Mechanically the truck is back together. Installed the rear drive shaft Saturday.
I had to grind out quite a bit more of the original carrier bearing crossmember. You can also see I'm installing a drive line brake. According to the shipping label on the box, I've had that brake sitting around for 5 years. Figured now was a good time to try and set it up. I'm excited at the prospect of having a parking brake again.
Spent quite a bit of my time yesterday patching the hole I had to cut in the floor to clear the rotor. Unfortunately the only sheet steel I had available was 20ga, factory is 16ga. On top of that we only have .035 wire set up for our welder. So it was tricky getting it all welded.
Next step was making a new carrier bearing crossmember. I lucked out and had 2 holes already in the frame that were just about perfect location; just drilled them out for 1/2" bolts. The trick was the frame angles up where the carrier bearing needed to be. Turned out to be 12˚ angle. I used a 3" channel for the main support and a piece of 3" angle to correct for the 12˚ angle.
My first thought was to bolt all the way through both the angle and the channel but then I realized that would put the bolt head and nut on different angles. So I had to cut out an opening in the channel so that in essence the carrier bearing bolts to just the piece of 3" angle.
In the end the carrier bearing is about 14" further back. The intermediate shaft if set at 0˚ and the axle section ended up at about 14˚. That a degree or 2 more than I was shooting for. It's close and if it seems to be a problem a 2˚ shim isn't hard to do.
Before shot of the rear shaft clearance:
And after:
I like the after much better.
