Archives December 2020

Howdy folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. If your truck is anything like mine, and you got a big gaping hole right here where an emblem ought to be. Now, a lot of trucks, especially the ones, well, I mean obviously the ones after, I think it’s ’82 or maybe ’83, I came right off the top of my head, have emblems in the grill just like this. Ford did this for a lot of years up into the present day, and before that, they had the four letters were up here on the hood. But if you’ve got an older truck like mine, then it’s a pretty good bet that your emblem up here is either gone or cracked or faded or terrible or ugly or whatever it is. So today I’m gonna solve that. I’m also going to get some nifty chrome stickers put on my wheel center caps to dress them up a little bit, so that’ll be fun. I’m really looking forward to seeing how it turns out.

On my ’85, the front grille emblem is about six and three-quarters inches, and so I went out and what I did was I found a seven-inch because this actual chrome part back here is about seven inches. I got this from eBay, and I had to go to eBay to get it, but when I’m done, that should just stick right on top of there and dress up a little bit. I got black instead of blue just because I’ve already got some black accents, and I think that’ll stand out a little bit better. So, but what I got to do first is get this old sticker backing plate off of there, and we’ll just use a screwdriver for that. There are a couple of clips back behind here that hold this on. They’re basically impossible to get to by reaching down in here. Now, I’m not going to reuse this piece, so I’m just going to bust it off, and there we go. Now that’s off of there. Very important that you get it clean so the adhesive will adhere correctly. So let me get my… just using some isopropyl alcohol for this. Shines it up real nice. And now this just sticks on. The trick is getting it straight and in the right spot. That looks pretty good. Push that on there and then take off the protective plastic. And there we go, a beautiful new black Ford logo stuck under my grill. Looks almost factory, and it sure looks a whole lot better than that big black hole I had on there earlier. Hey, even matches my license plate.

I got these nice Ford center cap stickers from houseofgraphics.com, and now they’re not sponsoring this video or giving me any kind of a discount or anything. I bought these with my own money. But the reason that I’m highlighting them a little bit is because I looked all over the place for something like this, and these center caps are kind of a strange size. There, let’s see if I can… there we go. The center part here between the ridges is 50 millimeters, which is kind of an odd size, and you don’t make anything that fits that, any kind of a stock configuration anywhere. So I had to go out and find some place that would make them custom, and I actually was working with a different place than house of graphics that does this same sort of thing, but man, they just weren’t very communicative, and I really couldn’t get a hold of them. And they took days to get back to me through an email, and then I finally gave them my phone number so I could talk to them, and they just never got back to me. It was terrible. I got to tell you, house of graphics, I emailed these guys on a Saturday evening. They got back to me Saturday night, and these were in the mail by Monday morning. So, you know, kudos to them for getting this thing out as quick as possible. It’s exactly what I wanted.

Now you see there’s a little bit of a texture on these. What I’m looking for was chrome and then black, and this texture is because of the transfer paper that’s on top here. So that will go away when I peel it, at least I hope it will. And so there we go. They, I only need four, they sent me six, I guess a couple just in case I screwed up. The only thing that I’m not a huge fan of with this is that they’re all sort of on the same sheet, so I’ve got to cut them out. I was kind of hoping that they would be in the actual same size circle as what I’m going to apply them, so I could just like put them on top of the… like I could just like put it on here to verify the fit before I actually peel the backing tape off. But that’s not a big deal. We’re going to figure out how to make it work. First thing I’m going to do is cut all of these out. Well, at least four of them so that I can apply them. I’m gonna keep these two together as my backups. So yeah, we’ll keep these two together as my backups and cut out the rest.

There we go. I got a set of instructions from them, but it’s pretty self-explanatory and pretty simple. And one of the things that they say in any place that you see that sells these kind of things tell you is that you need to make sure that the surface that you’re sticking things onto is extremely clean, as clean as possible. So that’s why I’m going to be using rubbing alcohol, isopropyl alcohol, to clean these off. Keep that on there, let it dry. You could do this while these are actually on the vehicle. I just happen to have my wheels off because I’m doing a brake job right now, so I figure while the wheels are off, that’s a good time to do this because it’d be a whole lot easier to do this with these off the vehicle. There we go, that’s about as clear as we’re going to get. So that’s what we’re going for. So what it says to do, which should be self-explanatory, is to remove this backing paper from the decal. I don’t have much in the way of fingernails, but see if I can get this done. Okay, okay, it should come up with the transfer paper, and now I can kind of see where it’s going to go. I’m going to move you a little bit this way so I can get this closer to what I’m doing, so I can get kind of right over top of it and see what’s going on here. My ability to center things is terrible, so I’m trying to get this as close as I possibly can without destroying the sticker. Okay, well, that’s… that looks like that’s where it’s gonna go, so we’re gonna go ahead and put it down there. Yeah, see, I’m a little off. I’m a little off. We’re gonna see how this goes. Uh, okay, now I got a couple extra of these, so if I’m not happy with this, I can always do it again. I got quite a few bubbles in there. It’s not great because I got a lot of bubbles in there. You can see them pretty clearly, but we’re gonna do another one and see if I can get any better at it. And if I have to come back and redo this one, I can. This time I’m going to start down here and push up this way with my finger. Much better. Oh, now that one looks like I know what I’m doing. There we go, nice. Now it really doesn’t matter which direction the Ford logo is going, but just want to make it facing me just because it’s nicer that way, I guess, from where I’m sitting. The hard part is lining this up inside the circle. Oh, nice. And the instructions say when you pull it, you pull it back like this, not up. Beautiful, stuck down all around the edge. Oh man, that’s nice.

So there’s two kind of… and a half. I think I’m gonna redo this one, but we’re gonna see how this last one here goes before I decide to redo this one. I’ve only got two spares. By the way, the first company that I contacted would not give me a spare. Well, I mean, I have to pay extra for a spare. So the fact that house of graphics just sent me two spares for free basically is amazing. And I should note that they didn’t have this particular graphic that I wanted in their stock. I had to specially request it because I wanted specifically a black Ford logo with that oval. I’ll really do this on here and I’ll tell you what I’m talking about. Nice, nice, nice. Oh, I’m so happy with that. So specifically what I asked them for, let me get it up here so you can see it, was the Ford logo in black with the chrome oval sort of outline around it, and then the Ford letters also in chrome. And what I did was I actually found a set of caps online that had that look but were the wrong size, and so I sent the guys at house of graphics a link to those caps and said, could you make me a sticker that would replicate this cap? And within a day, they had this sticker inside their little graphics program on their computer at their place and sent me a screenshot of what they’d done and made sure that I was happy with it before they printed it up. And then I said it was okay, it looked good, and they printed it up and sent me this stuff. So yeah, super happy.

