front Beam Questions

[Mowser]

I picked up an early adjustable beam a bit ago and am looking at installing it on my '59. It came simply as an open beam with torsions but no torsion arm/ spindles. Well before I picked it up I tore into the '64 beam (unclear of date or how to determine it) figuring I could pull the torsion arms and spindles off to use on the new adj. beam. In so being able to use '64-67 brake parts. So far all sounds good. My question is (after reading about what Riff Raff had/ has on his mango) I got a bit confused as to whether I would be able to do this.

torsion arms, spindles, and everything in between mounted to the early beam and torsions? Doable, or am I about to regret this?

note: I have all the brake parts to rebuilt a set of '64=67 front brakes
I also still have the stock beam in the bus

[riffraff]

I don't really know how my beam is put together.
I know it is an early beam with late brakes.
there are a couple of ways to do it from what I have read.
The big difference between the early and late beams was that the late beams use needle bearings and the early used bushings where the trailing arms ride in the torsion housing. Perhaps that part of the trailing arm was a different size?
I think the bushings need to be removed and the needle bearings pressed in.
The other way is the 63? trailing arms have the late spindles but the early link pins? so they can transfer directly onto early trailing arms.
There are a couple threads on the Samba about how to do it.
sled may be a good resource for the info on this as well

[flashback]

Keith I am assuming you are talking about my old beam in the mango...

The late beams do use needle bearings and the early beams use micarta bushings, the micarta bushings can stay in the beam with no harm however there will be bearing races pressed onto the torsion arms on a late beams and will need to be pressed off as I did when I built the beam that you have. The process is quite simple if you have a press and some fairly common bearing removal tools.

However Mowser, I don't know where your located but if you need you can pull the arms from the spindle assembly via the kingpins and I can press the bearing races off of the arms for you. *edit* Mowser I now see that you are in BC so that might not work too well, if you need I can walk you through the mods needed to go from late to early beam housings.

Brant.

[Mowser]

If you could I'd appreciate it. I was looking around on a bunch of threads and I'd like to give it a try.

[flashback]

Its quite easy like I say, there are 2 bearing races per torsion arm that need to be removed... I have made a diagram of it (not a great one mind you)

This is what the torsion arm should look like without the bearing races.


The red lines in this picture are to show where the bearing races will be pressed onto the arms, they add to the diameter of the torsion arm to fit them to the needle bearings.


I hope these semi ledgible diagrams help you out on this. I really wish I would have taken a couple of photos when I built that beam that keith has.

Brant.