The WC53 Carryall thread .

[jim lee]

P.P.P.P.S. Alex, I JUST noticed your licence plate. That's cool! I need that for mine! Or "NOTAJEEP". :)

-jim lee

[jim lee]

P.P.S. Got mine back on the road about an hour ago. (Fingers crossed!)

P.P.P.S. Alex is right, Bruce needs to get on this picture thing. Bruce, you have a smart phone?

-jim lee

[jim lee]

Alex, anything scrape or rub at maximum turn and suspension compression? Is there maybe a balance shaft in the engine? I never looked closely at your driveshafts, but are they like "normal" and have the slider on the tranny output shaft? Or like the original and have it in the middle of the shaft?

P.S. Its looking great! I bet your pretty excited. I know I would be!

Paint your extra radiator black. Its distracting.

-jim lee

[Alxj64]

Bruce, you need to take more pictures of these adventures of yours! I mean, seriously, I took a photo op of an alignment rack? I'm going overboard and you;'re hanging in the galley!

Question though, how much weight of beads are you running inside of your tires? I think mine run pretty smooth and its my weird engine shake issue that is making mine drive funny.

[Bruce in BC]

That is some serious flex, looks like you nailed it on boxing the frame and your choice of suspension. I am running beads in my tires, seems to work really well. I am noticing a vibration at 60 miles an hour to 65 miles an hour that was not there when I had the tires installed last year. Also I have a clunk in the front end that shows up while turning, it only shows up on occasion and is quite annoying. So far no luck finding it and I have had the truck jacked up and pivoted the front end but never replicated the clunk. I may need to mount a grow pro under the frame and see if I can catch what the issue is.
Went hiking yesterday and took out the Carryall, dropped the air pressure to twenty pounds instead of the usual 35. It may ride better off road but I can feel the truck working more when its on the pavement.
Bet you are having fun, looks like a camping trip is in the works. When are you taking it on the Rubicon? :)

[Alxj64]

No doors or gates were popped open accidentally during the photography of this "trail" ride. Ha ha. No visible frame flex, ALL suspension.

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Also, truck got a ride on the alignment rack... Everything was so close to where it should be we didn't even touch anything!

Just need to isolate this weird engine shake. I am going to ditch my internal wheel balance and go with road force balance and a set of centramatics and see what happens. IMG_20180829_210319_616.jpg

[Matthew Welcher PWA]

I have never heard an Allison make that noise before? If by chance you pull it manually into a lower gear not allowing it to go into 4th or 5th no noise right?

[Alxj64]

Gary, thats some smart thinking on the box. Very clean work. I am unfortunately committed to my battery location and need both of them to crank my ISB170 and run all of my other weird electronics.

I am steeling a bit of ideas from all of ya'll though. I got the first panel of the box made. I cut it out and a kid at the end of my street has a louver press at work so I had him stamp me some rows that matched a scaled appearance of the hood side louvers. I'm going with aluminum and going to put a key lock in the side of it for now. I'm trying to make it look like it was built this way when the truck was made and not be something that was built after the fact.

I've also been trying to figure out what is wrong with my transmission. I have a weird rattle / Growl from the Torque Converter when it is at lockup pressure in 4th and 5th gears. Stupid Allison. I attached a link to a video.


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[Gary Weaklend]

When working on my truck in 2000 I saw a Yellow Carryall in Fairfield that the guy rounded the front of his battery box to match the "rounded" contour of all other areas of Carryalls. If you look at the battery box it is the only body panel that is 90 degrees. I liked the rounded corner (like Bruce's) but in the end I decided to eliminate the battery on the side and put it under the hood where there is a recessed area to mount a battery. It works for a flathead L6 but not sure if it will work for a 4BT or V8. I also purchased an extra bracket and bent running board from VPW and cut the board down to fill in the battery box area. Here are some pictures of what I did for locating the battery under the hood and welding up the passenger side.


Batterylocation.jpgBatteryboxJpg3.jpgBatteryboxJpg2.jpgBatteryboxJPG1.jpg

[Gary Weaklend]

Jim, I haven't thought about a blog so will have to look into it. I really enjoy reading yours and amazed when I see you taking off quite a distance to buy a burger. I have also noticed that you have become very good at sitting along side the road in a lawn chair. LOL Good job my friend.

