1952 Willys Overland 4x4 Truck - Part 10, Tailgate and Brakes

hey everybody Welcome to the 10th installment of the Willies project in the last video everything we did was pretty easy in this video everything is either hard or tedious or heavy or messy this video took me about 3 weeks to put together and it was a lot of work I hope you enjoy it we're basically only going to cover two topics today number one is the tailgate number two is the brakes so let's get to it all right let's tackle this tailgate problem if you remember from one of the previous videos uh I pointed out that we no longer have a structural place to uh latch the tailgate on this side let me show you what the other side looks like see there supposed to be this tab right here and uh it's supposed to fit inside the tailgate and that's how you keep it latched to prevent it from opening but this side it looks like it's just been completely ripped out of there probably rusted got weak and uh at some point just completely fell out I was hoping I could just buy this little Tab and weld it in but number one they don't seem to sell these exact tabs for this exact tailgate and number two we have a larger problem than that we can't just weld it in because we have to kind of modify what is here um before we can weld some new metal in there so uh I'm going to get the tailgate removed and we'll get it on a bench or something and we'll get a better look at it and I'll show you what we're dealing [Music] with little stiff right there huh I think I can actually fix that also but let's uh move on so this is definitely not your modern type of a hinge or pin situation this is just a rod from the tailgate going into a piece of metal there's no bushing there's no nothing so in order to get the tailgate removed from the truck we have to remove this little bracket and the other side has one as well but of course we only need to remove one side all right there's the nut from the inside and hopefully we just have to remove this bottom one and swing this out of the way there we [Music] go all right here's the good side it's kind of a strange design here this right there is part of the tailgate and this right there is part of the tailgate and then there's an opening in there that runs down the whole thing as you can see there's a cavity up in there inside that cavity they slip this little bracket and looks like they welded it on somehow on the inside clearly that was done at the factory on the bad side here you can see what I was referring to this is the cavity that runs down the whole side of the tailgate and that bracket was I think welded to a piece of the tailgate here that's now missing I guess the only way I'm going to be successful at this is to for sure cut off this Jagged piece right here so it's at a 90° angle something we can actually work with and maybe even this piece here I don't know let me go see what kind of metal I have in stock and uh we'll go from there SE all right I found a piece that I'm happy with for this section right here it's about the same width and about the same thickness more or less and then uh have to find a piece for here and then we have to fabricate that tab with that oval in it also I guess we'll start to cutting I'm going to cut both of these off I'll clean up all the rust around so we can weld it and then I'll start making some templates [Music] all right here's what we got so far I'm happy with this one right here I just need to clean up the edge here and clean up the edge there you can see right here this one is bent down I don't know if we can do much about that right in here it's high on this backside so I think if I put a hammer to that that might raise that up a little bit it's not a critical thing but as long as we're doing it we might as well try it well after about 2 and 1/2 hours I got my pieces cut out um this one of course took the longest but I made it out of one of those pieces of flat stock I of course made the template off of this one over here I'm happy with how it turned out because of the engineering on the other side there was a piece of metal here that was curved and then of course there was a piece of metal here but there was also the tab it had a separate piece of metal that came down and was welded to this piece so there's no reason to try to duplicate all that um made curved piece to fit in there and then a flat piece to go on top and then we'll weld the tab strategically like that right remember I said I was going to try to knock this dent out and up well I took one hammer blow to it and Bondo started popping off this tailgate like popcorn on a hot we've got dents all over this thing I mean there's Bondo all the way up to here you can see it um I hate to be a pessimist but this tailgate is pretty much Beyond repair if this is going to be a patina truck we can work with this tailgate but if we're going to put a shiny paint job on it make it look pretty this tailgate isn't going to [Music] work [Music] all right we've got this one tacked into place now I'm going to do the top piece and then we'll do the tab at the [Music] end [Music] [Music] all right after a lot of uh welding and grinding here's what we got so far I still have a little cleanup to do but my batter went dead in my grinder so we got to