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

[Alxj64]

Also messed with some of my brake hardware. I will put up a post in the materials and vendors section on my brake flex line source. Its kind of cheap but it is PTFE stainless braided. I am going to get some heavy wall heat shrink tube or maybe just some hydraulic line hose sleeve to put over it to hide the shiny look and keep dirt and debris out of the braids. My hard lines are all 1/4
Copper Nickel line. Very easy to work with. Only thing I have found is I think I need to get calibrated on how tight is "tight enough" for my flare connections as I am using a combination of Inverted 45 degree and JIC 37 where I can. The JIC 37 parts are cheaper and easier to find in the 1/4" flavor, and I like the looks of the JIC stuff on this "aircraft / bomber" themed machine.

The next Carryall I build, with that detroit, will have all kinds of exposed hard lines, on purpose.

[Alxj64]

Alcan springs are being made as I type this. Very stoked on getting a softer spring pack built that I can run on this thing and then use the air system to adjust the load capacity as needed. I built that weird anti-wrap bar a few years back and now I kinda don't like the thing.. Dunno what to do. Not sure if I'll need it yet but if I do, I need to have the brackets attached to the axle before I send the housing off for powder coat. Hmm. Spring over with soft springs, however the load cap adding shocks are mounted to the front and have some leverage too so I am wondering if they can help manage the torque wrap? Pinion cranks up under forward acceleration load. I guess I just need to drive it and see what happens? I am not crawling with it, nor racing with it, maybe a little spring wrap will be my warning sign to let out of the throttle... Thoughts?

[Desoto61]

But you were planning on towing with it, and have a motor designed for low end towing grunt. You understand this stuff better than I do but seems to me your most likely issue would be trying to yank that airstream out of a muddy camp site or similar such situation, sure the air bags would be helping for weight but probably not as helpful for wrap.

[Alxj64]

But you were planning on towing with it, and have a motor designed for low end towing grunt. You understand this stuff better than I do but seems to me your most likely issue would be trying to yank that airstream out of a muddy camp site or similar such situation, sure the air bags would be helping for weight but probably not as helpful for wrap.

This is true... Hmm, I guess I'll just have to get the springs under it and see just how stiff they are. I guess I can run this bar for now and then later on build something that has the same geometry but looks better.

Also, this happened. I'll always have one Carryall with me at all times. So many straight lines of various weights, small numbers, and the hidden lines done in a grey ink, this girl Nailed this piece! She is in Norfolk Va for now, and is super humble. You can stalk her work as marenatattoos on Instagram.

[Matthew Welcher PWA]

The Carryall tattoo has my thinking....One day I may get my first tattoo

[Bruce in BC]

rear axle wrap.

I have huge air bags on the front of the rear axle. A lot of the time they are left around 15lbs and depending on the load I will raise the pressure to 30lbs. The springs are 96 dodge 1/2 ton and super squishy. Going forward there is no axle wrap, and the truck has climbed some steep grades with both transfer cases in low. But going backward there is axle wrap and the truck can start to bounce.
I can see myself adding a anti wrap bar. But how beefy it will be is open to a few tests. I do crawl in it, but more as an expedition vehicle than to show off what I can thrash.
I saw some ant wrap bars on a military Volvo, they were a single bar with rubber eyes at both ends.
Hoping to put mine back on the road this week.

Bruce

[Alxj64]

The Carryall tattoo has my thinking....One day I may get my first tattoo

I tend to only get them once I've thought about it for a long time. This one wasn't on a whim, and it took forever for me to isolate an artist that I was confident in doing it and doing it well. I've known this girl for a few years now and she is actually one of my wife's former models from her photography business.

I have huge air bags on the front of the rear axle. A lot of the time they are left around 15lbs and depending on the load I will raise the pressure to 30lbs. The springs are 96 dodge 1/2 ton and super squishy. Going forward there is no axle wrap, and the truck has climbed some steep grades with both transfer cases in low. But going backward there is axle wrap and the truck can start to bounce.
I can see myself adding a anti wrap bar. But how beefy it will be is open to a few tests. I do crawl in it, but more as an expedition vehicle than to show off what I can thrash.
I saw some ant wrap bars on a military Volvo, they were a single bar with rubber eyes at both ends.
Hoping to put mine back on the road this week.

Bruce

Good to hear Bruce! And you've got the doubler case in yours as well. That single bar is okay but it actually can invoke some weird anti-squat values into the rear suspension if the bar is placed in the wrong location as it effectively turns the leaf springs into a version an indeterminate 4 link; that is to say, that the front half of the leaf is acting as the lower 4 link bar and the anti-wrap single bar is acting as the upper 4 link bar. However, the rigidity of the spring pack itself throws some problems into running the numbers through a regular 4 link calculator. I may just end up going the single bar route if it comes down to it or fitting this big massive plate bar under the truck afterall. Not really sure at this point.

