Alex's '42 WC53 Carryall Build Details - Cummins ISB170

[Bruce in BC]

I look each you put up a post. That thing is amazing and I am glad the truck is coming together for you. The workmanship is great. What size is the yoke on that pinion and what diameter are the axle shafts? They look beefy.

[W_A_Watson_II]

Yep I'm here, enjoying your work as always.

[Alxj64]

I look each you put up a post. That thing is amazing and I am glad the truck is coming together for you. The workmanship is great. What size is the yoke on that pinion and what diameter are the axle shafts? They look beefy.

Yep I'm here, enjoying your work as always.

Thanks guys! Its good to know that somebody is following along and enjoying / using the information, because if not, then whats the point of sharing, right?

Bruce,
The pinion yoke is a 1350 Series, and uses the normal 3/8" diameter U-bolt kits.

The shafts are heat treated Chromoly, GM 14 Bolt 30 Spline and are 1.55" diameter at the splines, 1.562" at the seal surface and are 1.625" remaining length, so yes, they are Ring and Pinion killers in a hard shock load scenario. If I were using this thing as a rock crawler or hardcore trail truck I would have opted to have a neckdown machined behind the splines to prevent root failure and maybe even had them gun drilled up to the yoke ears. The yokes use 1480 joints, and my stub shaft outers get here soon and they are aftermarket Spicer brand shafts that are 35 Spline Dana 70 stubs and I have early original Spicer internal hubs that have been EDM broached to match the 35 spline stubs. I had a prototype made to replace the lockout dials. It worked out perfect because the old school Eaton logo is already the shape of a good hub dial. I need to have one dimension changed but then I'll get them printed in something UV resistant, I do like this color though.

I've been finish welding my stainless 3" exhaust system (my SS TIG skills are terrible, but its also 400 series and I'm not back-purging).

Also, I found the correct fittings and work around for these Gabriel Sky-Jacker air assist shocks. The plastic line kit that comes with these things is a sad joke, like laughingly terrible. It uses some little o-rings that compress on the OD of some tiny metric plastic tubing and then uses plastic nuts to crimp the pieces together. Well, for others following along, you can use 1/4" Yor-lok fittings and some CuNi brake line, (make sure the fittings have both a back and front sleeve and are rated for copper line) and then the outside nut is just something you can steel from a fitting assembly or buy separate from Mcmaster. I then flared the little piece of hardline to a JIC-37º and used some pushlock fittings and 250 psi, 400ºF rated hose for the flex lines up to a JIC T-fitting that will run from my FBV valve that I bought from Clippard fittings. The FBV valve is self relieving but only when manually opened. I thought about putting a pressure gauge in line but I didn't want to shock load the guage every bump so I am just going to adjust these by feel as I am driving. Bumpy road, soften them up, smooth road with a bunch of friends in the back, crank it up some to get rid of sag. I had the springs built really soft so these shocks should help absorb a few extra hundred lbs of weight.

CAVIAT... My shock brackets are ENGINEERED for the loads created with this system. These are a sketchy thing to use if the mounts are also rated to handle suspension working loads beyond shock body loads.

[Todd M]

Very nice work as usual. Always good to see pictures. Thanks.

[Greg Coffin]

Alex, I'm following along religiously. I'm not saying much 'cause I don't have much to add. This project is a fair bit above my skill set. I'm glad you're posting again, I was going through a bit of withdrawal there.

That Eaton lockout dial is a beautiful thing to be sure.

[Matthew Welcher PWA]

Alex, your work as always makes me envious of your skills, please keep sharing away with all of us.

Thank you

[Chip]

Alex - been a while since I’ve been able to log on. Can’t tell you how cool it is to catch up on your progress. All the little details are going to add up to a one of a kind truck!

[Alxj64]

Thanks for the good words guys! Glad to know people are still watching and checking in. I am getting SOOO CLOSE to making this thing a driver. All the odds and ends are coming together but they certainly don't want to "fall in place". The devil is in the details and the last 10% does in fact take 90% of the time.

Got a few things done over the weekend, but only took pictures of a few.

I finally got around to installing the internal beadlocks into the wheels. I was expecting this to be more of a hassle than it turned out to be. The hardest part was I had ONE wheel that just refused to come apart. The first one I broke down took a few whacks with a 2x4 and small mallet to get it to split apart at the centric pilot hub and to release around the studs because of the tight tolerance on the holes. Well, the second one stuck together pretty good, so it seems. Beat on it a good bit and it didn't seem to want to move but maybe a little on one side. I spent 20 minutes messing with it before flipping it back over with the intentions of trying to get the tire off with a spoon and pry bars when I noticed ONE nut was still on a stud that I had totally missed. I blame it on the heat...