wait for that to charge but I'm happy with this so far let's actually get a test fit and uh make sure it works and then I'll probably take it back off and finish the uh touchup and get it painted all right here's the first mockup uh I got to give myself credit here I really think I nailed it and here we are in the front side I don't think I could have gotten it any better than that I ground down most of the welds and like I said I'm still not done doing that I still have to finish it a little bit more it's a little bit rough if you remember this is all new metal from this corner to here down down to there and then over there and on the inside here this is all new metal also from here to there down the corner and then right about there out to there and of course the tab that's all fresh metal like I said I got a little more cleanup to do but I am very happy with that so these are the old chain hooks from the tailgate and this is one of the sides here the chain is pretty ratty and rusted so uh I'm not going to reuse this I've already got some new stuff but I kind of like the shape of these old hooks I can't find a modern equivalent of this so I think what I'd like to do is try to use the new chain with the old hooks but we've got a couple issues here number one they're all rusted up and and crusty that's no big deal I can throw them in a vapor rust overnight and they'll be good to go but you can see this one we got some issues it makes you wonder what kind of force this sustained to get to that shape you know this is pretty thick stuff I'm going to do my best to recreate this shape and if I can get it then great but if not then we'll have to uh go with plan B so to start with I guess I'll get this old chain removed um we're going to have to open these eyes up just a little bit anyway to get the new chain in there so we'll get this removed and then I'll try to get this hook reshaped [Music] all right after about an hour of beating and bending and cussing this is what we got I think it's close enough I think it looks great um I've got both of the eyes opened up to accept our new chain so we'll leave those open for now so now we're going to soak them in the evaporust overnight so let's see what happens okay it's the next day the evapor R Us did its job it removed all the surface rust and uh we're ready to assemble the chain I've already got it cut to length so we're just going to put it on one end now we're going to put this nylon cover over this chain so that'll do actually a few different things it'll protect the chain a little bit from the elements and stuff it will protect the truck from getting scratched by the chain you know dangling around when it's going down the road and it will also cover up this section of new shiny chain that just isn't going to look look right on the truck so I'm going to get this nylon installed right now I'll show you how I do that all right I've got the hook U just secured into a visce right now and I'm going to try to open up the nylon here and then we're going to drop the string through it and hopefully we'll see it come out the bottom here in a minute there it is now we can pull the nylon all the way up the chain to where the hook is I like to have extra so it kind of scrunches up on there like that now we can grab the chain and we can take this whole thing back over to the workbench okay let's get the string removed and here's our open chain link this is the part that's going to latch onto the truck so we're not gonna latch this yet but we're GNA get it on and get it ready to latch all right so there's the piece and I want to do one more thing before we put it on the truck you can see the nylon has some freay ends on it but we're just going to uh melt it around the ends that will get rid of all the freight ends and it will also um shrink the diameter of the nylon just a little bit and it will also prevent it from fraying all right that's good let's do this side the same way all right let's go see how it looks on the [Music] truck I really like that and I like the fact that we Reus these old hooks too I made the chains a certain length so when the tailgate is open it sits flat level with the bed and you can use it as a workbench or work surface or Carry long Lumber in here or whatever all right guys well the tailgate is pretty much done this is one of those projects that I thought was only going to take a couple of hours it ended up taking about 9 hours total and that was just not conducive to getting the whole thing on camera it would have been a nightmare to edit and it wouldn't have made any sense to watch so so I'm just going to show you and explain uh everything I did here all right well I don't want to have an hourong summary for you either so I'm just going to make this quick this was our bad side this was the area that was completely missing and rust it out remember we cut it out at 90° angles so I had something to work with and I welded new metal in those two pieces are welded together and the tab is welded to them so it's nice and strong I chose a gauge of metal for the patch panels here that kind of matched what was already existing on the tailgate as you can see this is a thinner one and this is a thinner one but the uh tab is thicker I did that intentionally