In other news, something scary happened as THE TRUCK FELL OFF ONE OF THE JACKSTANDS and somewhat tested the rigidity of the frame. Both front corners of the truck are supported on "dummy" struts that are rigid in compression but not in tension. I had the rear of the truck supported on jack stands under the rear frame horns, and then I went to lift the front, take the tires off, and place it on jack stands to work on the axle. Well as I am setting the front of the truck down I hear what sounds like a jackstand fall near the back of the truck and the truck does this little twitch. I didn't think much of it and figure maybe something leaning fell against the jackstand. I walk around to the back of the truck and the driver's rear corner had slipped off of the jack stand and was hanging in air, WITH the weight of the rear axle hanging off the truck. This effectively is more of a torsion scenario than if the truck was crossing a ditch and hanging the left rear tire off the ground, because, well, it was. Attached is a photo of the frame deflection, and that is by not allowing the front of the truck to adjust in any amount of suspension movement, which it would in real life. NOT TOO SHABBY. I don't think a factory C-channel frame would have stayed anywhere NEAR that rigid.

[Alxj64]

Also, I blew apart the front axle and am working on it to get the front brake lines plumbed, the inner axle seal flanges and sealing web plates built, and also I need to order my custom axle shafts. It will use Dutchman 4340 Chromoly 30 spline 14 bolt sized shaft ends at the diff but with 1480 Dana 60 universal Joints. The outer stubs will be Chromoly 35 Spline and I have a set of early Spicer forged 4340 drive flange style hubs (not cast segmental drive gear like the Warns) that were re-broached to fit the 35 spline stubs.

The Dana 60 donor axle was very rusty and as such I am having to clean up a lot of rust scale off the parts of the outers. I put the spindles in the lathe and cleaned them up too. They were all gouged around the edges where the axle didn't want to come apart and the guy I bought it from had used chisels and a ball peen to break it all down because he wanted to keep the original 30 spline stub shafts so I agreed to let him fight the thing apart in exchange, well he made a mess of it. Ohh well. I'll buy some new lower kingpin caps because these are just too far gone and bent from him trying to pry them out of the knuckle. The grease fittings are broken off, etc.

I also think I decided on my paint color... Its that Anvil grey that a lot of guys are using lately so I need to hurry up and get the truck done. However, I was able to find a poweder coat color that is nearly, if not exactly, identical to the paint color. I had some old pieces of scrap done in it so that I can make sure I like it. The paint color changes color in the differing daylights so I'd wager its pretty good at being a "Battleship Gray" for the truck that has battleship floorboards.

Ohh, also I started on my floor template too for the deckboards. I didn't take any pictures but am hoping to get rolling on that this weekend too. Going to re-saw some of the boards to use for the floor since I don't have enough original length boards, I'll need to use a veneer. Also, these boards have chunks missing, holes in them, etc, so it'll be a scavange to get enough "good" solid material out of them for this floor, BUT its going to be awesome!

[Greg Coffin]

I dread having a vehicle fall off a jack stand. I'm glad yours was a non-event. The frame is pretty darn rigid.

Is it an illusion, or are the two spindles different? The seal contact area looks much wider on the clean spindle.

And I love the gray color for the chassis. It will make it easier to see all the cool stuff going on under the body.

[Alxj64]

I dread having a vehicle fall off a jack stand. I'm glad yours was a non-event. The frame is pretty darn rigid.

Is it an illusion, or are the two spindles different? The seal contact area looks much wider on the clean spindle.

And I love the gray color for the chassis. It will make it easier to see all the cool stuff going on under the body.

Yea, I've had this truck fall off worse than that actually. I had a VERY large buddy of mine come over and despite him already being a bigger guy, his method of sitting down, because he thought it was funny and had broken several chairs, was to just basically collapse. Well, he tried pulling that BS onto the passenger's running board on this truck, but the boards weren't bolted on but were sitting on some blocks to mock up next to the truck that was just on stands up front. Well, when he sat down, the boards dumped him so his body weight went sideways against the truck and pushed it off of the jackstands. Sitting supported on a tube and a sling was my ISB170 and Allison 1000 combo. When the frame went sideways it dump the truck off of the jackstands, which dropped the oil pan onto some blocks below but the engine rolled over onto its side and it gouged the intake horn and cracked a fuel fitting (that luckily was getting replaced anyways) but I lost my cool and he hasn't actually been back in my garage since. He was a non-contributor to the project anyways.

The spindles are the same, it was just an illusion. The second one was in worse shape than the first.

I think the grey is going to be cool for this truck. I might even have the hood numbers stenciled back on the hood and rear gate, and have the HQ number put back on the bumper, but in another tone of blueish grey so that it is only visible up close, kind of ghostly even. Not sure yet. If this poweder matches the paint colors well, then I can have parts like the wire grill and headlight wire guards done in Powder and then just have the bigger sheet metal parts painted. This will protect things from chipping and such.

This week in the evenings, I have been working out the design for my front axle shaft seals; this is going to be complicated, just like everything else on this build.