After that, the rest came apart easily, the internal locks went in with only a little bit of fight, and luckily these studs are the perfect length that getting the shells back started and piloted on was not a real fight. Also, when I had them apart I threw about 16 oz of balancing media into them based on others reviews of these tires.

Also if you ever need to pickup Spicer parts for your builds, hit up Down To Fab .com. The guys that run it are awesome. If you don't see something on the website, just email em and they can get it and it will be added to their inventory. These are the Spicer Brand 35 spline stubs and they were a better price than Dutchman, Yukon, Etc. I also ordered my U-joints from him and the rest of the stuff for the Front driveshaft. Which reminds me, I need to order my 1350 front output yoke for the NP205.

Got the shafts installed and dialed in the Camber with a set of adjustable lowers. I've also heard mixed reviews on running these things. Essentially its don't use them on a hardcore wheeling rig and if adjusted properly, they are fine on street trucks, and then there are two instances where guys admit to putting a small TIG tack on the eccentric stud to keep it from spinning when tightening it all down. After messing with them, I feel it would be an install error if they are changing adjustment after the fact, or the lower bearing is locking up and causing the stud to break free and move. Also, you can see in the photo, the dog is still alive and fairly well, granted he was OVER the heat and kept rotating his spot on the cool concrete or sitting directly in front of the floor fan, blocking it from moving any air and just panting with this F-U smirk on his face.

1/4 of a degree of negative camber should be fine. I thought about taking it in up to a full degree to reduce wear on the outer shoulders of the front tires but after reading a few P4x4 threads regarding camber effects on larger tire solid axle trucks, its not really that big of a deal and the effects of caster working with camber has more of an effect than just initial zero point camber anyways.

However, there are always the stupid little things that keep slowing me down. This front donor axle is an '86 for the Ford outers. I keep spacing on that and even when I ordered my first round of brake parts I just ordered the "KP Ford twin piston brake setup". MISTAKE. The '86 calipers and stands are different. They are NOT the H-block setup that I was used to, instead they are the weird drive in rubber/metal clips. EASY as pie to install, etc. After returning the wrong calipers, and getting the "correct ones" I go to install them yesterday and they are just BARELY striking the outside radius of the rotor; on both sides, but the driver's side locks the rotor up, passenger's side just zings along. So, the hubs and rotors I have are off of a TTB F-250 setup that I bought because originally I had Dually hubs. So with this being the case, I figure okay maybe this is just the wrong rotor. I check the PN on two different autoparts box stores and its still the same PN for the the TTB 50 setups as the Solid Kingpin 60 stuff. So, I guess, the rotors that were on these 250 hubs are just machined wrong. Or the Reman-calipers are wrong, but they look like old castings. The last thing I am wondering is since my stands were pretty scaled and had some notable pitting, that they are allowing the caliper bodies to strike the rotor. Either way, I am just going to toss the whole hub and rotor assembly on the lathe and take a few thou' off the OD, and also check them for true so that its one less thing to "shake or wobble" while dialing in this forever project.

[Alxj64]

Well, the brake situation was resolved. Somehow the wrong parts were in the boxes, or I picked up the wrong boxes and never looked again.. who knows, but I've got brakes on the truck now, even though I am going to pull the Caliper and paint it here first.

The lockout hub dial works and fits and all that good stuff. I'm certainly a fan!

[Matthew Welcher PWA]

I run into wrong parts in the box on a daily basis, It used to be a very common practice when a parts store or distribution center bought out another franchise they would do a massive rebox or relabel on all parts.
A very common practice that would commonly get a couple hundred thousand dollars worth of parts either marked wrong and or in the wrong box sent out around the country. Very frustrating.

[Alxj64]

Well, back to messing with the engine; I changed out the FCA to try and get rid of the rough idle, camming problem and it seemed to clean up the rough idle and get rid of the fuel rattle but I still have what feels like a pretty rough idle and a minor misfire. The exhaust is actually really quiet. Like, I am surprised how well this muffler works actually. The engine itself is fairly quiet but all of my loose parts floating around inside make everything seem so much louder.

I have very slow drip fuel leak at the tank pickup fitting. I am afraid I am going go have to drain the tank to fix that one, ohh well, it will at least be 5 gallons of fuel donated to the "cleaning" of the tank process for this initial starting stuff.

Current issue with the engine is a rough / low shaky idle and then weird throttle response and surging. I am going to see if "re-setting the pedal calibration" is actually a thing or some internet Ram 5.9 only myth. As a reminder, this engine is a Common Rail ISB 3.9 which shares most of the fuel system of the '03 -'06.5 Ram Cummins 5.9 engines, however mine is a fully industrial unit.

The Allison does spin when tossed into gear, so thats a good sign. Needs some more things hooked up, the cooling fan setting established, and the brakes bled. Getting so very close to driving this thing. And again, I wish a lot of you guys were closer because man... I could use a hand on this thing.