and because that's kind of how it was before if you look at the thickness here of the tab you can see it's pretty much like the uh Factory original one as far as the paint goes first I shot it with red orange colored primer starting on our new metal here and then I went all the way down on top of that I put a light coat of white on top of that I put a light coat of gray and then on top of that I put a light coat of ivory then I came back and distress the whole area to kind of make it blend into the truck and by using the red orange colored primer underneath all the paint it kind of looks like rust or old primer showing through which is what I was hoping for so again I distress that all intentionally to make it blend in with the rest of the truck if you remember right down in somewhere in here and here we had those two pieces of Bondo pop out well I absolutely hated how that looked so just to make it kind of like it was or maybe even a little bit better than it was I simply refilled those divots with Bondo made it smooth and then I painted over over the whole thing just like I did up here with all those different colors of paint and the uh red orange primer underneath it it just looks so bad with those big chunks missing I had to do something trying to intentionally PA a paint is harder than you might think if you've never tried it before it's very difficult to get the same tone of the rest of the paint on the truck in the same wear and the same age I could probably do a little bit more work down here but but you kind of reach the point of diminishing returns on something like this overall I'm very happy with it I think it looks great I think it matches the truck pretty well and again let me show you the alignment of the new tab versus the old I mean like I said before I don't think I could have gotten it any better so as far as the welding goes it's like painting um if you want to do a good job at welding 95% of the work is going to be in the preparation and then 5% is going to be the welding itself that's the easy part all right the last thing I did to this tailgate that I want to share with you remember right when we were getting started the tailgate was binding up right about [Music] there it was making all kinds of noise and it was kind of hard to get past that point I got that fixed also it opens nice and easily now in fact it'll drop if you let it doesn't make the noise anymore doesn't bind [Music] up [Music] well I've been putting this off long enough it's time we finally inspected the brakes on this rig for starters just to let you know everything seems to work you press on the brake pedal it feels good and it stops the truck we don't appear to have any leaks to any of the wheel cylinders or the master cylinder um however we need to get our eyeballs on the brake components to make sure the truck is going to be safe for more regular use it's going to be kind of a big job just to inspect the brakes but fingers crossed that they've been redone you know in the last 10 or 20 years and we can work with what we have I you know you never know what you're going to find when you get in here and what I'm hoping not to find is just a bunch of old rusty components if that's the case you know we're going to have to end up replacing everything but anyway let's get the wheel off and see if we can get this drum [Music] off well the rubber line between here and the wheel cylinder looks to be semi okay it's still kind of pliable it's not all hard and crusty and maybe this has actually been replaced in this Century that that would be good but you can tell over here where the rubber connects to the uh metal Line This is clearly not from this sentury that's most likely the original metal line that came with the truck that'd be my guess anyway judging on so I've got the wheel off now we need to figure out how to get the drum off uh for Star does need to remove this cap [Music] all right looks like there's a little uh snap ring there that needs to come off I guess that's all one piece there take a look at this look how boogered up this nut is I mean we got some major chunks out taken out of this nut clearly somebody in the past has not had the right tool and they were just using like a a punch or a screwdriver and a hammer to remove that nut wow that is not a very good way to do that there's actually a uh a washer underneath this nut that's folded up right there so we'll bend that washer down flat we're going to try the impact on the lowest setting here this is a special tool by the way um that you absolutely need for this job if you don't have this it's going to be super hard to get that nut off as you can see that's why it's damaged like I said before somebody's not had this tool in the past and really just boogered up this nut there's another nut in there and it's loose interesting design they got an inner nut and an outer nut that one should have been tighter than it was okay there's the inner for whatever reason this one isn't boogered up I think that must be it now there's a little retaining ring first with the keyway notch on it yeah come on come on all right mission accomplished first impressions are good so far just by a glance as long as we're in here we're going to make sure these uh six bolts on the backing