All right, so I’m going to redo this one because I’m not happy with those bubbles, and I’ve got a couple extra, so let’s make use of the couple extra that I have. See if I can get this off of here. Well, they stick pretty good. Now, I do know that chrome in vinyl does not last nearly as long as other colors, especially out in the sunshine, because I’ve had chrome vinyl stickers on vehicles before that just didn’t last very long out in the New Mexico sun, especially. So if this vehicle wasn’t going to be garaged like it will be, then I might be more hesitant to use chrome as a vinyl color. But because I’m keeping it in a garage and when it’s outside, I’ll be having wheel covers on it to keep this stuff out of the sun, I think this chrome is going to last quite a bit more than my other chrome, which I got about a year and a half to two years out of it, but that was on a windshield, and so it was not only was it being battered by the sun all the time, but it was also being hit with wind and dust and everything else.

So all right, let’s see if I can do this better this time. The tricky part is getting it laid inside the circle. Looks like I’m pretty close. Looking not too bad. Looking not too bad. Oh yeah, and I still got one extra. Fantastic! Look at these. Oh, that looks great. So happy with that. So happy with that. I cannot wait to see what they look like on the truck. So I just realized that that last segment that I did was actually out of focus. So, but here’s the final product. Yeah, man, I am so happy with that. That looks so good. I cannot wait to see what that looks like on the truck. Um, so yeah, I’m gonna get these wheels on, and we can see how that looks.

So, well, I gotta say, if you’re looking for a quick and easy way to spruce up the looks of your old truck or car, an emblem is a good way to go. And I’ve really got to tell you that I am super impressed with these cap emblems, and I’m super impressed with the company, house of graphics. Did a fantastic job. They look really good, they were easy to put on, they are super communicative, they got back to me basically right away, and they’re very reasonable in terms of their pricing too. So definitely, if you’re looking for a custom emblem of any kind, any kind of a sticker that goes on your vehicle, pretty much any color you want, make sure you check them out. Like I said, I am not affiliated with them, I’m not being paid by them. I just like to highlight good online companies that take care of their customers and do exactly what they say they’re going to do, and house of graphics is definitely one of those companies. Make sure you check them out. And hey, you know, if you’re looking for a good way to spruce up your vehicle, little emblems, stickers, stuff like that, it’s an easy way to go. It’s just a couple of hours of work, if that, and makes a big difference. So as always, you guys have any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, internet ramblings, stick them below. Thanks again for watching, and we will see you next time.

Howdy folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage. If you’re a one-man band like I am and, uh, don’t have any friends that can help you work on your vehicle, uh, then you need to figure out ways to do things by yourself. And that’s what today’s quick tip is all about because today we’re going to be installing and using speed bleeders for the brakes.

Brake speed bleeders are pretty simple nifty little devices that just replace the bleeder valves on your calipers or on your brake cylinders, depending on if you have, uh, brake rotors or brake drums. My truck has rotors in the front and drums in the back, so I’ve got both calipers in the front and brake cylinders in the back. So I’ve got to get two different sizes of bleeder screws, and that’s what I’ve got here.

Installing them is real simple, so I’ll go ahead and get started. I’m going to be using these flare nut wrenches for this. It’s always a good idea to use flare nut wrenches when you’re dealing with brake lines or brake components. Really, I probably don’t need to use flare nut wrenches for this because these are brand new bleeders on brand new calipers and brand new brake cylinders, but it’s a good idea to get in the habit of doing that when you’re working with brakes anyway.

Make sure you don’t lose these caps when you take them out of the package. Uh, they just go on the end to prevent crud and grime from getting inside. These replacement brake cylinders that I have are 10 millimeter. They just break it loose and take the old one out and then just thread the new one in. Be careful not to cross thread. And there we go, new speed bleeders successfully installed on the brake cylinders.

These calipers are going to be basically exactly the same thing. Again, you want to be real careful when you’re putting these in that you don’t cross thread them. Here you can see two different bleeders: the speed bleeders on the left and the old bleeders on the right. The difference between a speed bleeder and a regular bleeder is that a speed bleeder has a ball valve on the inside. See, when you bleed brakes, what you do is you press the brake pedal to push all the air out of the system along with the hydraulic fluid. But when you release the brake pedal, air can come back into the system because there’s now that little bit of vacuum. So normally you’ve got to have a second person at the brake line to close the valve to prevent air from going back into the system when you release the brake.

With a speed bleeder, there’s a ball valve on the inside that does that for you. So you press the brake and then your hydraulic fluid is flushed out through the brake system. And then when you release the brake, that back pressure causes the ball valve to close, preventing air from going back into the system. That’s why you can do it with one person.

Most often, you’re going to be installing speed bleeders on parts that are already in the vehicle. I just happen to be replacing all of my brake parts, so I can have the luxury of doing it outside the vehicle, which makes it a little bit easier. But really, changing these, even with these parts installed on the vehicle, is not hard at all. These parts are meant to be accessible because you have to bleed the brakes, so taking these in and out shouldn’t be a problem.

Bleeding the brakes with speed bleeders is pretty simple. In most cases, you’ll bleed the brakes starting from the rear right and then going rear left, front right, front left. But check your vehicle manual to be sure. I’m using an old soda bottle and some clear tubing. Install the tubing into the end of the bleeder, tighten the bleeder screw all the way, and then back off one quarter to one half a turn. Now go into the vehicle and pump the brakes. You’ll want to visually see no more bubbles coming out into the clear tubing. Depending on your brake system and the work you’ve done, this could take only a few pumps or several dozen pumps.

I used a video camera to watch the bubbles and then played the video back. Once I saw a video with no bubbles, I knew the bleed was complete. One of the issues I had was that my front left bleeder screw was a bit loose in the caliper, causing air to come in around the threads and making it so that I never got a pump without air. To solve this, I tightened the screw a bit more, probably to about 1/8 of a turn from full tight, and added some Teflon tape to the threads. This allowed me to fully bleed the system, and that’s basically how to install and use speed bleeders.

Man, I gotta tell you that speed bleeders are worth every penny. It’s so nice not having to worry about finding someone to pump the brakes for you while you crack them open and shut them down again to get all the air out of your system. It’s nice just being able to, uh, do it yourself. I know sometimes it’s hard to find someone to help or to get, you know, conflicting schedules together. Especially, I mean, right now, I’m not sure when you’re watching this, but the whole COVID thing is in full swing, and it’s, uh, hard to get people to come by and help you out with projects like this.

So speed bleeders are definitely, definitely worth the money. They’re super easy to put on, they’re super easy to use, uh, they made this brake job that I’m doing on this truck a whole lot easier. Hey, you know, if you want to check out the brake job that I did on this old truck, make sure to check out those videos. I’ll have the links in the description. Uh, it’s all three parts. I did a basic brake check, changed some parking brake cables, I did the entire rear brake redo, and the entire front brakes including hubs and rotors and calipers and the whole bit. So I got videos on all that stuff.

You know, guys, if you enjoyed the video, if you learned something new, give me a like. If you want to see what I’m doing with this truck, make sure to subscribe. As always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, internet ramblings, stick them below. Thanks again for watching, guys, and we’ll see you next time.

Howdy folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage for part four and what I hope is the final part of my brake job special, where I explain what all of these things on this table have in common, which is that their spoiler alert, all broken. Indulge me for a moment, friends and neighbors. I go into a little bit of story time as it pertains to the brakes on my truck.

