I might be interested in said tool Greg, I can imagine this might even be more difficult once brake fluid gets in the caliper also. Link to it?
The rears are pretty much mocked in place. Still trying to decide what to do with the flex lines before I button everything up. While the pic I posted above shows a bunch of room between the caliper and frame rail, I forgot that the brake line comes out of that side of the caliper.
I think the lines i have will work for now but to really be neat and tidy a shorter line with a straight banjo instead of an angled banjo fitting might be a better choice.
First off, lets talk about the backing plate Ron designed and how slick it is. Putting a brake backing plate on a 9" with Torino axle housing ends can be difficult. I've had the fight many times with my Ford Explorer brake kit which is similar in design in some ways...but then way different in other ways. The axle bearing is pressed onto the axle and whatever you use as a plate has to also double as the retainer that holds that bearing in the axle end. Ron designed this plate to be two piece so you can take it apart, place it over the axle behind the bearing then put it back together again. SO slick!!
You then reassemble the e-brake setup on the front side of the plate with the axle on the bench and it's ready to slide into place all in one piece.
The next battle with this setup is getting wrenches onto the e-brake cable ends to tight the cable housing to the bracket. This setup makes it super easy to just rotate the whole backing plate one hole around getting the bracket from out behind the shock brackets so you can get a wrench on it.
Just one nut on a Tee bolt holds this all in place while you tighten the locknut on the cable end. Then just loosen that nut again and roll the plate back into place.
Here's the caliper in place...
Think I'll end up moving the caliper down one more hole to the bottom ones just to take up some of the slack in the flex line and give me a comfort zone between the banjo fitting and frame. It pretty sweet looking though, isn't it?
Hope to button it all up tomorrow... If all goes well, I may even get to race it in Topeka on Saturday.