plate are tight I just have it on the lowest setting on the impact so it's not like we're really trying to Ram these in I just want to see if they're tight or not that one's tight that one's tight okay good those are all tight all right I'm actually going to use some brake clean for what it was intended for once just going to hit all the components get the spider webs and the dust and the dirt out don't worry about getting the pads stuff dries right away I am pleasantly surprised by what we found so far let me get you in a little closer here first look at the thickness of the pads here there's still a lot of meat left on that that's very good same with this one a lot of meat left on it we look at the the surface of the pads themselves they look decent they're not all scored up uh here's the wheel cylinder 14203 USA and the boots are actually still pliable it's hard to say but just looking by what we have and also the color of the metal part of the brake uh pads you can tell uh it's obviously oxidizing but that's not 70 years old you can tell that there was fresh metal under there in the semi- recent past so who knows 10 years 20 years ago I don't think it's been any longer than that and I don't think we have to touch this side this looks this all looks good to me let's check out the brake drum yeah so we're just feeling for heavy score pouring gouging anything like that and uh I'm not feeling anything at all if you guys work on as much old stuff as I do do yourself a favor get yourself a uh Power uh grease gun oh my goodness these things save a lot of time and no I'm not doing a deep dive on the bearings they look just fine there was no wobble to the wheels I do want to get the part number off it though this is a timkin 18590 well so I'll just jam it full with some new grease and uh we be good to go now we have this inner nut so now listen carefully when I spin the drum you can he there's just a teeny little bit of brake pad drag in my opinion that's where you want these things is just to have just a teeniest bit of drag so you know that the brake shoes are adjusted out as far as they can go without being you know without stopping the wheel so you just got to kind of get a feel for it that feels pretty good and then once we get the outer nut on then we need to reach in there with the screwdriver or something and bend up the outer tabs just a little bit and it acts as a kind of a lock washer all right here's the outer nut um it's still got boogers in it but I filed it all down so there's none sticking up anymore sticking out and it's just fine to reuse okay now this uh outer piece goes on over the spline of the axle it has it is splined as well of course and this snap ring goes on kind of keeps the axle in place sort of kind of Let's Jam some grease into the cup and put it back on all right one wheel down three to go well we pretty much got more of the same on the driver side here everything looks pretty good um looks to me like everything was replaced the same time as the passenger side the brake pads have the same amount of material left the still in good condition the uh wheel cylinder boots are still pliable they're not all hard and cracked the only thing that was a little bit suspect on this side but number one this nut was even in worse condition than the one on the passenger side and I already cleaned this one up with a file it was uh it was really bad before I cleaned it up and the other thing was this washer that was supposed to be bent up you know around that big nut to sort of act like a a lock washer it wasn't bent up at all it was just flat and the outer nut was a little bit loose so it was a good thing we got that uh checked and fixed so I'm going to lube everything back up here and put the drum back on and put the wheel back on and then we'll move to the rears all right here we are on the passenger side rear I'm a little worried about is I think it's going to be more difficult to get the drums off than it was in the front but uh let's give this a try I've already got the cotter pin uh backed out ready to go need to remove this nut that's a 1 and 716 in socket and there's a thick washer behind the nut now the drum should come off I had a large large puller with arms on it like this but you really shouldn't grab the outer drum like that I think it's possible that if you put enough force on it that you could actually warp the drum um I took the centerpiece from that same puller apparatus and I fabricated my own arms for it and uh we're going to see if this works all right I've got the puller on there and all tight so let's see what we can do [Music] here this is what I was afraid [Music] of [Applause] [Music] [Music] d [Music] well I don't think you guys see me give up very often but uh I'm giving up on this I don't want to uh break anything I don't want to hurt myself uh the drum is just not coming off my homemade pull held together just fine but um I don't know what it was maybe the angle just wasn't quite right I guess I'm going to have to break down and buy the proper puller for this I really thought my homemade job was going to get it but this thing is amazingly tight so I guess I'll just have to take the L for the day and uh you can't win them all so I'll bring you back when I get the