So I did what I thought was the end of episode three. I had the rotors and the hubs replaced and everything put together. I did what I thought was a pretty good brake bleed and, uh, got the truck out on the road and embedded the brakes, which is to say that I got the truck up to 40, 45 miles an hour and braked real hard down to about five or kind of like a rolling stop. Um, you know, probably five or six, maybe seven times. Um, there’s not really a great road around here to do that on. There’s a lot of traffic right around here, but I managed to get that done and I noticed when I was doing that, the truck pulled to the left a little bit as I was braking. So obviously that’s something we have to look into. But other than that, everything seemed fine. The truck felt good. Uh, the brakes stopped the truck okay. The brake felt firm. I wasn’t having any other problems.

And then I went to try the parking brake and try to get the truck to stop on a hill. So the truck stopped on the hill with the parking brake held going both forward and backward the first time and subsequent attempts for me to check the parking brake as the truck was parked facing up a hill, so rolling backwards, which is the harder because the way drum brakes are designed, it’s actually the harder direction to stop a vehicle as it’s going backwards because of the rotation and the way the drum shoes and stuff are. But anyway, um, yeah, so holding a vehicle facing backwards on a hill is harder and subsequent times I tried it, it began to get worse and worse at holding the truck to the point where it wouldn’t hold the truck hardly at all. So I chalked that up to the cable stretching and figured I’d come back to the garage here to do some adjustment, tighten things up and, you know, take it out again and give another try.

And, uh, one of the times that I was tightening things up and pushing down on the parking brake cable, I felt something go a little loose and I thought, well, that’s weird, but nothing seemed terribly off. The brake pedal still went down and clicked okay, but it never really returned correctly. So it would, uh, it would click all the way down and then when I released the cable, it would pop back up, but it wouldn’t pop back up all the way. And I thought, man, did I just break my cable mechanism or not my cable mechanism, but the parking brake mechanism itself? Is the ratchet not working? Something like that, I didn’t know. And, uh, eventually I got to take a look at it and this cable broke. Now, obviously it didn’t break on the cable itself, but if you look at this thing, you can see right there, there’s like a bunch of plastic all kind of bunched up and nasty right there. Well, that’s this like a plastic coating that’s going around the outside of this steel braided cable and I think that this actual plastic coating snapped inside of here and made it so that I can’t, I can’t even move it like it won’t, it won’t slide in and out right there. Look, this is the new one. Yeah, no innuendo there. And again, this is the old one, nothing, right? Piece of crap.

So this is a Wagner cable. Now, I don’t want to say anything bad about the brand. I don’t know anything about Wagner, but the other cable, my new one is Brake Best, which is the O’Reilly name brand and I think it’s actually Dorman, but I don’t know for sure. Don’t quote me on that, but I think it is because all the pictures look the same as the Dorman model. And look, it’s got this nice little boot on it and there’s no plastic sheath around this cable. It’s just straight braided cable. It slides in and out really easy. So, oh, and also if you watch the first video in the series, this one here, the old one for some reason has this sort of like split loom right here and I kind of questioned why it was like that because the original only had one and that’s much closer to this new piece that I bought, which only has one there as well. So I’m really hoping that this cable works out better, but, uh, I’m also going to use some dry lube on this, I think, just to help it slide in and out a little bit better and I’m probably going to put some dry lube on the cables that are already on there, uh, just to give myself every possible chance of success.

Okay, we’ll take care of that parking cable and try to get that parking brake situation figured out. In the meantime, uh, maybe, you know, I was going back over some of the footage I took of bleeding the brakes and it didn’t look like maybe I got all of the air bubbles out. Now, ah man, when you get down toward the end, some of those bubbles are pretty microscopic and it’s hard to see. Uh, the way that I was doing it, I was using my TV with that, uh, sort of phone streaming software and the resolution just wasn’t really high enough to really see the bubbles. And once I got, um, a helper in here that could push the pedal while I actually watched the fluid flow and then also I could take video of it with my phone and play the video back to see, it’s pretty tedious, but it does work. I could very clearly see some bubbles coming out. So I thought, well, okay, I suppose maybe, uh, that’s the problem that I was having with the veering off to one side, that maybe one side wasn’t completely bled. So I went back to work trying to bleed the brakes and no matter how many times I tried, no matter what I did, I continued to get bubbles. And I’m talking I was out here all day long for one day just pumping the brake and getting bubbles and bubbles and bubbles and bubbles and bubbles.

So my next move was to get a new master cylinder. These master cylinders are not terribly expensive. It’s like 40 bucks, which I know is 40 that you shouldn’t need to have to spend, but I did to get a new one and this one’s a little worn out, so it’s actually not that bad of my, uh, idea to get a new one. And this one’s pretty gunky and stuff. Um, but when I changed my calipers, I let the reservoir pretty much run dry. So to solve that, you really need to bench bleed these and I figured, well, if I’m going to take it out of the truck anyway, yeah, I might as well replace it with a new one. So I got my new one, I got it bench bled, which we’ll see here in a minute and got it put on. So, uh, once that was done and I started bleeding the brakes, I had much better success. I got clean bleeds out of both back brakes and eventually I got a clean bleed out of the front, um, passenger side brake. Took a little bit longer. I think that’s because it was a brand new caliper and there’s a lot of air trapped up inside the caliper internals, but eventually I got a nice clean bleed out of that and then I came over to the driver’s side and began trying to bleed that one and no matter how long I sat there, no matter how much I did, no matter what I did, I just couldn’t get a no bubble bleed out of that front right or front driver side brake left now.

And I knew it wasn’t the master cylinder because if it were the master cylinder, I’d be having the same problem on the opposite side. So it had to be either the caliper or maybe something else going on in there. And so just to be 100% sure, I decided that I was going to look up the torque specs for, uh, the banjo bolt and check to see, uh, if I was torquing it correctly. Torque specs for banjo bolt are about 12 to 14 foot-pounds. This torque wrench goes from five foot-pounds up to about 80 foot-pounds, so it’s a big range and I think, well, I can get it using that. So I started tightening the banjo bolt down and it felt like this should snap and it wasn’t snapping, so I stopped and I thought, well, what’s a good tough bolt that’s right around that area that I could test this on? So I brought this down to the lowest setting, five foot-pounds, and started testing it on this. Now this bolt is what holds the caliper into the knuckle. You remember if you watched the last episode where I actually had the little spring in the clip that goes underneath the caliper that you pound in? And once that’s pounded in and holding the caliper up, this, uh, threads through that into the knuckle to keep that pin system from moving back and forth. I thought, well, you know, it’s a good strong bolt and it’s going in a knuckle so I can, you know, wrench on it pretty tight and not have to worry about it too bad and I’m certainly not going to wrench more than I’m not going to break it with more than, uh, with five foot-pounds of torque. So, you know, I’ll just put this on five foot-pounds and wait for it to break.

