Power Steering Lines
I had a significant problem finding vendors who would crimp my hand made PS lines because of concerns for liability with the pump producing 1500+ lbs of pressure. And I had a difficult time finding the right terminal pieces for the lines. I lost about 5 weeks over these two issues. I finally found the parts and a shop willing to do the crimping for me, a hose shop in Fresno, Ca that produces hydraulic lines. I had to punch two holes in the fender skirt so the lines could run from the pump to the box. Even that has its' problems since it wasn't easy too find the right grommets for the hole size and wall thickness. In the end, I thought they came out pretty nicely.
Parking Brake Assembly
Nothing is easy when you are modifying a vehicle. Early in the rebuild I decided to keep the hand-pull parking brake because I liked the vintage look and it saved a lot of money to keep it. However, when I installed the 4L80E transmission it changed the geometry of the setup. The new trans has a longer tailpiece and was in conflict with the original assembly. I didn't want to lengthen my cables so I had to come up with a way to keep the original assembly and make it work. I modified the cable anchor brace which originally mounted across the frame and attached it to the new brace holding up the tailpiece of the transmission. It was a whole lot of geometry and was not as easy as it looks. Figuring the correct new angles was all trial and error and it took 3-4 attempts before I got it right. You can see from the photos that I had to mock it into position so I could get length and angle measurements on the two steel posts that would secure the assembly to the transmission cross-member. Here are the fabrication photos:
