Loadstar 1850 brakes

Actually, the pictures don't do it justice. Except for a little bit of 'cancer' at the bottom of the door (from silage dust getting inside the door when the windows were down from its past life as a silage truck) it has almost NO rust. The guys at the shop said the brake lines all came loose without twisting off (to their great amazement), and the adjusters for the brakes all worked freely, and they inspected the steel lines the length of the frame and found zero bad spots. I can attest for the work I've done on it myself, every bolt unscrews without twisting off, and the threads are all good, even on the nuts spotwelded in place from the factory. It is one of those things, where the closer you walk up to it, the better it looks.

I even got the radiator fixed. There is a shop in Broken Bow, NE that I can highly recommend. I made an appointment, dropped it off, and in under 2 1/2 hours, it was ready to roll. Fixed 1 major leaks, and 4-5 pinhole leaks for $85. I dropped it off at 9:30, and was on my way home before noon. I've got some welding/brazing/soldering in my background, and I can recognize good work when I see it.

Wow thank you for posting all that you have done with your brakes! I will use this thread as motivation to get the brakes working again in my truck!

All said and done, the parts and labor ran roughly $3K per axle. This includes new pads, new drums, new wheel cylinders, and even the new master and booster, and power bleeding but does not take into account my labor (I put in the new master, booster, a couple rubber lines to the wheels, as well as fixed a couple potential vacuum leaks). If it did not have 'nonstandard' sized brakes, I could have saved $400 per axle, because the drums had to be special ordered.
I must say, they really WORK now. I had a not so bright driver pass me in the right lane on a 4 lane road, then immediately try to turn left. He had to stop because of oncoming traffic, and did so abruptly, and right in front of me. Kudos to the guys doing the brake job, because it stopped on a dime, almost scared me that corn might spill up over the front of the box, or squeal the tires loaded, they were that strong.
Coming home, I tested them on a deserted stretch of blacktop, and I can lock up all 8 rear tires effortlessly while empty. Very happy with the end result. Had I not had them fixed, the guy that cut me off, would have potentially gotten a 45,000# enema.

There really is no "standard" size brakes on these trucks! The axle rating + the GVWR had a lot to do with what size was used.By the late 70's 15x6 & 15x7 on the rear were the most common hydraulic brakes be it a IH,GM or Ford.
After spending 12 yrs behind a dealers parts counter I speak from experience.

Ok, maybe it would be better to say that the size I had, were not a standard warehoused part, and they had to special order them. They had several sizes in the warehouse, but not the ones I needed.
The parts guy said they stocked the more common ones.
Maybe 'uncommon' size would be more accurate. They didn't have any within the State, and had to ship them in.

Here's a link to the MT-132 parts manual (Group 4) brake index for '74 & later Loadstars. It will show what was available in each model by axle.
It may enlighten you a bit.


The F1850 didn't have many options.
FYI...rear axle codes
14341 (RA 341) IH 30,000#
14351 (RA 351) IH 34,000#

https://app.box.com/shared/otkihx6yoa/1 ... 72256946/1


As for who stocks what,it's different today than the 70's/80's. I've found many things that were "common" then are NLA or hard to find today,especially brake drums. PN's we bought by the pallet they were so common are obsolete.There are also a lot fewer mfrs too,which compounds the situation.

It is surpiseing that they 34K rears with juice brakes. I have seen one, so I know they did, but thats a lot of weight to stop.

Did business with the army (Fort Dix & Monmouth) navy (NWS Earle & Lakehurst NAEC) plus the air force (McGuire AFB) and they all had Loadstars like that,some earlier trucks were air over hydraulic as well.

I agree about the weight,plus the fact that 15x3 1/2" was the max available on the front.

Saw one Loadstar dump with 44,000 GVW painted on the side... 34K rear and 10K front. All on jucie brakes, vacuum powerdivider lock. Odd duck when compared to most of the things I work on. Not sure I'd like to pilot it at max GVW, but I suppose it could only do 35 -45 flat out on the level so not like it is out on the interstate doing 55- 70.
15x4 is the std air brake on a 12K axle, so 15x 3 1/2 on a 10K isn't much less. I'll have to check, but I think wedge brakes may be narrower then S cam I know the rears are smaller for the same load, but wedges, when they work properly are better at turning the movement into brakeing power then S cams. Everything has to be well mantained with wedges, lots of anti seize and the rubbers need to be in place and in good condition or everything seizes and you hae no brakes!

Nice, very nice truck. I'm envious as not many left who can still drive the old 5X4 transmission. I was never a whiz kid on them but could get around fairly well. Your comment on no rust reminds me of the old long abandoned trucks on the North Canol road that I used to see. They had very little rust and the undercarriage was still painted.