And so I put this on five foot-pounds and I turned it and I turned it and I turned it and, uh, yeah, this thing is a piece of spring because I did that with five foot-pounds. No, I had absolutely no idea how many foot-pounds I was actually applying to this, but it was way more than five. So this thing doesn’t work. Now don’t tell me I don’t know how to use a torque wrench because I’ve got several of this exact kind that are just different sizes. As a matter of fact, I use one to torque the lug nuts down for the wheels and it breaks just fine. So I know what I’m doing. This one is just broken to the point where I sheared off this bolt. Now I know you’re gonna tell me that I’m a dumbass because I should have felt that I was applying way more than five foot-pounds, but you know what? I was like, well, this thing’s gotta break at some point, right? And this is a good tough bolt. I mean, you know, should this thing should break like, you know, the clicker should click way before I ever get to the point of doing any real damage to this thing. No, no. So I sheared the head of this bolt off inside the knuckle and I just, oh, that was a rough day, let me tell you. Luckily this bolt, and I’ll get a video of it so I can put it up here on the screen so you’ll see what I’m talking about, but this bolt actually goes all the way through the knuckle and sticks out the other side. So I was able to get a pair of vice grips on the other side of this and turn it from the opposite direction and back it out so I didn’t have to do any drilling. Uh, thank God I didn’t have to replace the knuckle or do anything weird like that. Let me actually have that get that taken care of, but oh, that was, uh, that was a rough day. So this thing is going in the garbage.

So once I got that taken care of, I still hadn’t figured out why the driver’s side front caliper wouldn’t bleed. I just kept getting bubbles and bubbles and bubbles. Well, it turns out probably because I got a remanufactured caliper, which you almost always do, that the threads, the hole for the bleeder was a little loose and there was really no setting where I could screw in the bleeder far enough to prevent air from leaking in around the threads as I was bleeding, but yet still be far off enough out to actually bleed the line. Now I managed to get there just by having it really tight and just barely getting any fluid out by pumping the brake, but I was able to do that and, uh, verify that there was no more air coming out in the pumps that I was making. So I’m pretty happy with that, but I even wrapped some Teflon tape around the speed bleeder just to try to get it tighter in there so that no brake fluid would leak out around the threads and no air would come in around the threads because, you know, if you got air coming in around the threads of your bleeder while you’re trying to bleed the brakes, then you just have air bubbles going through the line constantly because they’re coming in through that bleeder connection and now they’re not actually in the line. They’re not going from the master cylinder down to the caliper, you know, but they are coming in around that bleeder then going back up out through your hose. Man, I must have went through like, God, 64 ounces or more of brake fluid. Now I kept recycling it because it’s all brand new stuff, but man, that was a pain in the ass. And then once I finally figured out that that’s what it was, it was like hallelujah moment.

Now the agenda for today is to replace that parking brake cable. I got video of where I replaced the master cylinder, so I’ll show you that and bled it on my, uh, my bench. So maybe we’ll take a look at that and once all that is done, then I’m gonna put the wheels back on and take her out for a drive and hope and pray that everything works fine and that the parking brake holds me on a hill because that is the entire reason I did all this stuff in the first place. And I will be damned if I’m not going to solve that one problem for this parking brake cable. The first thing that I’m going to do this time is put some dry lube in there just to help keep things moving along. I’m using dry lube as opposed to like white lithium grease or something else because underneath the vehicle, a lot of grime and grit can get up in there and you want to be dry so it doesn’t attract any more dust and dirt than you have to. Hopefully this will help this slide a little bit better. This cable looks different than the other replacement cable that I had because the other replacement cable had a plastic sheath that went around through this over this steel braided part and this one doesn’t appear to, or if it does, it’s really, really thin, which is fine by me. Either way, I’m just gonna go ahead and lube it up then I make sure this cable moves nice and free.

If you watched the first video in this series, then you know how this goes. Basically just install the cable onto the parking brake mechanism, run the cable down through the front of the cab of the truck underneath, clip it in, run the cable across to the linkage, hook it up, and then, uh, bolt your mechanism in. So I’m not gonna go through that whole thing again on camera. If you want to see how that works, go check out the first video in this series where I take it all apart and put it back together.

I have to admit that I wasn’t originally planning on replacing my master cylinder, but when I did my front calipers, a lot of the brake fluid ran out and the master cylinder actually went dry on me. It could be possible for me to bleed all the brakes even though this cylinder has gone dry. As a matter of fact, I’ve actually already tried to go around and get all four sides bled without having air in the system, but I haven’t had a whole lot of luck. So I’ve decided to take the master cylinder off and bench bleed the master cylinder since I’m going to have it off and go through the entire process of bench bleeding. I’m just going to replace it because I don’t know how old this one is. I don’t know when the last time, uh, it was replaced or, uh, if it’s in good internal working condition. I mean, it seems to be, but you know, I’m very much of the camp that if I’m gonna go through all the trouble of taking it off and bench bleeding it and going through all of that, then I may as well replace it with a new one. Um, this one here is an OE, it’s aftermarket anyway, so I’m not, looks like I’m not replacing an original Ford part or anything. And that way I know when it was last replaced and, uh, should be good to go.

So I’m gonna go ahead and get the fluid out of here as much as possible, disconnect this and, uh, get the new one on the bench and start bleeding. First order of business is getting all the brake fluid out of my old master cylinder and I’ll do that with this metal turkey baster looking thing that I actually picked up from a garage sale and just an old pop bottle and the rest I’ll just let drain out when I disconnect the brake lines. So now the brake lines are disconnected. Now I can disconnect it from the brake booster. So this is a 14 millimeter. It’s pretty tight. There it goes. Um, so there we go, old master cylinder removed. Here’s my new master cylinder. Picked it up from O’Reilly’s, it’s about 40 bucks, not too bad. Um, I think it’s the same as the store brand that you get probably at Advance or AutoZone or any of the other major parts places. It’s just a store brand. It’s basically exactly like what’s coming off the truck. Um, the only disappointing thing is that this said that it came with a bleeder kit and it didn’t. What it came with was a couple of plugs, right? Just like this, nothing to it, just a plug that I guess you could kind of use to bleed it, but I don’t want to do that. I want to actually try to bleed it the right way. So I modified the plug by adding a hose to it. I just drilled a hole through and stuck a hose in there. I had some clear hose or another brake bleeding kit that I had and that’s going to work perfect for me because, uh, just to make sure I don’t cross thread this, right? But I’ll get this in here good and tight. And I also happen to have a couple of, uh, infants. So let’s see, there we go, come on. So, uh, apparently this is good for infants, acetaminophen or brake fluid because this will go right on the end of one of these hoses and I can squirt brake fluid in there up through there to get all the air out. So that’s what we’re gonna do. Brand new container of DOT 3. This, by the way, is called bench bleeding because I’m on a bench. You just want to put this in a vise, get it nice and level and, uh, the reason you want a device is so you can have a lot of pressure pushing in on this cylinder in here and I’m just going to use a brass punch for that when the time comes. But the first thing I’m going to do is try to get all the air out of here by injecting brake fluid into these hoses. Now a lot of these kits come with syringes. Well, the brake bleeder kits come with syringes and they’re going to be a lot bigger than this, so this may take me a little while with this little infant acetaminophen syringe, but we’ll see how it goes. Oh yeah, see the air comes right out of there. I’m just going to keep doing this until no more air comes out. It may be a while this little syringe. Oh, that seemed like there was some fluid right there at the end. Yeah, we have a little fountain going on there now. Okay, so then I think that this side, well, there’s a little bit of air still coming out of there. Let me do one more, oop, and see. I’m actually pushing some air in because when I let the syringe go, some air actually comes back into there. So I’m gonna actually bleed this the opposite direction too by pushing in on my cylinder, but I will do that after I get most of the air out this way. Now that didn’t take nearly as long on that side. Okay, that’s much smaller. Okay, now that I’ve got that mostly done, let me get my, uh, little makeshift clamps here, just enough to hold that on if I can get it. You know, this is much harder on camera. Like when I do this by myself as a test, this stuff just goes right together and as soon as I’m rolling, it’s like, no, no, it’s going to be the most difficult thing you’ve done all day. There we go. Oh, that one worked. All right, so we’re going to top it off. Okay, now I’ll be looking into these hoses for air bubbles as I work the cylinder and you want to be gentle with this because the more you agitate this, the more likely you are to introduce air. Okay, so one of the problems I’m running into is I’m actually sucking air back into the system, so this hose needs to be lower and actually go into the reservoir so they don’t suck air back into the system. There we go. Whoa, that’s what I get for buying cheap dollar store clips. Okay, hopefully that’ll stay. Try this again. Uh, uh, okay, I don’t see any air whatsoever, so I think we’re about ready to try to put this on. There we go. Now for the tricky part. The tricky part is disconnecting these and connecting these back up while leaking as little brake fluid as possible. My flare nut wrench doesn’t seem to be getting any bite on this plastic fitting, so I’m going to just go ahead and use a pair of vice grips for this because I don’t care about this plastic fitting. I can destroy it trying to get it out and that’s fine. I have to make sure it comes out and just getting it loose should be enough. There we go. Let’s be real careful not to cross thread these because that would be a nightmare. Okay, there we go, fully bench bled master cylinder installed. Now it’s time to hit the road once again to see if I fixed the problems from my first go-round. I certainly hope so, but we will see.

