Grizz's Redneck Express 1966 Chevy Short Fleetside RESTO-GO!

[Grizz1963]

So this morning I sorted out and matched the pile of nuts n bolts I picked up yesterday at JohnnyBravo's place after washing them and drying them overnight.

Happy with my pile of free fasteners now all bottled up in the garage.



Then I made up a couple of parcels to send off to the USA and went to post them out.

On the way back home I passed the local Gulf fuel station and saw this Subaru Brat/Brumby/284/MV/Shifter in various markets.

I have always has a hard spot for them, despite the fact many just disintegrated over time.

Swung around to go look.

As I got put my car, before even walking around to look at it, the driver who had just filled up, greeted me with a "Hallo Grizz !!"

Huhhhhh....?

I did not recognise him, but he knew who I am, anyway, turns out he is Mark, a regular on Auto****e car forum.

So this is his pride and joy.

We spoke for at least half and hour, and I was in and out and all over his truck. We even agreed that maybe we will investigate importing a pair of them from Australia at some point when it suits us both. Small world.



Original Four cylinder Boxer engine, high and low range gearbox, 4x4



Then off home again.

Had lunch, and was just headed out to the garage at about 3pm when an email landed....... Security and background checks to be done, so I had to sit down and deal with all of that.

Then down to the garage after 4pm.

Finished marking up the brake lines, then started to undo them from the rear.......

This dribbled out the front of the brake line when I released the rear end.




So, at last...... Never ever thought my truck would end up looking this sad. Brake lines all removed. Why ??

Measure up the pipes and they seem to total up at around 30 foot or 10 meters.



Remember Paul who helped me remove the lower ball joint from the burgered LCA? Well, he replied on Garage Journal that he had a full set of tools that I could use. So tomorrow evening he will be around to check out my hoarding space and hopefully have a coffee/tea and a chat.

Will go look for a roll of brake pipe tomorrow as well as the fittings and some P clips and some B clips as the fuel line runs along the same route from the rear to the engine bay.

Then we are in business.

[flashed]

Rian,I always loved those Brats ,dont see them here at all anymore .Any Suburu around here is hard to buy unless it's got way too many miles on it .Im waiting on a friend of mine to get ready to sell a 4 door coupe thats allwheel drive ,I get first shot at it.

[Grizz1963]

Flashed, I have no idea why I like them, but I do.


This is a weird time for me..... Being made redundant, finding a new job quickly, being on gardening leave but being asked to carry on servicing the company that made us redundant.....

So today there was a bit of admin, I ordered a new car to replace the existing one that is at the end of its corporate life as I am staying with the same agency. I opted to not order a C220 but instead after being given permission to go to a lower level, placed an order for a Focus 1.5 Zetec. Perfect Womble Wagon as the seats go down and it saves me over £900/year in tax. Once all the other admin stuff was sorted, I cleaned the house (trust me, it scores me great brownie points with Nicola) then out to get the brake lines and couplings.

I feel the need here to give a public acknowledgement of these guys.

They are local to me at 5 miles and I have used them a few times before.

Always ready to help, advise and will even tell you where to save money. My friend Paul_F also used them before and only had good stuff to say.



So I fitted all the brake lines into my car and took them down there. Being told to ask for Gaz, I did so and he turned out to be the same guy who helped me with all the fittings to adapt my old compressor to new style fittings and make up cross over connectors.

He grabbed them all and disappeared upstairs for about 15 minutes and came down with a hand full of couplers and a puzzled look on his face.

The one fitting that serves the rear brake line off my supersized Master Cylinder has a different fitting, ultimately they could not supply it, so I will reuse it.

So here it is.... The one to the right serves the rear circuit and has the odd sized fitment. The one to the left has an adapter and is normal 1/4"



He also had some 3/16" pipe fittings drilled out for 1/4" pipe as my trucks front brake lines and the line feeding the rear up to the point where it switches to a flexi hose coming out the chassis to cross the rear axle and then those rear drum feed pipes are 3/16"
This means I have two sizes of fittings to replace like with like.

