Hi Dan, your master cylinders you bought are perfectly fine. You were pushing the cylinder in to far when bench bleeding. When you push to far the front O-ring(front of car) goes past the hole and lets fluid in front of the o-ring letting it leak out the front of the master cylinder. Short strokes will solve your problems.
The perfect addition to a Classic 55 Hot Rod !!! Lakewoods will make it Leave the Line So Fine !!! Great Job everybody !!! Rave - On - Danni and Dan !!!
These old school traction bars have bind under load. And improvement would be having a shackle at the front mount of the bar or a sliding tube (kind of like a driveshaft slip joint) to allow forward and back movement under throttle and braking. But as you said, little movement and stiffer ride will be the result.
Oooo it’s burning soo bad 😂. Sorry your pain makes us laugh but it’s quality entertainment. Great content as always! John can come but most of these people are beyond being educated.
Put those ladders- on your Chevelle... in the 60 s, My Brother welded up some 3 foot Ladders for his Gasser 55. I barely remember them, but I do remember, you could barely see them- even my 3 ft.8 year old self !!..
Dan back in the day I had a 53 Chevy pick up truck I want to put in a 68 nova rear rim at it I use the same lake with ladder bars what the cool thing was when I rode at night because I painted them yellow rear end black my shocks were white and I had a 12 bolt rear rim cover on it and when you ride behind it at night it would glow and it look cool and bad ass take that in consideration call looks great keep up the good work
Enjoyed the video. Seems to be a lot of ladder bar vs axel bind, which to be honest with you, I know nothing about. Just be sure your set up is safe. Safety is the most important thing when your pedaling this much HP and torque. Keep it wheels down!
You should follow a car with slapper bars. You will be amazed how much spring twist is going on. The bars are constantly moving up & down even in traffic. My 2 cents.
What ever you do in a new shop the number one marriage saver is a wash basin to clean up before you go in 1 sink and refrigerator 2 lift 3 parts bench 4 tool wall You know the rest Dream big Dan
Ansen made a hell of a set back in the 60’s-70’s. A cousin drag racer had them on his Nomad drag car. They bolted to the spring perches and had an additional bracket that bolt to the front of the main leaf spring. Large bolts attached the bar arms to these brackets. Lock that rear end up so it wasn’t going anywhere as far as wrap goes. They were heavy duty but a hot setup back in the day.
Lakewood Ladder Bars.... I had a set on my 66' Chevelle SS They worked great, no problems✌️😎 (Paint 'em orig. Yellow ! ) I also remember some were bright orange.... it was many decades ago 😊 Next step: Wheelie Bars 😉
Been Working on my 56 Nomad on my channel. I take a break to come and watch you have the same issues I got! LoL Keep up the great work of keeping these old Chevy on the road. Now I got to get back to mine. See Ya!!
with the torque you are thowing at that car. the ladder bars are useless unless they are welded to the axle tubes. because the axle will just spin in the u blot. and there is sience to it. you got to have total acr weight on the suspention so they are where they wanna be while under no load. some did not wanna weld to the axle tube, so they made center bolt pads like what the leaf sit on and a mached flat pad on the ladder bar so it could not spin on the axle tube. when dialer corect they are great low budget traction control.
Used a "Pinion Snubber" on my Road Runner. Oddly the mount was there all I had to do was go pick it up at Chrysler.. My Dad clued me in. Very "stealthy".. 😂
Dan, Daniel my brother.. Once again, excellent work. Car is looking good. I want to give you some old head advice, from an old drag racer..... That big engine makes a LOT of torque. Everything depends on the tire you run. If you're just gonna run typical cheap radials, I think you'll be fine. But, if you use a tire that hooks up, those bars aren't beefy enough. Also, install a driveshaft loop. If you hook up and that front U-joint gives out, you could get hurt. I don't want to see that. Loops are easy to install, cheap and the car is already in the air. Just do it. Its $20 and 20 minutes. Danni is gonna be riding in this car...It might save your rear... literally. Signed - Your friend, Cancer guy. 😊
You are not going to be happy with the ladder bar setup on a leaf spring car unless you install a floater. Suspension bind and a very harsh ride can be expected without a floater setup!
could be my old memories but it seems to me if you had coil springs you used ladder bars if you had leaf springs you used slapper bars. or maybe its just me.😊
You were right those are made for a coil spring cae and those brackets that were on the front bolt up to the front trailing arm torque box I had them on my 69 and 70 chevelles I had them fully welded to the rear-end on my 70 the weld on the left side always cracked.