Here we are back on the road again. Now you didn’t see any of my original footage for the first time that I did my test drive because it didn’t go so hot. I’m hoping that this time is going to go better. So all I’m doing now, since my brakes are already bedded, I don’t have to worry too much about getting up to a high speed and then slamming on the brakes to transfer the pad material onto my rotors or the, uh, shoe material onto my drums. All I’m testing this time is to make sure that the brakes feel good, they’re not spongy, and that they stop me appropriately and that I don’t veer side to side when I hit the brakes. Come up to a stop sign here and we’re going to see how this goes. Hopefully I don’t veer one side or the other and no, no veering side to side. So, uh, we’re actually at the stop sign now and that seemed to work pretty good. So what that tells me is that I’ve solved that issue where I veer side to side and almost certainly the problem there was that my brakes weren’t properly bled and I’ll talk a little bit more about that at the conclusion of the video.

Let’s do one more here. I got another stop sign coming up. Hopefully the fuzz isn’t anywhere around here because I’m going a little bit fast, but we are out in the county, so should be all right. And no, feels good. And now the time has come for my other true test: parking the truck on a hill and seeing if the parking brake holds me. Now I’ve got a specific hill in town that I use for this test because it’s actually in a parking lot and doesn’t have a whole lot of traffic. So let’s see how we do. All right, I’m facing down the hill and I’m not moving, which has never been a problem. It’s always been a problem facing up the hill. So let’s see how that goes. And up we go, parking brake applied and foot off the brake. And as you can see, the trees in the background aren’t moving and that’s because I’m not moving and the truck isn’t moving either, which is fantastic. I’m very happy to report that this second go round has been an unqualified success. My braking performance has been fantastic. I don’t veer either left or right when braking hard and maybe the most important thing as far as I’m concerned is that my parking brake is fixed. That’s right, ladies and gentlemen, I can now hold my truck on a hill both forwards and backwards. Oh man, that feels good. 85 F-150 Bullnose brake job special in the can finally. Man, that took me longer than I expected. It was like a month that my truck was laid up in this garage. Now that’s because I have a full-time job and a couple of babies in the house, so I don’t have as much time to devote to the truck as, you know, I’d probably like. But that’s okay, we get things done at our own pace.

As I go through this stuff, this is lessons learned right here. If you hear me repeat something I’ve already said, that’s because I’m an old guy and that happens to me and you’re just going to have to deal with it. Okay, so like I said, a 85 F-150 brake job special lessons learned. Go when you’re braking a vehicle and it’s drifting to one side or the other, hopefully and probably that’s because you didn’t bleed the brakes completely. At least that’s what you hope it is because if it’s not, then that means that it’s probably either a bad caliper or it could even be bad steering components in there somewhere. Although I wasn’t terribly worried about the steering component thing simply because I wasn’t having that problem before I took the truck out for a drive or changed any of the brakes. So I was pretty confident that it was either the caliper or it was the brake fluid and I was hoping it was the brake fluid and it turns out that it was because I got the truck finally bled correctly and that problem went away. So that is fantastic. I don’t have to replace my calipers again.

So, and we’ll talk a little bit about brake bleeding because that was a whole experience in and of itself that I didn’t expect, but we’ll get there. So the parking brake cable, I was very surprised that the Wagner cable broke as easily as it did and didn’t seem to work very well even when it wasn’t broke and maybe it was defective from the beginning. I don’t know, um, but I will tell you that the Brake Best, aka I think Dorman cable is way better. Man, that truck feels so good when you put the parking brake on now and you know, park down a hill. When I put the parking brake on and ratchet that thing down, it feels so solid. It has never felt like that since I’ve owned the truck, so that is fantastic. Definitely recommend that brand, Brake Best. I’ll put a link in the description to where I got that cable. Um, yeah, definitely, definitely a much better cable than the Wagner cable. Sorry, Wagner, you know, I got nothing against you, but that cable was just terrible.

So, uh, back to the, uh, the bolt that snapped, right? And the little torque wrench debacle that we had. Look, I know that you probably think I’m a dumbass and I probably am a dumbass, but not because of the torque wrench. The, well, okay, partly because of the torque wrench, but not because I don’t know how to use a torque wrench. Okay, so I know how to use a torque wrench. Uh, my problem was that I tested the torque wrench on a bolt that was installed on the truck and I should not have done that. What I should have done was tested the torque wrench on a bolt that was mounted somewhere in my garage, either maybe on the vise or maybe, you know, welded to a piece of metal or something that I knew if it busted, oh well. And, uh, something that I could really, really wrench in like a hundred foot-pounds or more on and not have to worry about it breaking. Um, testing that on the truck was stupid because obviously if the torque wrench is broken, which this one was, you run the risk of snapping a bolt, which I did. And, uh, you know, but you know, to be fair to myself, I didn’t expect that torque wrench to be broken that badly. It was brand new. I had just taken it out of the package. So, uh, that said, if you guys have the recommendations for a good torque wrench, let me know. I’m definitely in the market for it. I was never going to use the Harbor Freight torque wrenches to build my engine. I know better than that. I’m going to use a better name brand, but, and I was going to wait until I was building the engine to get that. But now maybe, uh, you know, that I’ve thrown that torque wrench away, I probably ought to go ahead and replace it with something much better. So, uh, I don’t know that I have the cash for a digital version. I don’t even know if a digital version is necessarily better than a click stop version, but, uh, you know, debate that, that would be great, uh, to find out you guys’ thoughts on that.