But, these different size brake lines do make me wonder about what was done before.

Service with a smile all the way from Gaz.



So came home with a roll of 25' of Kunifer / Cupro-Nickel pipe at 1/4" and another 2 meters of 3/16 of the same to replace the rear pipes.
Also a hand full of fittings, the T-Joiner that splits the front brake lines was £14.60 on its own.

The whole lot was £80.00 and I am sure could be had for less than that off EBay and elsewhere if you know what you are doing, but for me, the service and help I got was worth the price over and over.

My little pile of joy back home.



Paul came around night, along with his full flaring, cutting, bending kit.

We spent some time chatting and looking at all my "stuff" enforce we got on and looked at the kit.



Also showed me how to assemble the kit and then made a test flare. Looking good to me.



On to another question.

I will be wiring up my Custom reversing lights as indicators with amber light bulbs when the time comes.
So have been looking for options on reversing lights. As I reverse down the drive with the truck and having decent light is a good thing of course.

What experience does the collective have of modern LED lights?

It will be fitted under the bumper, off the chassis or tow bar, so needs to be weather and water proof.

Opinions and advice please.

[Palf70Step]

Nice looking stuff Rian. I am still looking at what I want to do for actual reverse lamps (other than stock) I thought about one of the long LED light bars, but I think it will be too out of place on the 64. Curious to what you find.

[Bomp]

Looks like you've been flaring brake lines for years.

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by Bomp

Looks like you've been flaring brake lines for years.

Bomp, that was one he made to show me.

I will be going down later today to look at the tools, cut a bit and just practice practice practice.

Of course also straighten out the spiral and cut to length.

Then start with the longest one.

Originally Posted by Palf70Step

Nice looking stuff Rian. I am still looking at what I want to do for actual reverse lamps (other than stock) I thought about one of the long LED light bars, but I think it will be too out of place on the 64. Curious to what you find.

Agreed Bill.

I am hoping that hiding it behind and under the bumper will be sufficient to Cammo its modernity.

However another idea is to mount it on the cab like a hi level brake light. Again, got to figure a way to Cammo it. Probably will not happen that way though.

[clemdaddy]

the way i do the backup light is to use a tractor headlight and mount it on a rear crossmember. i then wire it to a single pole light switch that is mounted in the choke hole of the dash. if you have an electric choke on your engine then you have the empty hole in the dash to fill anyway.

this makes the backup light operate manually which can serve as a work light behind the truck and gives plenty of light for backing up.

tractor headlights are available from most parts stores and still look period correct for our trucks. black metal case with 4 or 5 inch round seal beam lamp.

just a thought… but it is kind of a hillbilly solution.

[DakotaKid]

i used that Cunifer stuff on my truck when i just redid all of the brake lines. Awesome stuff to work with. much easier than the steel.

[[JP]]

ohh backup light!! didnt think of that one... mine doest have one, need to figure out where abouts that is on the original wiring.. did these trucks have a reversing light?

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by [JP]

ohh backup light!! didnt think of that one... mine doest have one, need to figure out where abouts that is on the original wiring.. did these trucks have a reversing light?

This one does.

But they will become indicators.

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by clemdaddy

the way i do the backup light is to use a tractor headlight and mount it on a rear crossmember. i then wire it to a single pole light switch that is mounted in the choke hole of the dash. if you have an electric choke on your engine then you have the empty hole in the dash to fill anyway.

this makes the backup light operate manually which can serve as a work light behind the truck and gives plenty of light for backing up.

tractor headlights are available from most parts stores and still look period correct for our trucks. black metal case with 4 or 5 inch round seal beam lamp.

just a thought… but it is kind of a hillbilly solution.

Hillbilly, but great idea Clem.

Thank you.

Originally Posted by DakotaKid

i used that Cunifer stuff on my truck when i just redid all of the brake lines. Awesome stuff to work with. much easier than the steel.

That is what I got.

However........ Check out the update when I get to it.

Not a progress update either.

[Grizz1963]

Just been down to Aghabridge, they have the same tool that I am using.

