Tuesday, August 8, 2017

Now that the truck can move under its own power, its time to get things running better. The plan is to work towards improving drivability and to be more reliable. First would be a set of wheels to call its own. Its time to stop borrowing Theodore’s wheels. To achieve this, I bought some extra wheels. These were nasty old rims with tires on them from who knows when. I was able to get three of them pulled apart, sand blasted and painted. The paint turned out a bit too glossy, but it’ll do fine for rims. I set these three up with new tires so I could now at least drive both trucks at the same time. (Using Theodore’s spare as Franklin’s 4th wheel.)

Filling the steering box with oil improved the steering a lot. It also showed us that there’s a leak in the steering box. The oil slowly runs back out, one dribble at a time. A couple changes of gear oil in the rear differential helped quiet down much of the growling sounds coming from that end of the machine. I fear the differential may be in poor shape. The oil we found in there resembled black peanut butter. Now its more like black slime. Better, but not good enough. Adding a new exhaust system with muffler really helped. Straight pipes are fun, ‘till you need to go up a hill.



I bit the bullet and ordered a reproduction gas tank with fuel sender. The fuel tank we found in the truck looked to be a modified M37 tank. It was a complete mess.

The real trick was, installing this fuel tank by myself. Guy loaned me a floor jack, but it was too small to be useful. I ended up laying on my back, under the truck, holding the tank up with my feet while trying to install the strap bolts.

The straps were all bent out of shape from years of holding in the wrong shaped tank. I was finally able to connect two long bolts end to end with a nut between. I used this to hold the tank in place while I ran to the store to buy an assortment of bolts.

Starting long and using shorter and shorter bolts, I was able to stretch the straps back in shape around the tank. Finally I was able to get the ends close enough to install the original bolts & nuts.

One problem with this tank is that when its filled to the top, fuel leaks around the fuel sender plate. I’ve not been able to solve this issue. Still working on it.



With the new wheels, exhaust and fuel tank we were able to run the machine in the local 4th of July Parade.

This was a lot of fun. As per usual, we let the kiddies use the M37 for hauling their friends in the parade.



Theodore with all the kids leading Franklin with Julie & me driving.

This is sitting in line waiting for the parade. We’d been invited by the other Army truck people to join them this year. How cool is that huh?



Theodore with a load of kids.

Like I said, the parade was a lot of fun. But driving along in first gear I could feel a surging in Franklin’s driveline. Something was wrong with the drive shafts.

I decided the next move would be to replace the U-Joints. As I talked to the online people, the suggestion came up that possibly the drive shafts were out of phase.

What is this “out of phase”? Why have I never heard of such a thing? Well, phasing is where you align the u-Joint yokes on each end of a drive shaft with one another. Now, modern cars have both ends of their drive shafts aligned and welded on at the factory. You never have to phase them because, being welded, there is no way they could go out of phase. However, these older army truck shafts have the slip joints in the shaft itself. So you have to be careful when putting them together that you do it, in phase. Got that?

Back to research. What type of U-Joints does this thing take? Where can I get them? Who actually has them in stock? Order, wait, pull out the drive shafts. In order to pull out he middle shaft, between the transmission and the transfer case, one must remove the entire floor of the cab. “Really?”

The U-joints are held in with steel straps that are slid in place and in turn pinned in by bolts & nuts with little plates that have bend up ears to lock the nuts.. Good Lord! I know, some people tell me that this is the best method ever. But does it have to be so bloody complicated?

Once again, doing a simple drive shaft service turns into way bigger project than I’d expected. But, as it turned out, the U-Joints were shot and all the shafts were out of phase. And I swapped out the bendable locking ear things for nylocks. Gasp!



Somewhere in the midst of all this drive shaft work. I decided to start rebuilding the heater. Now, this isn’t the original heater. I don’t think this truck originally had a heater. But, someone put in the effort to install this one so, what the heck, lets make it work.



Rusty old heater parts. The fan actually still worked fine. Cool!



Sadly the core was shot.



With new U-Joints and properly phased driveshafts, speed has improved. But, it’s not yet up to snuff. Above 40 something in the drive line starts vibrating. And, as you push it faster, it just gets worse.

We now have a new temperature gauge, very handy! The most important two. Temp & oil pressure. Don’t leave home without them

I’d also installed a new fuel gauge but that’s not yet working right. Before bothering outside people I’m going to replace the wire from the tank. Who knows what sort of shape its in?

Notice the 3D printed cup holder, very handy! And I had glass installed in the rear clamshell door. It was missing when we bought the truck. Then, just to be safe, I replaced the last of the rubber oil lines used for the oil filter. I didn’t want to pop one of these on the road.

Talking to John Bizal of Midwest Military, I order the lion’s share of my parts from him. He said that his command car had the same sort of vibration issue. His was caused by worn slip joints in the rear drive shaft. What he said made a lot of sense. If the slip joints wear, the shaft can effectively become bent, because they can no longer keep the shaft in column. To check, you grab the shaft at the slip joint and pull up & down. If it clicks, its bad. Franklin’s rear shaft clicked.

What to do? There were no carryall shafts available. There were some NOS drive shafts of different lengths. So I ordered one of these with the plan of taking it down to the driveline shop, with my original, and having them resize the new one to the same length of the original. For some reason I had a really tough time getting this plan across to the drive shaft guy.



While waiting for the drive shaft stuff, I decided that this would be a great time to replace the last radiator hose and fanbelt. The Thermostat housing bolts were really tight~ #$^&! Suddenly the project went from a La-de-da to a major pain to deal with.



Of course, by the time I was done, I’d broken off both of them. So typical.

What to do? I tried everything I could think of to get those bloody bolt ends out. Snake oil in a can, bigger vice grips, etc.



Well, working with the head on a workbench is a lot easier than trying to work on it in the truck. This also opens up the possibility of taking the head to a machine shop.

In the end I took it to a machine shop. They drilled the broken bolts out and helicoiled the holes.



I designed and 3D printed a tap fixture for keeping the tap vertical while chasing the head bolt holes.

Reduce chances for screw ups, always!



And the head is back on the engine. Whewh! That was a detour I never wanted to take.



Sometime, during all this drama, the heater parts came back from the powder coaters.

It never ceases to amaze me what some sand blasting and powder coat can do for stuff.

Looks brand new.

Now about this time the new rear driveshaft arrived. After fighting it back into the truck. It was time to check and see what improvement was gained by doing this.

Hop in the truck, fire it up, hand brake off, start rolling backwards out of the driveway hit the brakes and BAM! Brake petal goes to the floor and sticks there.

YAAAAaaa! Total brake failure!