Well, what an absolute pain in the dick the last few days have been! So after the transfercase debacle Rob came by the other night to pick it up in order swap the input we tried to bleed the brakes while he was here only to discover we had no fluid going to the rear axle. Come to find out the proportioning valve was dead and badly leaking out of the rear section of the prop block with the valve hanging out. I tried to recenter the valve but there was no go….the prop was shot. This must be a common theme with these as my dad’s 90 G-van did the same thing a few years ago.
The best part about this is this particular stinking prop valve is a 2 year only valve use on RWAL equipped 90-91 square bodies, while the GMT400 trucks used a completely different prop valve. After studying my K10 and Suburban for a while I determined it wouldn’t be too painful just to convert it over to the earlier style and retrofit the earlier prop valve back down on the crossmember where it belongs. I tell ya, I would rather shave an angry Badgers balls than go through this again.
So this is the mess before. The Red Arrow is the rear brake portion of the prop block. It was badly leaking from here.
This is the spot on the crossmember where the prop valve would be on older rigs. The lines looked like they would almost line up close enough to an older prob valve. Well, this isn’t horseshoes or hand grenades…. And of course, the ORD steering box brace must come back off that I conveniently installed when the engine was OUT!
This here is what the 73-89 proportioning valves look like. This one happened to come off a ’82 C20 or something like that.
For the most part, the lines did almost line up with the older prop valve with the exception of two issues. First issue being the lines from the master cylinder to the prop valve must be changed as it would practically be impossible to bend them around to fit the valve and still clear the ORD steering brace. Second, the brake line to the rear is too long and has the wrong size tube nut. I don’t know what size tube nut is the right one but it doesn’t exist in any part store! So, Rob had to grab the M/C to prop valve lines and rear brake line tube nut from the boneyard. The line must be cut and double flared at the red line. Doing double flares is not my favorite thing to do and I’ve never been good at them but I never had a good flare kit either so I made a trip to Sears for a fresh Craftsman Double Flare kit. It worked great! I’m a double flaring building mofo now!
These were the original lines for the RWAL. Just no way to cleanly bend them to fit the older prop valve
End result…prop in place and ORD steering box reinstalled/torqued. Hope it doesn’t leak once we bleed the brakes!
Looks better with less congestion now too. Vacuum brakes will do for a while until a hydroboost swap finds its way into the budget
Also got the battery trays sand blasted and squirted this week as well. It seems I painted them on the windiest day of the week so they’re not perfect.
Oh, and I had to cut 2 F150’s worth of aluminum weight out of the 700R4 dust cover to fit behind the Gen III oil pan.
Now, I can finally get back on wiring where I had hoped to start this week!