Two of the guys took me and gave me a tutorial on how they do the pipes for customers.

Not much different to what I was doing, except advice to centre each punch before pulling and to ensure pipe is square to front of grip dies.

[[JP]]

I've been checking my wiring diagrams, dont seem to find one wire that indicates to be reversing light.
i guess mine didnt have reverse light

[Grizz1963]

So I came home with the fittings, all excited.

Then, as I am neurotic and not too clever, I thought I would check if they fitted the hoses and fittings on the truck.

Nope........



Drove back down to the shop to collect one fitting that was out of stock when I got the rest.

Gaz, his usual helpful friendly self saw the problem, grabbed them and disappeared for about 10 minutes. Came back smiling and sent me On my way. Now they were cut back and ready for action.



Cut some pipe off my roll to use as a practice sample, once I figured out how to read the instructions.

Using Paul's lovely tool to make the should be a doddle.






My first practice flare....... PERFECT even if I have to say that.

First step........



Then the second punch and out she came.....



Thought I would do a few more practice runs.

OOOOOOOOOPPPPPPSSSS....... !!!

I ended up doing at least 12 more practice runs, all failing to achieve the "perfection"of number one.






Back to the drawing board. Or is it workbench today.

[Ta2Don]

The joys of building old trucks!!!

Cheers Mate! You will nail it!!!

[dwcardfan]

Don't just buy it. Build it!!! Nice work.

[Grizz1963]

Originally Posted by Ta2Don

The joys of building old trucks!!!

Cheers Mate! You will nail it!!!

You know it then Don !!!

And yet we keep going back.

Originally Posted by dwcardfan

Don't just buy it. Build it!!! Nice work.

Indeed Donny, indeed.

Even making up the brake lines, I could take the samples down to Aghabridge and they would reproduce the lot in under an hour at a reasonable rate.

But it feels so much better learning the tricks of the tools and this pipe.

[Grizz1963]

Well, after much faffing about and trying all sorts of ways (about 20 samples) to get this to work, Paul the owner suggested I do the two punches fast, rather than the cautious slow way I had been doing it all along.
That seems to have worked as the flares came together.

So the culprit was this lovely soft Kunifer pipe. Easy to work with.



Lovely bendy pipe.

Keep in mind that you need to thread the nuts on facing the right way or else you have to cut off the flare and start again.



The result left me happy for sure.

This nut fits the master cylinder serving the rear brake line and was the only one I could not find a replacement for, fortunately it was in really good condition and could get reused.



Next up was threading the original through the chassis as a sample of the bends.

The original pipe had a join around about at the rear of the cab. I chose to delete it, as Martin and I worked out that it must have been the option of the long and short Chevy bodies where the factory could screw on the rear half depending on what they built.

I had to put a bend in it where it joins the flexi hose at the chassis to feed over the rear axle, at which point for some reason the pipes change to a 3/16" size from the 1/4" the rest of the system employs.

No idea why the difference.



Just finger tightened, this allowed me to bend the line to the various contours coming to the front.



Up front I used a straight joiner and a bend to join to the pipe that runs over the cross member or under the sump.



The other thing I did was to keep an extra 500mm to create a spiral once I do the front brake lines as well.




Tomorrow I will spend the day out with Nicola.

Hope to finish the pipes over the weekend.

[ibrown50]

Nice neat job, I knew you'd get there

[flashed]

I love watching you work ,you actually get things done .Seems like all I do anymore is cut firewood and make messes .

[Palf70Step]

Very, very nice my friend. Looks like you been doing it for years!

[65sub]

Nice job Rian. Another skill mastered.

[clemdaddy]

right out of the box… another skill mastered. looks good sir...

[Ta2Don]

Originally Posted by clemdaddy

right out of the box… another skill mastered. looks good sir...

X2!

Great work mate!!!

[60chevyjim]

your doing a great job making the brake lines .
I never seen a tool like the one your using.
and I didn't know you can buy the line in a roll .
I have a old fashion double flaring tool but it works great .