Beverly Hillbillies, Part Deux

[rickf]

And I just realized I mislabeled the drums on the winch, they are capstans.

[rickf]

I get a kick out of the pic from inside the bus, the driver sits almost in the middle. You say it is repowered, what engine is in it? and do both rear axles drive on that 6x6?

[m3a1]

The bus has a 360 in it. It scoots but he's having trouble with keeping it cool when it's stopped so, after a drive he has to shut if off and let the electric fans take over. But he's been all over the map in this thing so the problems with it are really just limitations. Rolling down the road, if he stomps on the gas pedal it'll literally put you back in your seat. Gobs and gobs of power. And, he's not afraid to take it out into the wilderness. He showed me a picture of it thoroughly high centered on one outing. Heard his stories of broken axles (he has a complete set he keeps in the bus) and all sorts of misadventures on the sides of mountains.

The rear drive on that yellow job is whatever the WC-63 was. The rear suspension is bone stock. Didn't get to spend much time investigating that truck.

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[m3a1]

Round 3 (or 4) with the Dodge WC-6 Command/Recon Car. After a brief search of the premises where the WC-6 had been parked for the last 18 years, we found both front universal drive axles, wrapped neatly in black garbage bags... and brought them home.

Now, it has been some time since I fiddled with these but after a brief glance at the TM it all came back to me. After separating the inner and outer shafts on the right side I discovered a small trough worn across the normal pathway of the bearing balls and while not necessarily a major point of contention, they certainly could have been better. The reason for the undue wear? No doubt, lack of proper lubrication. The plan is to gently burnish out the breakover angles on both sides of the trough (which will leave a trough, yes, but one with better angles for a bearing ball to roll in and out of, and put the bearing balls (which are all just under .003" less than the optimum dimension of 1") and replace them with new, true 1" bearing balls. This should help to account for the minor amount of metal we're going to take out. This solution is not perfect, but Dave isn't going to war in this machine and the the bearing balls are allowed to be +.003" or -.003". If they don't have to struggle over, into, and out of that trough, that irregular wear should be completely unnoticeable. If it doesn't work out to his satisfaction, he can always throw more money at it but, for now, we're trying to stay within a reasonable budget.

The universal drive axle on the left side is a real bugaboo. First, despite the presence of massive amounts of grease and despite no obvious impediment to the flexibility of the joint, the darned thing was just terribly reluctant to flex, even when removed and out on the workbench. So, we gave it a serious wipe-down and disassembled the thing, finding bearing balls that were, on average, about .002" undersized (which, from a size perspective, is arguably better than the other side) but functionally, still far worse than the other side. Tough to explain THAT, friends! Then I noticed it.

One of these things is not like the other.

Outer shaft on the left side was different from that of the right and by that I mean, just a bit different in length (probably not a big problem). Even the quality of the machining was different.... but, the smoking gun was, the load bearing surface on it was WAY smaller than that of the right. So, after test-fitting it against the bushing within the spindle, we found that it rattled around like a ping-pong in a boxcar. And, there was the matter of the broken retaining bolt that secures the end of the splined shaft in the splined cup on the hub drive flange...a break that probably came as a direct result of the unsupported shaft and the inherent inflexibility of the joint.

NOPE. This outer shaft doesn't belong in this truck.

And with all that, the mystery of the wind-up and popping of the axle during turns has been solved. From what I can gather, this outer shaft probably belongs in a VC series Dodge and somebody either put it in there out of sheer desperation or due to total ignorance. May also well be that the bearing balls (which are completely within tolerance for a WC) may be serving time in a VC flexible axle joint that might just require bearing balls of a slightly smaller dimension. Can't say that I know that last bit for sure but we cannot find any other reasonable explanation for the inflexibility of the joint.

One thing that this whole situation illustrates for you, Dear Reader, is that these old military machines have served many masters and one cannot count on ANYTHING to be entirely correct or unmolested. The morals of our story?

Expect the unexpected.
&
Trust, but VERIFY.

Cheers,
TJ

[m3a1]

Picked up a very used parts cleaner from Nice Lady since I was sure she could use the money and Dave needed a parts cleaner for his command car project. This is a 20 gallon, garden variety parts cleaner (except for the fact that it happens to have racing stripes). I was able to put it back into service for about $20 and about 4 hours of labor, making the whole expense about 1/3 of the cost of a new one. Making it all the better was the fact that it looks awful which means using it will require absolutely no effort to keep it looking pretty. Today I finally wrapped up putting it back together and it will go live at Dave's place for a while and there, be rather useful. Sooner or later I will get it back but luckily for Dave, I have no immediate use for it.

Annnnnnd, we dug a little deeper into the command car's front axle and found even more mechanical mayhem. At some point, this vehicle had experienced a broken axle on the right side and the steering knuckle just tore the double compound doggie doo-doo out of the inside of the cup at the end of the axle tube. There was a LOT of material missing with a wall section reduction taking place mostly on the outermost section of the cup, affecting everything south of the equator and especially the area right around Antarctica....which is where the lower trunnion is located.

