The WC53 Carryall thread .

[Bruce in BC]

image_12994.jpg Thanks for the kind words.
I made a buck of the interior of the Carryall, not the whole interior, just the section over the front seats. Hope fully the measurements are correct. I got the thinnest hard board I could find , took a brush and painted the board with a generous coat of water and kept applying pressure to get the board to take some shape. The board was left clamped in place for quite a few days. it seems to work. IMG_1647.JPG The next trick will be to trim the sheet for a nice tight fit in the cab and then glue on some vinyl. I am not happy with the vinyl I used on the rear corner panels, the darn stuff shrank and pulled away.

[Todd M]

Nice work.

[Alxj64]

Well, that took way longer than planned. Battery box that was way too complicated is mostly done.

Bottom swings fairly out of the way but I need to put a limit on it because it hits the tire and I can just see me forgetting about it and driving a few feet in a hurry and the tire eating the box. The lid is on spring loaded hinges. They are solid rivets. I'll have the whole thing powder coated in due time. I have a key lock for it too but I'll sink that in later; I had to move on to other things before my brain went numb from this thing.

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[Bruce in BC]

IMG_0377.jpg Got out on a little one day run. we were looking for a old road down to the water, first you climb a mountain and then you drop down the far side. The road in was a mess, it had been cross ditched every 2 - 3 hundred feet and the surface between was cobble stone. I dropped the air pressure in the tires down to 15 lbs the truck I was following was running 10 lbs, when we go in again I will try 10 - 12 lbs and see how that works. We did find the old road down but it had turned into a creek bed and we were short on time. Not only was it a creek bed, the sides were brushed in and there were a lot of branches and trees in the way. On trails like this it pays to get out and do some brushing or you end up caving in sheet metal. Hopefully I will get back in before the snow flys, it was chilly up there at the top of the mountain and that was only 4000 ft. I do not like off camber driving, anything over 15 degrees and I am uncomfortable.......might be the drop off that comes with the side hill camber.
This is not the camber that bothered me. It is a decent idea of how brushed in the road was.
Alex that looks good. What colour you going to, grey?

[Gary Weaklend]

Nice job Alex and Bruce. Both of your trucks are definitely built to go off road.

Bruce good job on the headliner. When I did mine I made a "buck" for each section and used short screws to hold it down. To keep the shape I then put fiberglass on the back of all sections. It took a lot fitting, cutting and adding more cardboard/fiberglass to get all pieces molded to the ceiling. After everything fit I then used Polyester filler to make the front smooth before gluing on the fabric.

ReconHeadliner - 9.JPGReconHeadliner - 10.JPGReconHeadliner - 14.JPGReconHeadliner - 8.JPG

[jim lee]

Happy B-Day Bruce.

Man, headliners! That's so.. refined.

I'm still trying to get mine to return from adventures under its own power.

Looks like my new-to-me rear 3rd member is leaking a fair amount of oil out the pinion shaft seal. Ugh! New issues to deal with.

Alex, from your description, I keep seeing your entire driveline, suspension & truck body as one big rocking horse harmonic. I wonder if you could set up a camera on a really long selfi stick to the side and film the truck at speed. Watch the wheels & body to see if it is actually building up a harmonic rocking motion.

-jim lee

[Alxj64]

Happy B-Day Bruce.

Man, headliners! That's so.. refined.

I'm still trying to get mine to return from adventures under its own power.

Looks like my new-to-me rear 3rd member is leaking a fair amount of oil out the pinion shaft seal. Ugh! New issues to deal with.

Alex, from your description, I keep seeing your entire driveline, suspension & truck body as one big rocking horse harmonic. I wonder if you could set up a camera on a really long selfi stick to the side and film the truck at speed. Watch the wheels & body to see if it is actually building up a harmonic rocking motion.

-jim lee

I'm with you on headliner's, I've not even given any thought to mine other than knowing it needs one and I'll probably make it out of some sort of canvas.

Do those thirds use a crush sleeve or just shims for the pinion? If it is shims, then its no big deal replacing the pinion seal; if its a crush sleeve, Lord have Mercy on your Soul because the whole third needs to be cracked open, and then re-lashed. Which is quite doable, just a greasy mess that has to be done on a bench, and I know you just installed that thing. Was it an NOS, used, or rebuilt third? Whenever I go into an axle housing it ALWAYS gets new seals... like, always.