Video of the shake rattle and roll.

https://youtu.be/ZRc7apcqpVk

[Bruce]

Still following, I better get busy or you will finish before I do!

[Alxj64]

So a few updates:
I bought a code reader off of Amzn to try and get the fault codes from my J1939 connector and it failed, all it did was give me real-time data and some overall data. Good news is the drive-train only has 50k miles on it, so the problems are most likely involving old fuel, or wiring things I may have done wrong / any kind of "sitting" type deterioration. After the code reader failed to give me any DTCs, I resorted to more professional methods...

I had a guy who works on many different modern diesel engines come by the garage one evening. He is a field service tech for a living so he has the Cummins software to connect to this weird proprietary system. Long story short, the engine was in "Protection Mode" from all the weird things going on, primarily with the bad FCA solenoid. He had to take the engine out of protection mode and while doing so we dug through a bunch of the system parameters. The OEM application of this was a drivetrain of a wrecked package delivery truck belonging to a major known company. Anyways, the truck had a 65 mph speed limiter, 2600 rpm tach limiter, 65 mph cruise control limiter, max torque limiter of 333 ft-lbs, and individual gear torque limitations. Ie, first gear was limited to 111 ft-lbs... yea, thats it. It was a "drivetrain protection" system. I mean, I get it... fleet truck needs to last and you can't trust people not to beat on the trucks. 111 ft lbs, x 3.7 first gear, x 4.10 axles = 1683 ft lbs to the axle shafts.

^ So... we obviously had to tweak all of the above settings to better fit my application. Long story short, the speed limiter is not an issue now, cruise control limiting is not an issue on either end of the high low spectrum, individual gear protection is just "off" and the max torque limiter was set to "Data-plate" which is 420 ft lbs. and the field for max over limit driver demand was set to 125%... meaning in the correct situation this little bugger can allow itself to make 525 ft. lbs of torque...:) So 525 x 3.7 x 4.57 = 8877... ie axle shaft breaker, and thats not even throwing in the 1.96 low range. So its now up to me as the drive to NOT romp on this thing, especially not in low range.

However, thats not going to be an issue until I can get the TCM figured out. Another long story. Transmission is an Allison 1000, and its only shifting into P, N, and 4th. No 1st - 3rd, and no Reverse, at all. When I put it in Drive, it drops into 5th for a second then downshifts to 4th after a few seconds of stumbling. I initially thought it was an internal issue, such as a stuck E shift solenoid. The field service guy had a code reader to pull the Allison codes. It was showing that G-Shift solenoid Electrical Fault... So thats an internal problem on the valve body. That night I look into it more. The transmission is a 2002 build date so it shouldn't even have a G-shift solenoid. Using the wiring diagram I have for this transmission I discover there's not even a wire in the original chassis harness for a G-shift solenoid... so why is the TCM looking for this and throwing faults which essentially prevent any shifts. The G-solenoid is the later method of line pressure modulation so without that, the default line pressure operates the 1:1 ratio clutch set and thats it. Hrmm. So the local Allison dealer takes my CIN (calibration code from the TCM) and runs me a print out for its "Group Applications", and then I compare the tag on my gearbox to the CIN groups, and nothing matches. The CIN indicates 2004 year build (hence its desire for the G-solenoid because thats the year they started using those in the 5 speeds) and the "Vocation" of the CIN is "LLY GMT 800".... translation --> 2004 LLY Duramax GM Truck w/ no Snow Plow"... Uggh.

^All this means that its the WRONG TCM for my transmission. Evidently when the yard pulled and palleted this drivetrain they must have thought "An Allison TCM is an Allison TCM"... well not quite. This different year model has different sensor needs to operate the shifting protocol. So now, I have to use the OEM application VIN for this drivetrain and find the CIN through the Allison dealer and have them re-flash the TCM with the correct program, and then I have to drive the truck enough for it to re-learn its shifting. However, there may be a silver lining. I might be able to get the shift points adjusted to better match a 3/4 ton truck vs the 16k box van that the TCM was originally out of.

In other news, I did some wiring on the back of the chassis to finish up my tail lamps and trailer connector. I ended up using some Amphenol connectors soldered into some M series tail lamps. I was informed by the internet that this was a bad idea because these connectors are less than water resistant. I install an O-ring in the shell, and then heat shrink before the strain relief and then again after and over the strain relief over the existing long piece of heat shrink... the 4:1 adhesive stuff too.

I am, however, stumped as to where to mount the license plate on the back. Its too darn big and covers too much sheet metal.

Umm. Finished the exhaust system, it turned out nice and is rather quiet!! Like very quiet, atleast from what I can tell.

[Alxj64]

Trying to add some photos

[Bruce]

Unless you plan on dipping a boat into he water, I think you are good to go, that setup almost looks like over-kill? The diesel Guru did good for you, are you planning on historic tags or daily driver tags?