right puller and we'll try this all over again all right guys welcome back it's been about a week or so since we tried this last I have the uh proper puller in hand so we're going to give this a try I'm on the other side of the rear just because that's the way the truck was facing so I haven't had this side open at all yet and we've got a lot of spider activity in here whenever I have these big castle nuts like this you know the kind that take uh cotter pins I always like to put a paint mark Mark uh one on the drum and one on the nut so next time when I tighten it all the way back down I know where it was before and that'll help me with the alignment of the pin so this is the driver side rear and just a reminder that the lug nuts are actually opposite thread their left-and thread um but the nut is still standard thread so let's get this spun off and we'll try the puller I'm not sure how the feet are supposed to go like that or like that I'll try that way first that seems to be like the most logical way all right after a couple minutes we've got the puller successfully on it is quite substantial so this has got to do the trick right um let's get it snug and then we'll start hitting it with the hammer if we need to it's also got this dog bone on the end like that it gives you something to hit it with like that and by doing that you're essentially tightening the screw which is pulling the drum I'm actually going to go get my bigger Hammer though what do you guys think thinks the brakes have been done like the front or do you think they've just left them alone in the past because these are so hard to get off hopefully we'll find out here in a minute yeah wow that's ridiculous all right this axle key here was actually installed incorrectly we'll talk more about this later these uh pads look just like the ones in the front a lot of meat left on them on both sides and the surface of the pads look pretty good too there's no damage that I can see everything looks usual and customary in here and I think these brakes were in fact done at the same time as the fronts we got a lot more spider activity in these for some reason so I'll get this cleaned up and then we'll just put the drum back on I don't think we have to do [Music] anything [Music] all right here we are on the uh passenger side rear this is where we were a week ago and failed so let's try this again one thing I didn't mention when we got the drum off on the other side is there is an axle key in there it's about that long I'll show you when we get it off but that's the only thing really that you have to get lined up when you put the brake drum back on you have to make sure that key is in number one and then you have to get the brake drum aligned accordingly all right here we go [Music] go [Music] all right well this was definitely the right tool for the right job well the suspense is over these brakes are good too it looks to me like all four brakes we're done at the exact same time we got the same amount of oxidation on the metal same amount of wear on on the pads everything looks about right um so before I put the drum back on let's talk about why these things are so hard to get off in the first place there's only a nut here and a key and there's nothing else that's holding it on to the axle except that there actually is and the axle itself is tapered it's a narrow diameter here and it's a larger one towards the inner bearing and the drum is tapered also so when you're putting it on there and then you uh tighten the nut all the way down you're effectively pressing it back onto the tapered axle and that taper is what holds it in place for the most part of course the nut is doing its job too but that's uh one of the reasons that it's so hard to get off is because you're actually kind of pressing it onto the axle all right here's this key that I was referring to on the other side you can see slightly tapered just on the bottom there going going up all right so one of the ways to do this is to put the Hub back on the axle before you put the key in obviously you have to get the notches to line up and the way the key goes I'll put a diagram on the screen so you can see it a little bit easier but you can see the taper the taper goes down towards the axle and towards the inside so we're going to try to um get this lined up and then we're just going to push it in right about to there so it's kind of like flush with the outer side then we can put our washer on and we just got to torque this nut down and then we're done so we've got the brakes uh inspected checked serviced and and they are in excellent condition uh thumbs up to whoever did that job in the past they really did a good job except for a couple things here and there like a couple those big nuts up front were a little bit loose and they had the axle keys in uh backwards and upside down but other than that they did a great job with the brakes whoever did it and that's really good news cuz that means we don't have to do anything we don't have to buy any parts we don't have to do a brake job on it however in between this video and the last one for some reason the brake lights quit working before you remember you had to press on the pedal quite firmly to get the brake light switched to activate and then the