1961 Ford F500 project.

[DavidBarkey]

@JSinMO The ability to rebuild or repair is so much more satisfying than throughing parts at it .

[Eugen]

Good work Jeff! Will you use some type of hose that's resistant to collapse under vacuum instead of the steel line?

[Jancoe]

Its great when you just disassemble a part, clean it up, maybe replace a bushing or small piece if needed and put it back together and it works.
As for those wheels hopefully your on track finding some replacements. There was a write up somewhere on the net that had listed all vehicles with that bolt pattern. I can't find it now.
The wheel blanks we used were from www.heywheel.com. If I was close to you I'd have helped you get those wheels welded up.
I found out the source of parts we used was from http://www.chuckstrucksllc.com/. These guys were great.

Sent from my SM-S906U using Tapatalk

[JSinMO]

Good work Jeff! Will you use some type of hose that's resistant to collapse under vacuum instead of the steel line?

I don’t have the numbers in front of me, but I don’t think it’s pulling that much vacuum so I’m going with the easiest first. Just standard 1/2” ID vacuum hose and we’ll see what happens.

@Jancoe i got my brake hoses from chucks trucks! Your right he is great to work with. I may be getting some other things from him as well.
I appreciate that you would help if we were closer. Reading what you wrote and looking at your pictures I see how it should go. My welding ability is not good enough at this point to pull it off. I may still go that route and hire the welding out. I’ll come up with a solution, just not quite there yet!

[Spike188]

Thinking back 40 years ago and with a bit foggy memory, on Chevy 60 series trucks we used a short piece of hose to connect the vacuum lines when modifying trucks. If the F500 solid line integrity is good enough , we would have cut out the bad section, supported the steal line ends near the cut sections, and jumped the gap with a length of vacuum hose. We usually robbed the hose off of a Surge milker.

We had a 61 235 Chevy set up a with a petcock tapped into the intake manifold and 30 feet of milker hose run to the stalls. When the electrical power was out the pick was pulled up to the barn and attached to barn vacuum system. 2 pail milkers could be ran off of the engine manifold vacuum if the milker was turned on s.l.o.w.l.y. The 5 gallon milker pail vacuum had to draw down. When the engine rpm levelled out the suction cups could be gently moved to the cows' teets while avoiding opening the suction line to the teet cups. Do it wrong, the pickup dies, and the milker falls off the other cow. If your lucky the milker on the second cow didn't open and cause you to cry over spilt milk. If the milker dumped the cats would love you and dad would go .

[Toolslinger]

Vacuum runs all over the place on the '48 Diamond T. Shifts the rear, shifts the speedometer, brake booster, wipers, air horn pump etc... Anyplace I can get away from hose, and put in a hard line, I'd put in a hard line. Every little bit of flex in a hose is going to add to any delay or weakness in vacuum.

I kinda prefer the air system on the F750 over the vacuum on the T. Not that I've sorted out that mess yet, but at least I can hear those leaks a lot easier...

[Timj]

Thinking back 40 years ago and with a bit foggy memory, on Chevy 60 series trucks we used a short piece of hose to connect the vacuum lines when modifying trucks. If the F500 solid line integrity is good enough , we would have cut out the bad section, supported the steal line ends near the cut sections, and jumped the gap with a length of vacuum hose. We usually robbed the hose off of a Surge milker. image.png We had a 61 235 Chevy set up a with a petcock tapped into the intake manifold and 30 feet of milker hose run to the stalls. When the electrical power was out the pick was pulled up to the barn and attached to barn vacuum system. 2 pail milkers could be ran off of the engine manifold vacuum if the milker was turned on s.l.o.w.l.y. The 5 gallon milker pail vacuum had to draw down. When the engine rpm levelled out the suction cups could be gently moved to the cows' teets while avoiding opening the suction line to the teet cups. Do it wrong, the pickup dies, and the milker falls off the other cow. If your lucky the milker on the second cow didn't open and cause you to cry over spilt milk. If the milker dumped the cats would love you and dad would go .

I remember my father and grandfather doing this with my Dad's old Ford pickup when the power was out.

[JSinMO]

Thinking back 40 years ago and with a bit foggy memory, on Chevy 60 series trucks we used a short piece of hose to connect the vacuum lines when modifying trucks. If the F500 solid line integrity is good enough , we would have cut out the bad section, supported the steal line ends near the cut sections, and jumped the gap with a length of vacuum hose. We usually robbed the hose off of a Surge milker. image.png We had a 61 235 Chevy set up a with a petcock tapped into the intake manifold and 30 feet of milker hose run to the stalls. When the electrical power was out the pick was pulled up to the barn and attached to barn vacuum system. 2 pail milkers could be ran off of the engine manifold vacuum if the milker was turned on s.l.o.w.l.y. The 5 gallon milker pail vacuum had to draw down. When the engine rpm levelled out the suction cups could be gently moved to the cows' teets while avoiding opening the suction line to the teet cups. Do it wrong, the pickup dies, and the milker falls off the other cow. If your lucky the milker on the second cow didn't open and cause you to cry over spilt milk. If the milker dumped the cats would love you and dad would go .

Great story spike! That’s a great example of ingenuity at work! And it reminds me of being at home as a kid, i can think of only a few things that broke , stopped working, etc that my dad couldn’t find a way to get it going to get the job done.
In the F500’s case the hard line is pretty bad. I had the idea to cut out the bad section but I need to poke around on it and see how solid the rest of it is.

@Toolslinger I think the brake booster is the only thing that needs vacuum on this truck, luckily. I don’t blame you for running hard line, I sure wouldn’t want to keep chasing all that hose!

[JSinMO]

We have been having pretty good weather so I figured I’d keep doing what I can on the truck since it’s outside, and continue on the 446 in the shop once it gets cold.

I’ve got all the lug nuts loose and the wheels ready to come off.
The brake hoses came in and are installed alone with 33 feet of brake like. I still need 4 or 5 feet of line to make it to the passenger rear wheel, then it will be time to start bleeding the system and looking for leaks and/or bad wheel cylinders.

I took @Spike188 advice and checked over the vacuum hard line to the booster. Other than the rub hole it’s pretty solid. So I just cut out the bad spot and placed a hose in the line. Installed it on the truck and tested it and now I’m holding vacuum from the check valve down to the booster!

You guys know how it is when you get into a project. It can take you down roads you didn’t expect, this one is no exception. I was working in a small town about 40 minutes away last week and guess what I drove past sitting on an empty lot? An early 1970’s Winnebago Chieftain! And guess what was on it? 8.00x19.5 rims with my bolt pattern! Lucky I had some time to spare so I started knocking on doors till I found the owner. Long story short I’m now the semi-proud owner of a worn out RV!

The gentleman sold me the rims but I have to take the RV with me! I paid $500 for 7 rims that can bolt right on Herbie. So $71.42 a rim I don’t think I could beat that price building rims for it. The left and right lugs nuts are the same so I’ll have an extra set, 2 headlights that I think will fit, as well as, 2 brake boosters that will go on the shelf as spares! The rest of the Winnebago is going for scrap. I haven’t looked at the engine but I think these came with Chrysler V8’s unfortunately it went through a flood so its probably junk. Here’s one of the 19.5’s setting next to the 8.25x20 on the truck.

I found a set of tires that have a 34”diameter, so if I did the calculations right depending on vehicle speed I should only loose 3 to 5 MPH with the smaller tire, I’m quite happy with that!

So there’s todays truck update / ramble.
Quite an exciting week, with some progress!
Thank you guys for following Herbie’s story!

[Timj]

awe, you gotta fix the camper. . tell you are going to take up camping. you may need a place to live.