Now on to the bleeding, which turned out to be a way bigger pain than I ever expected it to. And I think the reason is because I let the master cylinder run dry. Uh, the master cylinder ran dry because I took the brake lines off the calipers in the front of the truck and just sort of let them leak into a bucket, which, you know, ran the master cylinder dry. And then of course I cleaned it out thinking that, uh, you know, it needs to be cleaned, so we’ll clean it out and fill it with new brake fluid. But the problem is that when you do that, air gets into the nooks and crannies of the master cylinder and really it’s, it’s possible to bleed that entire system from scratch on the vehicle, but really you need to take the master cylinder off and bench bleed it because that is so much easier and the master cylinder is not hard to remove. So that’s definitely a good idea to do that. And of course, since I was taking it off anyway, I figured I may as well replace the whole master cylinder, which I did. And once that was done and bench bled and reinstalled in the vehicle, those rear brakes bled right away, like within five pumps all the air came out and they were good to go. So that was a very good validation that I was on the right path to take care of this bleeding problem. The front right bled fairly quickly. It took a little bit longer, maybe 25, 30 pumps for that, but I’m guessing that’s probably because of the calipers brand new. There’s some nooks and crannies in there and, uh, you got to get all of the air out. And then of course, the driver’s side front is a whole other story altogether.

One thing to note about bleeding brakes, which was very frustrating, is that you’ve got to get all the air out. I kept getting all these little micro bubbles like the, you know, the carbonation in a Coke bottle or something. Uh, that’s the kind of size bubbles we’re talking about and they just kept coming out no matter what I did. It was very, very frustrating, but you got to get those out because if you don’t, over time, they could coalesce into a much larger bubble which can get in there and cause sponginess and responsiveness issues. You just don’t want that. So try to get, well, not try and get all the air out of your brake lines. Uh, that’s important.

Now the issue that I was having with the front left is that I knew I had to get all the air out and I just kept getting air in the lines every single time I would pump the brake and it began to get really, really old. And of course the reason for that is because I was having air come in around my bleeder screw and no matter how many times I pump the brake, the air would always come in around the bleeder screw and then go back up to the lines and it looked like I never had the brakes properly bled. To solve that, I put Teflon tape around the bleeder. Once I found out that was the issue, that took a couple of days to track that stupid thing down, but once I figured that’s, uh, what the problem was, I put some Teflon tape around it and got it fairly tight in there, but at the point where I could still bleed it, but it was, you know, tight enough that it wasn’t going to leak around the threads and that took care of it. I was able to actually bleed it to the point where it wasn’t leaking anymore. A lot of guys say that you can use grease. If you put grease around the threads of the bleeder’s screw, it’ll prevent air from going in that way. I tried that, it didn’t work for me and it may just because I didn’t use enough grease. I was kind of afraid to get too much grease in there and maybe I don’t want it getting inside and causing some issues inside where the actual brake fluid would flow and that kind of stuff. Teflon tape worked for me. It could work for you to give it a try if that’s your issue. Remember that could be an issue if you keep pumping your brakes and you get nothing but air, check those bleeder screws because man, it took me a couple of days to figure that out and it was like, oh, when I finally figured that’s what it was, ah, that was a huge relief off my mind and I got that thing bled. As you saw, took it off for a test drive, performed flawlessly. It breaks like a dream. It breaks now better than it ever has. Obviously, it, uh, the parking brake works better than it ever has, uh, feels solid, feels good. I’m so happy. It’s nice to have brand new fresh brake system. I know when it was installed, I know how it was installed and I can schedule my future maintenance, uh, based on these, these dates that I know that known good components were put in, you know, that’s important. And I also learned a ton along the way. If I ever have to service my brake system again, I’ll, uh, have a reference other than just the internet and YouTube to pull from. So definitely a frustrating long, but overall good experience because we’re back on the road and better than ever and that’s the way you always want to be at the end of the day. So if you have any questions, comments, concerns, growers, internet ramblings, stick them below. Always thanks again for watching, guys. We will see you next time.

Howdy folks, Ed here. Welcome back to Bullnose Garage for part three of the Bullnose brake job special. Today, hopefully, we’ll be wrapping up with the front brakes. So, I’ve got new hubs, new rotors—actually, it’s one piece hub and rotor—new calipers, new pads, new wheel bearings, the whole nine yards up here. Should be fun getting dirty, packing these bearings, and getting everything back together. So stay tuned.

Just like in the back of the truck, the first thing we’ve got to do is some disassembly. We’re going to start with the brake caliper since that’s the first piece that has to come off to replace anything here. Now, normally when you take off a brake caliper, you would just remove it and then hang it somewhere so the brake line doesn’t get kinked up. A lot of guys use bungee cords or, you know, wire hangers or something like that. But since I’m gonna actually be replacing the entire caliper, I’ve got to remove the brake line completely. So that’s where we’re going to start. This is a 9/16.

Something to note about disconnecting a caliper from a brake line versus a wheel or brake cylinder from a brake line is that there’s not an easy way to cap this connection. The way this works is that this bolt goes through here, actually goes that way, and there’s a hole in the bolt for the brake line or the brake fluid to go through, and then it comes out the end. So when you remove this, that connection inside of here is just open, and there’s not really a good way to plug it. Now, maybe they make something to do that, I don’t know. I’m not familiar with anything, so I just have a bucket here for all the brake fluid to drip into.

On these Bullnose trucks, the calipers are mounted in a sort of unique way, and I’m not sure what all vehicles this mounting system is used on. It’s the first time actually that I’ve ever seen something like this. But there’s this little assembly down here with actually like a little spring in here that pushes the caliper up into this plate, and there’s a plate up top here, like a groove that the caliper slides into. And so this assembly here actually has a spring that holds it in place with tension. So you have to remove this bolt and then pound out this assembly, and I’m just going to use a regular pin punch for that. Just like with the brake line, this is a 9/16.

And there’s the assembly with the spring. There’s not too much to it, and actually with the calipers that I purchased, I got a new set of these, so I actually don’t need to keep these, so they’re going to go in the garbage. And now the caliper should just come off, rotate out, lift up, and slide off just like that. There’s some brake fluid still in there, and of course the pads slide right out of the caliper. You can toss those. This pad here is actually stuck to the back of the rotor here assembly. There we go, that pad comes out.

Now, these calipers can actually be sent back for a core charge. Usually, when you buy a brand new caliper, you’re usually charged a core charge anywhere from five dollars to maybe fifteen depending on where you buy them. And then if you want that core charge back, you send your old caliper to whoever you purchased your new caliper from. I bought my new calipers from Rock Auto, and the core charge is only like five dollars, so I’m not even sure it’s worth the money to send these back. I’m probably just going to go ahead and pitch them.

