Insert Witty Title Here

Okay, too whipped to come up with a witty title, so I'll simply recall (briefly, 'cause I'm tired) today's progress:

1. Rear Brakes

Bead blasted the rear backing plates today; cannibalized enough sets of rear brakes (plus got in my one new rear shoe) to assemble the rear brakes. However, discovered the rear wheel cylinders are a modern type that will not bolt right up without modifying the backing plates. I have no qualms doing that, but want to confirm I got the right cylinders before I start cutting on original Ford parts.

2. Front End/Brakes
Was prepared to assemble the front wheels today; yesterday picked up my '40 wheels with old 6.00x16 tires/tubes mounted (sorry, no pic) to check out the ride height/determine my front wheel size. Also picked up my F1 drums (again, no pic, sorry) from the mail center. However, a friend came by about the time I was going to fool with fitting the inner bearing in preparation to grind on it to get it to fit the spindle (as I'd read in all those car magazines). He thought I should trim down the spindle to fit the bearing, since the bearing's gotta ride straight and true or it might fail (and we don't want that). Aside from his input, I also discovered the bearing will not even fit on these spindles (inside diameter a wee bit too small) but will fit the other spindles. So, I'm off to the machine shop on Monday to trim the spindle to fit two ways, and recut the tapers in the steering arms so the tie-rod will ride above the wishbone (believe me, if you're a hot rodder, you'd get that last statement; if not, don't worry - it just saves me heating and bending front end parts).

3. Rear Spring

Since I could not make much progress on the other fronts, I took the post-dinner hours to knock the shackle bushings from the Model T rear spring. This was quick and fun work, if you can imagine such a thing at 10 at night. I'm sure the neighbors appreciated my John Henry impression as I used a hammer and driver to simultaneously pound out my frustrations and the bushings. Both came out relatively quickly and painlessly, as evidenced in the photo above (note: only the bushings are depicted, you'll have to visualize the frustrations dissipating).

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