[Alxj64]

More work and Sad news

So, sad news in my life lately. I don't have kids, but I do have a 9 year old Australian Cattle Dog (Blue Heeler) who has been having some health problems lately. He just had his Spleen removed which was quite a pricey adventure and is going good, however, the test results on the tumor came back as very malignant and agressive. The Vets tell us to make him comfortable and basically sorry about his luck. We are going to try some treatments, that are also pricey but my wife seems to think he can kick this stuff, so we'll see. Either way, I've been trying to focus on getting this truck driving soon so that I can take him for a ride in it before its too late. He's spent so much time with me in the garage, going on trips for parts, and sleeping in the truck that I feel I owe it to him, and myself.

So for an update;

Working out the seal issues for the front axle. The hybrid front didn't have a method of sealing things up so I need to come up with something. Lots of guys just seal the ends of the tubes and then polish the axle shafts for the seal to ride. This still usually ends up leaking because the universal joint type shafts have a slight amount of lateral movement if they are not centered exactly in the King pin pivot line. I decided also, that I'd like to just have the oil in the diff. So the plan is to weld some steel plates into the webs of the housing just inside where the center slides into. Then the alignment bar will true everything up and I can make sure the seals live in their .003"+/- tolerance that they require.

I machined these from a chunk of 3" aluminum. No CNC work, just good old fashioned Manual lathe and mill work. It kept my mind off of things while I was zoned in working.

[Alxj64]

Lets see, I also TRIED to start re-sawing the BB-55 deck boards, but that didn't go so well. My father in law is heading up that portion of this project in his woodshop. I went over to their place, in small town america... and we got organized, spit a board in half that wasn't going to provide us any full length pieces just to look at the fresh grain, and then setup the re-sawing fixture on his big band saw. As we started into a test cut of just some cheap scrap, the blade stopped suddenly... the drive belt on the saw broke. We open up the machine and it appears to be some weird little specific size flat belt with 4 shallow ribs, totally weird industrial. So at 11 am, in a small town, on a Saturday, we all know that we've got about an hour to try and find something... yep, nothing. In a world of the internet, nobody stocks specialty items anymore. Its a sears brand saw, and even the two stores an hour away laughed on the phone and said that the part was like a "2 week out" piece. I cross referenced it to something on Amazon, but it was still a few days out. We will try again later. In the meantime, heres a few of how pretty this material is.

I also decided to make a badge for my hybrid axle. Its an old school Eaton, so I used their old school truck axle logo. Two step logo so I'll have it powder coated to show up the right way and have it tapped to the housing tube.

[Bruce in BC]

How on earth

did you make that badge? What tools did you use? That is way cool. Now some DB badges to put in the top of the shifters knobs would be neat as well.

And if you ever get the notion to run off the old school "Cummins oil Engine" logo I want a couple.

[Desoto61]

Sorry about your pup, been having old dog issues here too, nothing quite as serious but it definitely makes me appreciate my time with him more.

The work as always is just amazing!

[Alxj64]

did you make that badge? What tools did you use? That is way cool. Now some DB badges to put in the top of the shifters knobs would be neat as well.

And if you ever get the notion to run off the old school "Cummins oil Engine" logo I want a couple.

The DB logos would be cool, and I might try to sneak one in or around the underside of the truck. My shifters are either an Automatic T-handle or the air-shift T-case. If you want me to try and come up with something for you to add to the end of a manual shift handle, I can try. I want to try and make a DB stamping die that I can stamp the inside of my glovebox with or something, at the very least. I love little hidden details as long as they are done well.

This thing is just two seperate pieces of steel that I cut with the plasma cutter and are going to be laminated together, but powder coated different colors and attached to the axle tubes. One front and one rear. They are just going to screw on using some brass fillister screws.

edit: As far as the Cummins Oil Engine, thats pretty complex, be hard to make into a "badge" but maybe a shop sign. Maybe something that could mount under the hood so that its visible when you open the hood wings?

Sorry about your pup, been having old dog issues here too, nothing quite as serious but it definitely makes me appreciate my time with him more.

The work as always is just amazing!

Thanks for the words on the darg. We had an appointment this morning for more details on the bad news, the short term prognosis, and long term eventual process on when things get really bad for him. Certainly a very tough morning.

Also thanks for the compliments on the truck. I am doing what I can to use it as a distraction. I've got some more hardware on the way for this weekend so I can finish up the tank straps and get the skid out to powder coat next week.

The light is visible at the end of the tunnel and the list is narrowing and this is actually kind of fun again!

To all of you; thanks for any support you give, it keeps me going to know that others enjoy this truck too.

ohh, almost forgot, finally got some insurance approved on it! It took forever but Progressive wrote me a custom policy, with an Agreed value and an ACV using 3rd party appraisals. So long as I keep them current (period of bi-annual with quarterly detailed photos of the vehicle's condition). I believe it is underwritten by Hagerty internally, but the bigger company is covering my ability to drive it on the beach and tow certain trailers as long it is for pleasure and at no time for any business use... TOTALLY agreeable on my end.