Now that the caliper is off, the next job is to remove the rotor and hub assembly, and to do that, I’ve got to get this cap here off the front. There’s a couple of different ways to do this. I’m going to show you what I think is the right way to do it, which is just putting a little screwdriver in here and peeling it off little by little. These caps aren’t terribly expensive, but if you do this right, you can reuse the cap. Now, I bought new ones because my cap on the other side is mangled because whoever did that side didn’t take it off like this. So if I clean this up just a little bit, it’ll be much easier for you to see the bits and pieces inside of here, just a little.

So we’ve got this cotter pin here, which holds on the castle nut here, and then behind that, you’ve got the actual spindle nut itself. So first order of business is to take off the cotter pin. Success! Castle nut, and there’s your actual spindle nut. Now, these actually aren’t typically very tight. As a matter of fact, this one here was just finger tight, just barely. And so there’s a torque spec for these, but it’s really low. It’s like ten foot pounds or something like that. So most of the time, when you’re reading manuals or something, that’ll tell you to snug it up, give it like a quarter turn, rotate everything to make sure everything’s seated, and then turn it back so that you’re not too tight. But we’ll go through that when I do the installation for the new hub.

Now this is all cleaned up and taken apart. This should just come right off. Let’s get our old bearing and washer out of there, and off it comes. So this is the hub and rotor that came out. On the back, you’ve got the rear bearing seal, and since I’m not going to save this seal, I’ve got a new one. I just want to pop this off, and as a matter of fact, to be honest, I’m not going to save this hub and rotor assembly either, so I don’t really care what I do to it. I can get away with this because I don’t care about these bearings. And there we go, our bearing and seal.

So in terms of old parts, we’ve got the old rotor and hub assembly, the old seal, the old inner bearing, and the old outer bearing. But these are all being replaced, so in the garbage they go. Obviously, this is my new hub and rotor assembly. I’ve got it turned upside down so the part that faces the truck is up, and these are my new bearings. Actually, I’ve got, of course, you have two. You have an inner bearing and an outer bearing, and then a new bearing seal. Let me show you this real quick because these rotors are a little bit different than I expected because they come with races already installed. So here’s my Timken bearing, and you can see there’s the actual bearing itself, and then there’s the race that comes with the bearing. But if you look, there’s already a race preset into this hub assembly. So what I’m going to do is I’m going to put this bearing down in here and just verify that it seats in there correctly and I don’t have any issues with it. And it seems to seat and fit very well. So because of that, I’m just going to go ahead and use the race that’s already inside of the hub.

Now, I’ve done a lot of research since I found out that these hubs came with their own races, and I couldn’t find anything definitive that said whether or not I should try to remove these races or if I should just go ahead and use them as they are. Because the argument would be that, well, the Timken race is going to be better quality than that race or that the Timken race and bearing are a matched set and that the bearing won’t work as well on this race as it would work on the Timken race. So here’s my line of thinking: getting these races out of these hubs can be a bit of a chore. You have to have either special tools or know how to weld. If you weld a bead around the outside of the race, when it cools, the race can contract and will sometimes pop off. Trying to beat these out with a screwdriver or a punch or something can be a real pain. You risk damaging the hub itself, maybe mushrooming out the ends and causing some issues. I mean, these things need to be pretty clean and straight or else you’ll get some problems with your wheels, obviously. So I don’t know that I want to chance doing that. I’ve never done that before.

As much as I would love to use the Timken races, I think it’s just going to be too much trouble and potential disaster for me to try to get these races out of these hubs. They’re in there pretty tight. Just to do a test, I took a—let me get it—just to do a test, I took a brass punch and tried to see if I could punch out the outer race of this rotor right here. And you can see that the end of this, if I can get it to focus here, I don’t know if I can. There it goes. Yeah, so you can see that the end of this is pretty well hosed. I mean, it’s brass, so it’s meant to be that way, but that’s what I got trying to pound that race out of this rotor hub assembly. So since I didn’t have any luck trying to get it out, I figure it’s going to be way too much trouble trying to get all four races out of both hub and rotor assemblies, and I’ll just go ahead and use the Timken bearings with the races that came with the rotors.

And here’s the other thing too: if these races came with these rotors and these aren’t necessarily the best rotors out there, they’re Raybestos, which is sort of middle of the line. But if they come like this and they’re installed like this on, you know, thousands and thousands of vehicles all over the country, then you gotta think that these races are probably serviceable. And I’m not gonna be racing my truck or doing anything crazy. If I were, then these would probably be drilled and slotted. As a matter of fact, I’d probably convert this whole thing to be two pieces—the hub and rotor assembly would be separate because you can do that. And then that way, you can go out and get a little bit nicer rotors, drilled, slotted performance rotors. And then I’d probably be upgrading the calipers to double pistons and all this crazy stuff if I were going to be racing the truck, but I’m not.

So if I were worried about all that stuff, then I’d probably go ahead and maybe pound these out. But that’s kind of a moot point because if I were doing all of that, I would make sure to get hubs without races already installed. These hubs are brand new and should be pretty clean, but just to be 100%, I’m gonna hit them with some brake cleaner and a clean rag. The important part is inside these bearing races where the bearings are going to go, just to make sure that there’s nothing in there. This should be a fun experience for me. I’ve never packed bearings before in my life, but that’s the next step. If I want to put this rotor and hub assembly onto my spindle, then I’ve got to pack these bearings with grease.

Now, I’m going to use a bearing packer because, like I said, I’ve never done this before, and I want to make sure that I get the job done right. You can pack bearings using your hands, probably with gloves, by rolling the bearings across your palm and getting all the grease inside of there. But like I said, I’ve never done that before. I am absolutely not an expert, so if I can get a tool that will help me ensure that I’m doing it correctly, that’s what I’m gonna do. So this is actually pretty easy to use. Obviously, it’s never been used before, but take a little plunger out, screw the cone off. You put your bearing in there with, obviously, the taper going in like that. Once you got the bearing in there, screw this back on tight, put all your grease down on the bottom of there, put that in, and push down. And as you compress this, the grease goes up in through those holes right there, out through the holes in there, and goes into all the little nooks and crannies of the bearing, at least in theory. We’ll see how well it really works.

I’m using red and tacky grease for this. All the reviews for this grease are very favorable. It’s got all the right ratings, GCLB and LGI number two. It’s got a really high drop point. Project Farm actually did a video using red and tacky grease. That’s really interesting. So if you haven’t seen Project Farm’s videos, you should go check them out. He’s a really cool dude. So we’re just about ready to get rolling on this. Obviously, the first bearing that I’m going to do my packing on is the inner bearing. That’s the bigger one. And then once the inner bearing is packed and good and gooey, then I can take my bearing seal and pop it on here and then pack my outer bearing, flip this thing around, stick it on the spindle, and get everything put back together.

So there we go. Now that looks to be pretty well packed. All right, now it’s off to the races. Okay, now just a little more right here on top just to make sure it’s good and gooey. I’m not going to have any issues here, and now we can put our seal on. And I’m just gonna make sure that it’s good and even here, and I’m just gonna bang it on with a rubber mallet because I’ve never done this before. I want to make sure to use something like a rubber mallet instead of an actual hammer. It gives me a little more leeway in terms of making mistakes.