[Bruce in BC]

image_12957.jpgimage_12958.jpg To drill the hole in the bumper I used this method that keeps things in line and prevents the blade from walking and breaking the centre guide. You can drill compound shapes with this. The bottom piece of the bumper is flat with a 45 degree angle breaking the edge. With the guide clamped in place the hole saw walked through the 1/4 steel and 45 degree metal without any issues.
This shows the swing arm closed. It does not look like it in the photo but the vertical face on the swing arm and the bumper line up. Paint? I am fooling around, at some point it will get wet sanded and then clear coated, but not any time soon.
edit: The top was drilled first and then the guide was clamped on the bottom and then drilled from the bottom. A 1/4 hole was drilled from the top through the bottom plate to act as a guide and index point.

[Bruce in BC]

Swing out tire carrier. Lock detail. On the bottom of the swing arm is a standard door striker pin. This striker pin locks into a DOT double safety door latch. To unlock it is a simple manner to pull on the knob that is at the centre end of the bumper near the licence. As an additional safety step a spring loaded latch locks the swing arm in place. The result works quite well, my wife has no issue unlocking the tire and swinging it out of the way. The tire weighs in around 185lbs. IMG_1635.JPGIMG_1636.JPG

[Bruce in BC]

Swing out tire carrier. Hinge detail. Instead of using a spindle and bearing I went for a simple set up where one piece of DOM pipe slides into another. By doing it in this manner the tire carrier can be removed and all that is left is a receiver hole. With the spindle you end up with a greasy mess sticking up from the bumper. The DOM that is now part of the bumper has a slot machined into it. The carrier drops down into the DOM in the bumper and a bolt goes through the slot into the carrier. The bolt serves two purposes (1) it keeps the carrier in place if there was a roll over or accident (2) it acts as a stop and only lets the carrier swing out so far. The unit does not rattle and is easy to open and close.
IMG_1638.JPG
You can not see the bolt in this picture, the bolt and slot are on the back side of the bumper. There are also two grease nipples at the top and the bottom of the receiver tube to help keep things rotating and rust free.

[Greg Coffin]

Alex, what if you installed a couple gas struts to keep the lid up and out of the way when using it? Feel free to use this idea, as I have a favor to ask in a week or so :)

[Alxj64]

I am pleased when someone uses one of my ideas on their project. I consider it a complement and one of the reasons we share is to help others. The louvers are 7.5 inches long and a bit bigger than common louver sizes. My box just pops off, there is no hinge. The nice thing about doing it this way is the cover does not get in the way when working on the batteries. Mine is steel and way too heavy. The cover is made from some sort of heavy machinery hood, either a stationary generator or some sort of excavator. If I was doing this again many parts would be made from aluminum. I suspect the truck would be 1000lbs lighter if I had used aluminum on many of the parts that where made from steel.
I had some guy complement me on my tire carrier the other day when I went on my cluster foofoo trip. Now there is a trip that I should have taken a few pictures on. I spent hours on the side of the road repairing vehicles. Perhaps 30 hrs wrenching over 3 days - it was crazy, at times funny and at times frustrating. I will post a description later.
edit: why not take a piece of cardboard and draw the louvers on it? You can try different combinations. Two rows going vertical may look good.

I have a friend with a 3" die set, so I may do 3 columns of just 2 rows at the bottom of the box to simulate a smaller version of what is on the side of the hood. I just want them there to allow some upward air flow from outside of the box to help encourage circulation but not suck in a bunch of sand and water while I am on the road or beach. I'm digging your corner cope detail too. Thats smart! I can just see my mother in law gouging her leg on it and then cursing the machine and never wanting to ride in it again.

Thanks for sharing all of the ideas and being cool about people using them; some folks get a little bent out of shape when things get replicated; but as you said, a good idea is a good idea and not everything can be unique. I'll add a few of my weird touches to mine and see how it goes. Mine will probably be hinged because I will want to have an air hose connection and such. I'll just allow it to swing all the way over, or be removed a little more easily. I might even make a little tool box inside the lid to keep a small air hose coiled.. Hrmm.