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

[Alxj64]

One of my favorite aspects of your build is the amount of hand crafted and custom one off parts. Over the years in both racing and off road builds you see some of this. Everyone to a certain extent has some of this on their vehicle.
With yours it is virtually every nook and cranny, front to back top to bottom has been upgraded, in a sort of fashion. Not with so much bolt on parts but hand crafted, custom machined parts made by yourself. I am in awe watching you build this. Hats off to you.
Keeping up with this build, Bruce's Carryall, Desoto's Power Wagon, Will's Frankie an Mule Build. You guys are all artists in the fabrication and Power Wagon world. And thank you all for sharing. And teaching all of us what you know.

Thanks Matt! I think a lot of the parts I make are out of necessity to simply match my other choices in this build. However there are some things I just can't make, but I can have them made to my specification.

You know, the correct lengths, arch, load ratings, and even grease groove cut sleeves to take the factory pins.
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[Matthew Welcher PWA]

One of my favorite aspects of your build is the amount of hand crafted and custom one off parts. Over the years in both racing and off road builds you see some of this. Everyone to a certain extent has some of this on their vehicle.
With yours it is virtually every nook and cranny, front to back top to bottom has been upgraded, in a sort of fashion. Not with so much bolt on parts but hand crafted, custom machined parts made by yourself. I am in awe watching you build this. Hats off to you.
Keeping up with this build, Bruce's Carryall, Desoto's Power Wagon, Will's Frankie an Mule Build. You guys are all artists in the fabrication and Power Wagon world. And thank you all for sharing. And teaching all of us what you know.

[Alxj64]

Got the seals pressed into my pucks. NICE Tight fit which made me smile considering I made them by hand on an English built, 1968 lathe and a WWII surplus, 1943 Bridgeport Mill. I had the option of setting up the indexing head on the mill or grinding a tool for the lathe to make my puck to housing web o-ring sealing groove. I opted to grind an old parting blade and it worked pretty well. Probably a little bit wide for the X groove o-ring but should work. The o-ring is a 4 corner deal square so that way it has twice the sealing surfaces of a regular round o-ring. 2.256" OD x 3/32" square. Bag of 50 was the only way I could get them and they were still only like $6.00 total.

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1.562 x 2.125 x 0.375 Double lip shaft seals on the inside, its really weird driving in seals backwards but this will be the inside face. Below is the seal to the web plate from inside the housing.

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2.256 x 3/32 X-groove Viton O-rings.

Would have gotten more done but dumb dumb came in the garage acting all weird and kept laying on my feet so I knew something was up... I noticed little blood droplets on the floor and discovered he was nearly without his left dew claw. Neighbors have a Lab thats a complete punk so I have a feeling the two of them had a skirmish through the chain-link fence and this was his result.

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[W_A_Watson_II]

Yep.

[Alxj64]

Last two images do not show up, only a little blue square with a question mark.

Did that fix it?

[Bruce in BC]

Last two images do not show up, only a little blue square with a question mark.

[Alxj64]

Added my little Eaton Badge. It will get removed before Paint / powder.

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I don't know if you watch this form, but JIM LEE... you can see the Thrust bolt that was being discussed earlier. These aren't the Dodge axles that you have but they are built very similar with the load bolt running very close to the ring gear to allow for pinning during hard loading. Its an awesome design that is no longer in application. #olddudestrength

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Lastly, just a rear view of the front axle before it gets blasted and coated. If my Powder guy ever gets back to me...

[Alxj64]

So I think I have figured out some new features on the forum here. I think it will let me put attached images in line with text. Lets see if this works.
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So, the pinion yoke was well worn.. That was easily fixed with some metal filler, loc-tite metal sealer / adhesive, and a Timken Redi-sleeve that matches the Timken seal size and yoke size.

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Lets see, next up, got my front axle seal pucks installed into the housing by building some web plates that are tapped, and then welding those in using an alignment bar that I setup the axle with originally. It is concentric with the tube ends because thats how I set the tube ends. I will have to make sure that the third I choose is depth shimmed correctly. I believe that most of these thirds are setup to use a gasket for the correct depth setting, its kinda like picking the right thickness head gasket to match deck height. The cool thing about these pucks is that they are removable for replacing the seals. Don't need any special seal driving tools like you do for the Dana axles, and also being open knuckle, the tubes still stay dry also.

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[Alxj64]

Got the axles torn down and sent out for hot tank and parts washing. Found some bad bearings in the third so have to dig into my parts stack. I don't want to use the straight cut taper bearings and would rather stay with the spherical ones like these originally were. Also removed the kingpin studs from the front.

The one photo compares a Dana 60 pinion yoke to that of this Eaton stuff... BEEF.

[Alxj64]

Started sawing on and laying out my reclaimed Teak decking from the USS North Carolina.

MAN this stuff is really really pretty when you cut into it! I still have one whole 13' board left, granted its the roughest one, but something else needs to get made. The old bolt holes will get plugged with grain inlays from the end drops. The seat keys will be recessed and I have to make the side pieces that go around the fenders.

I feel smart for this advance thinking though; given the history of this material, I figured it'd be a good idea to run a metal detector over each piece before feeding it into any sort of wood working machine. We didn't find any bullets, just some of the original anchors.

[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.

[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!

[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.

[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.

[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.