All right, so the rear bearing is installed, or the inner bearing I suppose I should say. And now we’ll pack the outer bearing just like that. So I’m just going to take a little bit of grease and put it on the spindle just to make sure that there’s plenty of lubrication here. Now take the hub and rotor assembly that’s already got the rear seal and rear bearing, or inner bearing on it, get it on, and we’ll take my packed outer bearing and get it on. Then we’ll take the spindle washer. Now this is actually the spindle washer that came off the truck. It’s been used, but these don’t really go bad, so you can reuse them. The one that I got with my Dorman kit actually is the wrong one, so I’m gonna reuse the one that goes on the truck.

All right, and now our brand new spindle nut. And you get this on there about as tight as you can by hand, and then you rotate your bearing to make sure it’s seated. And so you can turn this a little more. You want to make sure you don’t get these too tight because if you get them too tight, they’ll put a lot of pressure on your bearings, and they’ll wear out. So as you rotate it around, you notice I can tighten it up even more, right? So I’m going to keep doing this until I can’t hand tighten this anymore, which is right about there. And then I’m going to back off just a little.

The last two parts that I need are my new castle nut and my new cotter pin. So the castle nut just goes over top of this like that, and what you want to do is try to find where this is the right tightness. This nut is the correct tightness so that it doesn’t bind your bearings, but it’s not so loose that it really kind of comes off easy. Yeah, right about there. And find where it lines up good with one of the slots in the castle nut, and then you just drop in your cotter pin and bend it up. There we go.

Okay, now that I’ve got this all assembled, I’m going to load it up a little bit more grease, and I’ll put my cap on. That just goes right on there. It just goes right on there. It just goes right on there. It just goes right on there. It just goes right on there. It might take a little bit of persuading with a rubber mallet. There’s always a bigger hammer.

Okay, so I may have gotten just a little overzealous on the dust cap here. So just to make sure that I wasn’t gonna hurt anything, I went ahead and took it off, which I’ll do now real quick just to check to see if this indentation is going to be too deep. And it turns out that it is. Now, of course, besides the beautiful little China label there, you can see where my cotter pin has been digging into the top of the cap, which means that my dent here is just a little too deep. So this cap is garbage, but that’s okay because I have found a pretty neat trick to get my next cap on here without damaging it.

Now, of course, I bought two, one for each side. I’m gonna use my second cap for this side tonight, and then I’ll pick up another cap at the parts store tomorrow so I can do the other side. So let me show you what I’ve come up with. Here’s my other cap, also made in China, of course. And this is a two-inch piece of PVC, and it just so happens that that cap fits right in there, right along the ridge here. So I’m going to use this piece of PVC to pound this cap in. You get it started first, try to get it centered as much as possible anyway. Feels all right. I will use my PVC and see if I can get it on. Beautiful! Simple trick. It’s the best kind.

Now that the hub and rotor are back on, I’m going to give it one final cleaning before I put the caliper and pads on just to make sure there’s nothing on the braking surface that’s going to trip me up later. Here’s something interesting: these are my brand new brake pads, and they came with this hardware right here, which mounts the caliper to the knuckle. It’s that spring that I removed earlier, and this came with the caliper, so actually I have two sets of this little compression spring, and I don’t need both sets. So because I like the color black, we’re going to use the ones that came with the pads.

The brake shoe kit that I got came with this little clip. Oops! This little clip here, and of course, this is the inner shoe here. So the inner shoe slides into these notches just like that, and the clip is what holds it in. So we turn the clip like this, pop it onto the shoe, and then wedge it in there just like that, and then the caliper goes over top of this. Now that the inner pad is already mounted up, it’s time to put on our caliper. Before we put the caliper in though, we want to make sure we put some brake caliper grease on all the metal parts that are going to be touching each other. So where this pad touches the piston on the caliper, and then where this pad here actually touches the caliper on the other side, you want to make sure that you put some brake caliper grease on that to keep things moving smoothly, keep things quiet.

You also just want to make sure when you’re doing this that you don’t get any brake caliper grease on the actual pads or on the rotor surface itself because that will hurt your braking performance. So I’m going to be greasing the caliper rather than the pads because it’s just easier that way. So we’re just going to put a little bit of grease right around the piston. You don’t need a whole lot, just enough to get it coated. And then this obviously goes this way, but then this mounts on there just like that. So all the places where this contacts, especially in these little grooves and things, I want to make sure I get some grease. All right, there we go. Now I can put my pad on, being careful not to get any grease on the surface of the pad. There we go. And now I should be able to mount my caliper, start from the top here.

So there we go. Sometimes it takes a little bit of persuasion. So now I should be able to put in my holding pin and spring down here in the bottom. You just get it until it lines up with this hole for the bolt, and now we’re ready to put in the bolt. This bolt came with the caliper. It’s already got some thread locker on it. If yours doesn’t, it’s probably a good idea. Here we go, one mounted caliper with brand new brake pads. And now to put on the brake line. Now when you get a new caliper, it should come with a couple of crush washers like these. You want to make sure that you put a crush washer on either side of this block. So I want to put one on this banjo bolt, put one on this banjo bolt here, put it through, and then another. And now we can mount it.

And there we go, one front brake assembly completely replaced. I said before that I feel like there’s a right way and a wrong way to take these caps off. I mean, obviously, there’s a right way or wrong way to put them back on, right? But anyway, so this cap has been taken off what I believe to do the wrong way. If you look, let me get a little bit closer. So there you can see the damage that’s been done to this cap, right? Which allows dust and even maybe liquids and stuff to get inside this little gap there. So you don’t want that. And here is how that happens. Since I’m going to replace this cap anyway, I don’t mind doing it this way to show you what I’m talking about. Taking it off with a pair of channel locks, it works. It absolutely does, but it causes all kinds of damage, and it’s just as easy to use a screwdriver and do it right.

Unlike the other side of the truck, the spindle nut on this side is a little tighter than finger tight, so I’m going to use this 27 millimeter socket to get it off. And that was all it took, just a little bit. These don’t go on very tight. Get the washer and the outer bearing out. Now I’m going to reuse this washer. There’s an interesting thing going on. The replacement kit that I got for this nut, washer, and cotter pin actually has a washer that is different than this one. As a matter of fact, not even the same diameter. Now it looks like it might be able to fit, but when you try to put it on, focus, it’s a little bit tight. Actually, on this side, it’s not too bad. On the other side, it was pretty tight. So since these original washers don’t really get a whole lot of wear on them and they don’t really wear out, I’m just reusing the originals.

So, so, so foreign. Well, that didn’t go as planned. So that means we’re having a part four where I talk about lessons learned and reinstall this brake cable again because this one busted. Talk about this lovely bolt that I sheared off because of this piece of Harbor Freight torque wrench and how I had to replace the master cylinder and the nightmare that I had trying to bleed these brakes. So stay tuned for that. As always, if you have any questions, comments, concerns, gripes, internet ramblings, stick them below. Thanks again for watching, guys, and we will see you next time.