lights would come on but now that doesn't even work so something has happened if you remember I suspected that that brake light switch on the front of the master cylinder might be bad so I went ahead and switched that out I'll put that at the very end of the video for those of you who want to see what I did there in the process of doing that I had to drain the master cylinder refill it and and bleed all the brakes so anyway I got the new Switch installed master cylinder topped off bled all the brakes everything works great but the brake lights still don't work I thought replacing that switch was going to do it but it had no effect so something else is wrong the good news is we can cross off brakes and brake light switch off of our list unfortunately we have to add brake lights back to our list I also want to add emergency brake to our list I've already started working on the E bra I don't think it's going to be too difficult to fix so I'll put that in the same video with the brake lights in the future and regarding the next big thing we have to tackle the transmission transfer case leak well I've already got the parts for that sitting here on the bench I want to tackle all this other stuff first because that's going to be kind of a big project in itself so I'll start doing some more research on the brake lights and see if I can figure out what is going on with that just doesn't make sense to me there's no fuse box we put a brand new switch in there the only thing I can think of is maybe there's a wire grounding out somewhere anyway thanks guys for watching I always appreciate it I'm happy with our tailgate repair and everything else hope to see you on the next video please consider subscribing take care [Music] all right here's a few minutes of footage of me replacing that brake light switch I just captured some of the things I thought might be interesting and here it is all right I'm underneath the truck now and I remove the two wires from the front of the old switch which is right there and we're going to get that removed which uh all right it's the next day now and again this is the new Switch with the old piece that this is the piece that actually screws into the master cylinder this piece had these two um copper washers on here you can see this one has a larger inner diameter that one has a smaller inner diameter the one with a larger inner diameter goes on um towards you know where the nut is and the one with a smaller inner diameter goes right there I'll show you later when I install it but right in there on the truck there's a a banjo bolt Y adapter affair with two brake lines coming out of it so that's why there's a hole right there and that's why there's copper washers on both sides you can't really tell what the thickness of the original washers were because they get crushed right a little bit because they're copper so for example here's the old and there's the new I might be overthinking this but just to be safe I'm going to anneal both of of these new copper washers so we know we're going to get a proper crush on them and we're going to get a good fit with no leaks so the idea is to heat it up cherry red and then let it cool down now looks pretty good right there all right done now you can quench this in water or oil or you can just let it air dry it doesn't matter how you cool it it will still be annealed all right here's number two all right [Music] done all right they've cooled down I've already cleaned them up a little bit just got some of the black off of them so I'm not an expert on this analing stuff I don't want to sound like I am however I do know a little bit about it um I know that when copper gets um stressed or pressed or punched or worked or anything like that it tends to get hard that's just the nature of the metal and when they make things like this in the factory uh copper gaskets copper washers they have to stamp them out at the factory somehow and just the very process of stamping out these copper washers makes them hard or at least a little bit so the process of aeling well that makes them soft and pliable again um applications like this use these copper washers intentionally so that when you um cinch the hardware down down and tighten everything up the copper washers will crush or compress and that copper will sort of Squish into every little nook and cranny and micro fissure and whatever is there and provide a really good seal for whatever you're trying to do so by analing these and making them soft again the risk of having any lease goes down quite a bit all right here's the new Switch installed right there that's that banjo y fitting that I was referring to and you can see the copper washers on either side of it that's the master cylinder right there I also put new terminals on the ends of the wires got the master cylinder uh filled back up with brake fluid and with the help of my wife we bled all the brakes the brakes were great but we still don't have brake lights so that will be a continuation issue for the next video so I'll sign off at this point and we'll see you guys on the next video

Channel: Antique Cars and Stuff

Views: 2,878

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Id: 4pKRazcHxfI

Length: 48min 55sec (2935 seconds)

Published: Mon Feb 12 2024