The picture is a bit misleading due to angles of components. The yellow circle is on your brake line. It's a steel tube that goes from a junction block to the wheel cylinder. You can get stock tubing and bend it "gently" by hand. I have tubing benders to do that but if you're careful and don't bend the tube sharply, you can get one to fit by hand. Take your old one with you to get the right size end piece. There are both English and metric lines so be careful.

Now when I said angles were misleading, the angle on the steel brake line matches the other side of the axle tube and the emergency brake cable.

 

Ah, no wonder my brakes can be pressed 30% down before engaging. Thank you so much!

 

You're welcome. One thought, I'll bet your rear brakes could use some adjustment. 1/3 on the way down is now normal for brakes. Well, except when I was racing. Try backing up fairly quick and hit the brakes hard a few times. This is how your self adjusting brakes work. I do it manually with brake calipers when I replace them. If you drive forward a lot and never back up much, the brakes wear but never adjust.

Note, when I drag raced, we would go with all drum brakes and take the self adjusters out. That slight drag would cost a fraction of a second and if you're closely matched, can cause you to lose. Just be sure the driver knows about it or else there are some dirty britches later.

 

Happy Thanksgiving Everyone! Taking the downtime to drop an update on the truck. Did a lot of work over the last few weeks including:

• Replaced leaf springs with new U-bolts.
• Replaced steering wheel with aftermarket steering wheel and adapter
• Replaced oil pan gasket and re-painted pan.
• Installed new headers, had to remove starter and oil filter to install.
• Replaced starter with new high torque, smaller version to clear headers.
• Replaced all four shocks and fabricated new mounts in the front due to the
  old ones rusted out.
• Troubleshoot and rewire fuel gauge to work properly.
• Relocate and mount fuel pump away from headers.
• Replaced rear brake lines and new flex line.
• Bleed brakes.
• Fabricated extended pipes from headers to prevent burning valves.
• Inspected steering column and determined needs new steering box.

New Starter




top: suspension leafs, new ubolts, new shocks bottom: New brake lines and rear shocks

Next its time for body and paint! After that, the interior and full rewire.

 

Happy Friday Dodge Gang,

Another update inbound on the 74 Power Wagon restoration. Initially, my goal was to keep most of the car as-is and just give it a little paintjob. However, as we began working on the truck there was so much oxidation that we decided it would be best to take the bed fully off the frame, realign the frame, sand it down, and repaint and seal to do a full restoration. Last monday, my friends down in Tijuana began the process starting by stripping everything off the truck and accounting for all the little clips and fasteners that are needed to be replaced to complete ($1k worth of fasteners to be exact). Although this approach will be more expensive, the end result will be worth it. We decided on the final color for the truck as well but im going to wait to post here until the big reveal! Question for the community. Are we fans of glasspacks or turbo mufflers?

VIDEOS OF THE PROCESS HERE:

PHOTOS BELOW:

 

Put the mufflers on that give the sound you want. Glasspacks tend to be rather loud. And get louder over a relatively short period of time.

 

Neither, Chambered mufflers. Get a muffler you like sound wise and see if they offer it in stainless. You will never have to replace it.

 

My '96 with the 360 has the Flowmaster 44 system. It sounds GOOOOOOOOD! The main problem is the pipes run under the bed so the spare has to go in the bed as they block the under bed storage area.

 

I’ve found all the clips I need except for these ones. I can’t find them on any of the typical aftermarket sites

 

I haven't restored cars with those clips for years. There are all sorts of clips on those puppies. These are close;

https://www.ebay.com/itm/23477052658...PJYFRZ0Z282F3F

These aren't exactly what you have, but they're close and you can probably poke around and find what you need.