72 Duster Resurrection
Had some time to work on the duster yesterday.
Started rebuilding the brakes and taking the original front suspension stuff off to get ready for putting my front disks on.
Driver side disks spindle. Marked it with "D" to keep everything straight. It's pretty grimey.
Old Caliper off. Lots of fun critters and gunk living in there.
Old caliper looks/feels pretty stuck and I dont feel like rebuilding, so replace it is.
Old vs new pads. Old pads actually looked decent but I'm putting fresh ones in anyways, they're cheap.
Old vs new caliper mounting clips. Does anyone know what that black rubber band is for? It came with the new hardware. For holding everything together during reassembly?
New(remanned) caliper loosely installed to check fit. These are M body calipers from autozone. They have a bigger piston than the A body ones and are a direct fit, so I should have more breaking force. Thanks to Moparmat for that tip!
Bonus time! This is the passenger disk rotor. What are these holes? They are not on the driver side rotor. Are these from balancing?...
Questions about brakes:
-Should I inspect and possibly replace the bearings? Spindles do spin freely now...
-Should I get the rotors turned? I dont feel and "lip" on them
On to front suspension:
Disconnected brake soft line and tie rod end. A new complete brake line set is in the Duster's future....
Removing upper control arm bolts. This was not as bad as I thought. Minimal bodily injury sustained at this point.
Upper control arm disconnected from frame.
I also disconnected the strut bar from the lower arm and frame and removed the LCA nut. The lower ball joint refused to break even with vigorous pickle fork beatings and a busted knuckle. I realized that I do not actually need to break the LBJ if I just pull the whole UCA/spindle/LCA assembly out as one piece, so I uttered a final curse at the LBJ and moved on.
As moparmat recommended, I plan on removing the torsion bar retaining ring and smacking the whole thing from the front to push the torsion bar back and allow me to take the LCA/Spindle/UCA assembly out.
It is late in the year so it gets dark very early and I ran out of light. I will be traveling this weekend but back on the project Sunday. Stay tuned.
Had some time to work on the duster yesterday.
Started rebuilding the brakes and taking the original front suspension stuff off to get ready for putting my front disks on.
Driver side disks spindle. Marked it with "D" to keep everything straight. It's pretty grimey.
Old Caliper off. Lots of fun critters and gunk living in there.
Old caliper looks/feels pretty stuck and I dont feel like rebuilding, so replace it is.
Old vs new pads. Old pads actually looked decent but I'm putting fresh ones in anyways, they're cheap.
Old vs new caliper mounting clips. Does anyone know what that black rubber band is for? It came with the new hardware. For holding everything together during reassembly?
New(remanned) caliper loosely installed to check fit. These are M body calipers from autozone. They have a bigger piston than the A body ones and are a direct fit, so I should have more breaking force. Thanks to Moparmat for that tip!
Bonus time! This is the passenger disk rotor. What are these holes? They are not on the driver side rotor. Are these from balancing?...
Questions about brakes:
-Should I inspect and possibly replace the bearings? Spindles do spin freely now...
-Should I get the rotors turned? I dont feel and "lip" on them
On to front suspension:
Disconnected brake soft line and tie rod end. A new complete brake line set is in the Duster's future....
Removing upper control arm bolts. This was not as bad as I thought. Minimal bodily injury sustained at this point.
Upper control arm disconnected from frame.
I also disconnected the strut bar from the lower arm and frame and removed the LCA nut. The lower ball joint refused to break even with vigorous pickle fork beatings and a busted knuckle. I realized that I do not actually need to break the LBJ if I just pull the whole UCA/spindle/LCA assembly out as one piece, so I uttered a final curse at the LBJ and moved on.
As moparmat recommended, I plan on removing the torsion bar retaining ring and smacking the whole thing from the front to push the torsion bar back and allow me to take the LCA/Spindle/UCA assembly out.
It is late in the year so it gets dark very early and I ran out of light. I will be traveling this weekend but back on the project Sunday. Stay tuned.