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The Shop Truck

1971 Chevy C20 with a custom flat bed.
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Its a catch 22 with instructions. I send them out with certain products and get emails saying they lost the instruction card. So not only did the company take the time and money to print and provide instructions, the customer still lost them. Online instructions eliminate that cost, and potentially eliminate a call by the customer looking online first. Right, wrong, or indifferent, that's it. Its the way the tide has turned.
 
I would be happy with online instructions or even better a nice youtube video showing how to do it. They provided neither. There's a couple pictures showing how to hook up the P/S side and one explaining how to flip the booster if needed, but that's it. There was nothing about the modifications that are required to the pedal assembly, or even how to install and/or adjust the pushrod it came with.
 
Yeah nothing at all sucks. I had to change the throw on my hydroboost install as well, the biggest issue however was the angle of the unit to firewall. Looks like yours has custom plate made to adjust the angle correct, that's nice.
 
Yes, it does give it a decent angle, however the rod is at the top of the firewall hole rather than the middle, the whole unit should be down about an inch.
 
Interesting. I made an angle plate that relocated and changed the angle to match the firewall correctly, then changed the throw. Even though different trucks, the same rules apply, firewall angle, throw, and rod clearance during actuation. Atleast you got it in and functioning!
 
The bracket has slotted holes, but the lower studs are at the bottom of the lower slots and the upper studs are at the top of the upper slots...
 
I've seen a bunch of stuff on a vendor named CaptainFab over on the 67-72 chevy truck forum. Only looked at his stuff a bit but it looks nice.
 
I picked up the driveshaft yesterday, no time to install it though, we're heading for the boonies as soon as we can break free from work today.

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Well, I've gotta go back to the driveshaft shop, apparently they can't understand directions. I told them with the yoke fully seated it's 67 1/2" center of cap to center of cap at the spot where the driveshaft is the shortest so it needs to be shorter than that. They made it 67 1/2" eye to eye...
 
The guy that built it called me back to make sure he got all the measurements right (apparently the first guy that took the call said that was the seal to cap center measurement and that it had a 31 spline output...).
 
Where did you end up going? When I made my 85 C10 a short bed, Arizona drive shaft said a 1 piece was to long for a single cab short bed....
 
We wanted to give AZ Driveshaft another chance, but they said the same thing to us. They limited steel shafts to 56" and Aluminum to 68 I think? We could have done aluminum but I wanted steel. Phoenix Rack and Axle has made a ton of crazy driveshafts for me so we went to them and they built it no issues. They also built me a steel one piece for the Silverado that's just a bit over 70" long if I remember. This one ended up at 66" center of cap to center of cap.
 
r3dd0g said:
We wanted to give AZ Driveshaft another chance, but they said the same thing to us. They limited steel shafts to 56" and Aluminum to 68 I think? We could have done aluminum but I wanted steel. Phoenix Rack and Axle has made a ton of crazy driveshafts for me so we went to them and they built it no issues. They also built me a steel one piece for the Silverado that's just a bit over 70" long if I remember. This one ended up at 66" center of cap to center of cap.
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They ended up doing it anway sense I brought it into them and it was basically the limit.
 
Yesterday we worked on making the driveshaft fit. I modified the carrier bearing crossmember to fit the driveshaft throughout the range of travel. Since the AAM 10.5 has an offset diff, I had to widen the hole to the passenger side as well as allow for further down travel.

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With the driveshaft sorted out, we moved on to finishing up some electrical changes and putting the cab back together. After a bit of power steering bleeding, we took it for a test drive. I had pretty low expectations, but it drove and handled pretty good for just having an eyeball alignment. The brakes however, were lacking.

I'm going to try some more bleeding today, but I think I'm going to have to make a major change to the brakes. The rear callipers are massive two piston calipers and the fronts are single. The Silverado had a 37mm bore master (1.46") and I have a 1" bore now. If I close the rear brake valve, my pedal is nice and solid, but with it open it goes to the floor. I also think I may be over-ranging the master cylinder as it gets about 1" from the floor, then clunks down to the floor. I may have to drill another hole in the brake pedal.

I'm not sure where to go at this point. We're going to try to bleed it some more, but I don't think that's going to fix anything. Ideally I could adapt a smaller rear caliper, or even better a much larger front caliper with a bigger master cylinder. I'm a bit stuck now until we can figure this out.
 
I originally posted this up in the wrong thread (Silverado thread...). Wes Harden was quick to respond with this helpful tip:
Wes Harden said:
Me would be smaller rears, then maybe a larger master. You could sorce a late 80's early 90's p30 master if need larger. Those were jb8 rpo code hydro boost.
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I'm going to look and see if I can adapt the 2500 front calipers to work on the rear axle, that should balance out with the current front caliper. Maybe later I can figure out how to get big brakes on the front.
 
jb7 and jb8 had front and rear discs, the caliper pistons were same size front and rear, up 17000 gvwr. All the modern 2500ish trucks have smaller caliper pistons in rear in the 8600-10,00 gwvr range.
Since you are not running huge diameter tires large calipers can cause other issues, like locking up and sliding around esp if towing with a trailer brake.
 
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