, will the things ever pop out if the block freezes?