They make a kit to use ladder bars on leafs. They are slotted where the leafs attach. That way they can compensate for when the leafs get longer and shorter due to flex. No one ever used ladder bars on leafs in the old days. But hey it’s your car
I had a set of these on my '69 SS Chevelle way back, like others have said, they're meant for coil spring cars, I think these will bind up on a leaf spring.
As I understand "ladder" vs "Traction/slapper" bars. Traction/Slapper bars are installed allowing the bars to "flex" into the body, whereas Ladder bars are installed tight to the frame allowing zero flex.
The last time I saw ladder bars was 78. Timmy had jyst out a line loc on his el camino. After hs let out, he did a huge smokey burnout at the intersection on the corner of school. When the smoke cleared, the cop behind him lit him up with the red and bkue lights of appreciation ! On my slightly lower pkwered 67 ford shortbed, I put some,(helliweg, maybe?), small coil helper springs. Cured the tramp. I also had the loader driver laugh at me while getting a load of sand and gravel. Came out of there with just over a ton load. Steering was very light ! The driver was laughing because, my truck had patina, rattle can black primer, kind of, where it hadn't worn off. The motor had some chop. He thought I would either break, or not be able to pull away. Lol
Ladder bars are super cool old school, but you will need a housing floater set up for them to work as designed. I mean they won't keep the car from being moved, but suspension movement will be sparse since the rear end moves thru suspension travel with leafs on the front bushings and it won't pivot on the same axis with the ladder bars, as is....Assuming you make a solid weld holding the ladder bar mount in place. A couple good launches with traction and you'll know. Like door hinges on different axis, hope that makes sense. :)
Dan ladder bars with leaf spring will create a radial bind because of the different front mounting point of the bars and the leafs. When the bind occurs on a hard launch you will lose traction You fix this by making your axle a floater. This allows the axle to move forward on launch and the ladders become the anchor point for the rear housing.
I agree. The two different swing radii will be fighting each other putting stress on the axle tube. The only travel will be what is allowed by the spring eye bushing and flexibility of the front half of the spring.
I used roller housings with leaf springs so it wouldn't have leaf spring bind, also used a ladder bar cross member, competition Engineering on a 72 Maverick Grabber with a built 69 351w 4 spd and 9" 4:11
And if they dont work/ ride too rough- check out what Carrol Shelby did to the rear axles on the 1965 GT350 s.. those over rider bars might be the ticket for your 55..
Don’t use ladder bars, they won’t work, binds up the suspension and will bend your axle. Get some caltracs or competition engineering slide a links. We used those ladder bars on my friends GTO, it was a nightmare, they never worked for traction because the suspension would never move
Always liked the ladder bars better...and most of my hot roddin' buddies back in the day used them. To me it's a better solution as the the slappers have to torque the axel a bit before effect, while the ladders are working from the git go Oh, and btw, have I ever mentioned that you two are entertaining as all get out! Love ya!!!!
I think you will find that ladder bars with Leafs will bind up, usually you need housing floaters to allow it to work, but it may work for you without.
Funny that Dan makes a comment about hanging on to the ladder bars for 5 years as if thats a problem. I have car parts in the shed from a 66 Mustang that I sold in 1987 just on the odd chance I might need them before I die. 😂
You had the suspension hanging, instead of supporting the weight of the body, when you were locating the front of the ladder bars and the overload bumper. I don't see how the suspension is supposed to function. It looks like its going to ride like an empty 2t truck. There's not going to be any compliance in the rear suspension. You're going to need some air suspension seats like a salt water fishing boat.
funny not so funny. my buddy, not me . got stuck on a big speed bump with long latter bars. i mean stuck. cock tires trying to get off. older neck pulled him off. half ton ford. then we got my coffee.
Two lane was so much more simple and darn it worked now with the suspension you are going American Graffiti with the 427 not putting down your engine choice but the best sound was the rock crusher and the rear end working together
There are many ways to add traction control to rear leaf springs. you can use rubber snubbers instead of welding the front pivot to the frame. Consider a second set of leaves at the rear edge of the bottom plate, doubling up on the front half of the leaves makes them stiffer, in effect control arms. Dodge drag racers experimented with facing the ladder bars rearward so they pulled downward on the rear of the frame.