You are kind of right about the rocking horse description; the driveline is what is doing it. I have a go-pro but I had loaned it out and some screws were stripped out on the mount, so I finally removed all of that and am charging the camera, cleaning the card, etc. I've got a mount that goes on a super heavy welding magnet that I am going to clip all over various places and drive the truck around and see what I can see. I put a little torque arm setup on driver's side of the engine and that lessened the rocking amplitude but didn't seem to affect the frequency. It doesn't do it under hard load, and only does it under cruise load. I actually need to see if it does it under braking... Another thought on it is that it could be my divorced transfer case twisting in the mounts and then unloading, and then re-loading and then unloading. The mount is on a series of fairly soft poly bushings and the jack shaft between the Transmission and T-case are at kind of an steep angle due to the engine having to be offset to the passenger's side for the steering and foot room to clear the rear-gear case on the engine. If the frequency of the engine mounts are harmonic with the frequency of the transmission mounts under cruise load, I can totally imagine the transfer case twisting and un-twisting from the lateral load created by the jack-shaft. The Go-pro should give me a good view of that. If it turns out to be true, the T-case will get a set of more solid mounts. I'm getting tired of de-bugging things that shouldn't have been issues and would much rather get back to building things that I still need to build, like the rest of the seats, the center console covers, installing the air system and getting windows, roof, and wipers on this thing.

[Desoto61]

I'm getting tired of de-bugging things that shouldn't have been issues and would much rather get back to building things that I still need to build, like the rest of the seats, the center console covers, installing the air system and getting windows, roof, and wipers on this thing.

So much this! My least favorite part is fixing things I thought I did right that aren't, but it wouldn't be a learning experience if you did everything right the first time!

As usual amazing work!

[Bruce in BC]

Roughest road yet? Certainly was a rough trip, with lots of water falls and loose rock, the truck ran great and I sure needed dual transfer cases. I went in with graham and his family in a very modified Bronco and his family. This is not the kind of trip you do on your own. I spotted several broken front axle shafts on this road and one clutch. You could also see two spots where someone had flopped their truck this summer. This is a shot of Grahams rig and another of him attempting to crawl up a hill. The hill had a lot of cobblestone the size of basket balls and loose rock about 6 inches in size. Most trucks have to winch this section. Of course it does not look very steep in the photos. IMG_1650.JPGIMG_1653.JPG
Tough to make out the truck let alone see how steep the hill is. You may get an idea by the trees in the back ground and the loose rock in the shadowed area in front of the truck. I managed to not over heat the truck on this run, it is all about keeping the RPMs in the happy zone and picking the right gear. Speed does not matter, driving this truck is a whole different set of rules.

[Bruce in BC]

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This was a fun, clean bit of rock, what you can not see is that the Carryall has is at a 38 degree angle when this shot was taken. by the time the truck gets the front wheels on top of the rock you find yourself pressed into the back of the seat. I did not run this trail to see what the truck could do, i wanted to get to a couple of camping spots. Routes like this eat up trucks and parts and I tend to drive them slower than a person can walk, at least it the knarlie sections.

[Pismopowerwagon]

Rock crawler territory for sure, thanks for the pics.

[Matthew Welcher PWA]

That looks like a fantastic wheeling trip, I really would like to mount a go pro or recorder of some device while I trail ride and cut wood on the ranch. Keep having fun and using your Carryall. I love watching your adventures.

[jim lee]

Not a big fan of rock crawling. I love using dirt roads to get places, but I hate being all stressed out about getting there. Rock crawling to me is just stressful.

Also, your right, the pictures always make it look like you just went for a ride in the park. Looking at my last set of pictures, I remember all of us being all stressed out. But the pictures look like we just went over a bump in the road. I did get one that gave a pretty good impression as to what things looked like to us that were there. Its looking up at the rear of the truck as it crests a hillclimb.

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Maybe this is the trick? Looking up undernieth the truck tends to flip the mental switch that "Hey, this was pretty steep."

-jim lee

[Alxj64]

Off topic from the Carryall, but certainly a reason of why my Carryall is built the way it is; I have rock crawler in my blood and my fab experience is for suspension systems that just flat out WORK.

Rock Crawling was my main automotive hobby prior to really getting down and dirty on my Carryall. I had a TJ that had been through all sorts of variations. Had a club that I was the leader of, etc etc.

Here is a picture from Harlan Kentucky, drove over this... somehow.




Here is a video of one of our last trips before I got out of. Anyone with a sense of trails, rocks, and the finesse of driving on those situations can appreciate the scenes of mud falling sideways off of the hood due to angle of the rig, and tires well off the ground, static hill positions despite spinning all 4 tires. These rigs are all full body stuff too, no buggys or whatever.

https://youtu.be/NREyZEDN58A

[jim lee]

Yeah, ya see? Just stressful!

-jim lee