Hello all,
Bit of an update, since it's been a while. Still have the Ford - no hitch, no towing, don't want to discuss that part right now.
Swapped out the front and rear axles, including swapping in lift shackles and regular gas-charged shocks in place of the leaky air-lift shocks that were on it before. Swapped out front hubs with ABS sensors, mixed and matched "best of" half-shafts in front, rebuilt and reinstalled the front driveshaft with new CV joint and u-joint. Mixed and matched "best of" parking brake parts, cleaned up and greased the actuators, etc. Also got the transfer case skidplate swapped over. Couldn't get the parking brake adjusted properly, but otherwise it was working OK. ABS no longer groans and mis-applies when stopping on dry pavement, so at least one of the old front sensors was bad.
Remaining issues: 4WD/LOW lights are blinking, and I had binding in the front end (see below though) so I yanked the transfer-case plug again since it felt like the driveshaft actuating electromagnet wasn't releasing properly. It's likely a sensor issue, so I need to figure out how to yank them and clean them without breaking the plastic housings. I got the parking brake adjusted well enough to hold at the lower slope of the top of my driveway, but then drove off with it applied so it needs adjustment again. I need to check whether there's supposed to be a brake warning light. I know there is a brake warning light on the dash - it lit up when I lost the rear brake line integrity - but I don't know if there's a switch on the parking brake actuator or not. Would be nice if there was.
Biggest issue: despite using a torque wrench on everything, I had a problem: It first showed up as intermittent clunking, that would go away after any braking in the forward direction. Then there was a loud thump as something hit the floorboards under my feet while driving. The clunking got a bit worse, but otherwise did the same. The truck seemed to not want to coast as well. Then I started getting an odd intermittent rythmic scraping, but couldn't tell if it was driveshaft or wheel speed related. Yesterday I pulled out of my driveway backwards and got a bit of binding in the frontend when I hit the brakes and turned the wheels, but it seemed more like the symptoms the old front axle had when it had puked the gear oil and I knew it would do OK for a while longer so I went to work. Once I got there, when I went to back into a space, the left front wheel locked up. When I pushed the clutch back in, it let go. It did it again when I backed up again. A few repeats and I was in the space. Didn't see anything obviously wrong, so went in to work. When I got some time, I went out and pulled the left front wheel. Surprise! Upper caliper bolt was MIA, lower caliper bolt was loose, caliper was able to move around a lot, and had obviously rotated up away from the rotor and gouged the inside of the wheel. I got dang lucky it was the upper that was gone. If it was the lower, the wheel lockup would have happened at speed on the commute to work. Got permission to scavenge a bolt from work and borrowed a torque wrench, got everything put back together. Checked the right side - it was loose, so tightened it up too. So, this weekend I will pull the front calipers off, grab a spare bolt, clean everything, apply thread locker, and torque to spec again. Found a nice
NASA test document: so space-approved blue threadlocker should help. They note that it is a secondary method of keeping bolts from backing out. Primary is the preload applied by torquing it down.
The 4.11 gears will take some getting used to. I'm in 5th by 45mph. ~2200 RPM at 55, 2500RPM at 60, ~2600 at 65. Truck's louder too with the revs. No issues so far with the LSD rear diff, even being in 2WD while I figure out the transfer case. Now that I know the binding was a caliper bolt, I will probably plug the transfer case back in and see how it does. I should still be able to get 4WD, assuming it isn't a wiring/electromagnet fault. I could not get 4WD Low in previous testing - presumably the sensors' bad info is telling the computer I'm still moving, so it won't shift. Hopefully that and not a bad shift motor, though I have a spare. I have spare sensors, too, but the plastic disintegrated when I tried to get one out. Fuel level is more consistent on the gauge since the rear end isn't at random heights all the time from the leaky air shocks, but it will take a few tanks to get a feel for the "new normal". Once I have the braking and transfer-case issues sorted, I may try out the 32x11.50 mud tires. Taller, so lower revs, but wider and heavier so might end up a net loss for mpg. Mostly I want to see how badly they do on winter roads. I keep hearing how bad mud tires are on road, but have never personally experienced it. Fine time to try. Plus, it "looks cool", so maybe someone will say "Hey, I like it, how much?" and I can give them a ridiculous offer and get it sold.
If anyone's still reading after that wall-o-text, I have a question about my little white Chevy. I stopped driving it because I was smelling exhaust, and I was tireder than usual, and had more headaches than usual, and when I put those things together and told my wife "I think my car is trying to kill me", she rightly told me to not drive it anymore. It's been parked since. I know I flubbed a donut gasket installation in the exhaust - I can hear it. Other than replacing the exhaust or center pipe entirely, what's a decent way to stop that leak? The stock gasket is just a donut - flat, spiral-wound thing, not the big crush-type. It's held in place with a V-band type clamp, royal pain to get the donut in there as it is ~2" inside the mating pipe, which is how I flubbed it before. I can think of a few options: try again with a new donut gasket, measure the parts and see if I can get a crush-type in there instead, back-fill the joint behind the gasket with some kind of sealer, cut out the joint and use an appropriately sized/expanded adapter and two standard muffler clamps to replace it, cut out the joint and use one of those stainless-steel band clamps with a sealant inside. Any ideas? I see exhaust putty and exhaust system sealer, usually silicate based and dry hard as a rock. There's a "mastic" type from Walker that sounds like it wouldn't dry hard, but not a lot of info on it. RTV sounds like a bad idea on exhaust just downstream from a catalytic converter. This is a real beater of a vehicle, not worth sinking much money into, and I just want to patch it up enough that it doesn't gas the driver. Not going to replace the entire exhaust for something that might fail due to excessive rust anytime in the next few winters. Oh, also, any decent rusty floorboard sealers? Might be a path in. Can't see any holes, but that doesn't mean there's no pinholes.