1970 Ford F700

I bought the air compressor at an auction. It is an excellent compressor, and manages to keep the sand blasting cabinet running with a 4mm tip. The sand blasting cabinet, vacuum, and parts washer were all purchased new, just for my truck. I'm sure, though, that they'll find many other uses.

I removed the axle. According to other owners of old Ford trucks and the workshop manual itself, the axle is supposed to be filled with oil. When I took the axle out, not much oil poured out, indicating that there wasn't much oil in the axle to begin with. There are also some oil stains on the differential, so that will need attention.

After struggling to remove the drum, we uncovered a rather soiled pair of brake shoes. We were pretty sure the hydraulic brake fluid leaked out of the brake cylinder because firstly the brakes weren't working, and secondly, because there was a brown greasy substance which must have been the fluid that leaked out and conjealed after mixing with the brake dust and being heated. The rubber boots on the brake cylinders had perished and the metal parts inside needed some pretty good cleaning.

I sent in the brake cylinders to be reconditioned, as well as some new brake line to be made that joins the two cylinders to each other (there are two cylinders per drum). The brake cylinders were sand blasted, re-honed, and re-zinced. I reassembled all the brake cylinders at home with new rubber seals and boots, and now they look as good as new!

I sandblasted everything that I could touch...

And everything that I could lift... but the heavy drum did bend the mesh floor inside the sand blaster. Oops.

Then I painted everything with high-heat black paint.

But, I wasn't finished yet. I had to bake the parts to cure the paint, and we didn't have an oven big enough, so we made one using an oil drum and camping ring burner.

The oil drum oven worked well and heated up in about 20 minutes to 230°C using only the outer ring of the triple-ring burner.

I coated the pads of the brake shoes in methylated spirits and burnt off as much brake fluid and grease as I could.