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The grinding marks you see was the last guy's attempt at putting it back together. The big fat fly in the ointment is the unpleasant fact that the lower trunnion absolutely MUST be well-seated into the cup and ALL the loads placed on this bit of steering and suspension...

...begin

......right

.........THERE.

A lot of metal is missing around that trunnion and If that trunnion gets loose, you can say, Sayonara, Bobo, to whoever's driving this rig. The manual claims the command car is capable of 54 mph and all the usual bits of kit for keeping occupants safe during a crash is entirely absent (we die like REAL men when we're in this rig) so until then, I reckon we ought to sweat the details a little bit while we still can.

Compounding the trouble is what appears to be a crack in what little parent metal remains outboard of the trunnion, and friends, that surely ain't good. Yes, yes...I know. This vehicle's days of war-fighting are over, and true, it's remaining days are going to be spent as a platform for people to wave enthusiastically to people lined up along a parade route, BUT...

(There's that big BUT again)

Dave and I are feeling rather nervous about leaving this matter unresolved. Besides, one never knows when the end of the world is coming and having a vehicle one can count on in a pinch is always a definite bonus. So, we're going to clean this area until the pips squeak, then weld it up, reshape it and afterwards, congratulate ourselves for having paid attention to detail.

Cheers,
TJ

[rickf]

It should be no problem to find a replacement front axle for that truck. Vintage power wagons would be my first choice followed by Midwest Military. I realize he might want to keep all of the factory original parts, but, as you have pointed out this is a major safety issue and if original is destroyed then he has no choice.

https://www.vintagepowerwagons.com/page ... ts-catalog

Doing a search I did not find a housing there for a WC6, I did find all of the parts including axles.

Here is the Midwest catalogue but I also did not find a housing here. I would definitely call John at Midwest and ask though. They do not list a lot of what they have outside. Same with Vintage.

https://shop.midwestmilitary.com/produc ... wc-series/

[raymond]

Raymond

[raymond]

P.S. Had that let go, not only would the Bushes (obviously) be in trouble, but so would the owner.
And that would have resulted in giving a loud megaphone to the usual suspects who want to ban old military vehicles from road use.

Please properly repair and maintain your vehicles (especially things like steering and brakes), as not doing so can be bad for the hobby.

[m3a1]

We hit it hard today. My nephew-in-law, who is a professional welder, came over to help us build that cup back up to something pretty close to original wall thickness. He really digs doing to weird stuff and he was all-in the moment he saw what he was going to be working on. As per usual, the pros make it all look so easy. I jumped in and lent a hand with the 'between-laying-the-welds' sort of stuff. We were all very satisfied with the result of the welding. Not sure if Dave got the family rate but my nephew has his own family to feed AND he was there for us at a moment's notice.

Dave has the parts washer running full bore and clean parts are already beginning to come out. This axle will soon be back in action and completely ready (and safe) for the road. Wahoo!

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Cheers,
TJ

[m3a1]

Yesterday I put in some hours with Dave, who wanted to square up his list of needed parts and when parts numbers and dollar signs began to swirl around in our heads, we spent a little time trying to calm our brains by doing a light tidy-up on some of the pieces in order to make them ready for reassembly. Paired with Simple Green, my 'new' OLD parts washer has been doing yeoman service and has made the whole process so much easier.

The tricky bit of dealing with parts has been to get ol' Dave out of the habit of running straight to the catalogue. The catalogue is a terrific point of reference, along with the parts manual and the TMs. The problem is, the catalogue is like making a deal with the Devil. A particular seller (which shall remain unnamed because I can't begrudge anyone making an honest living) is selling many parts at a ridiculous markup and that doesn't square with Dave's desire to stay within the boundaries of his budget. The boundaries are based upon NOT throwing money at each particular problem until it goes away and unfortunately, this requires sitting down and doing a lot of homework...which is not wrenching. Homework is just no fun.

The catalogue offers very convenient rebuild 'kits' which is a collection of parts which are commonly needed in a full rebuild and it also offers a respite from doing homework and allowing you to get back to what IS fun. Doing our due diligence, we began to pick that convenient offer apart to see if it was really a bargain....or not.

A good example this are the bearing cones on the steering knuckles..

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There are four (two per knuckle) and they are all the same number (Timken 21212) but two are paired with tapered roller bearings (Timken 21075) and the other two bearing cones are paired with the bronze cone-shaped bearings. Prices vary wildly on the roller bearings, with some hopeful purveyors of bearings trying to find someone willing to shell out $70 each and yes, the catalogue was also too pricey.

REALLY?!!

In fact, we found that they could be sourced locally for just under $20. But, to realize these 'savings' one has to slow down, sit down and do the homework and use one's brain, rather than all those neat, shiny tools. Along the way we decided not to replace the bearing cones that are paired with the bronze bearing because...well, just how much wear do you think a piece of bronze is putting on a high grade bearing cone?

Zip, zilch, nada.

So we decided we only needed two bearing cones. Cha-ching! A penny saved is a penny earned.

Once again, every retailer wanted WAY too much for Timken 21212s, including our local suppliers. So, we found some that were very sensibly priced on eBay and that also squared with our unwillingness to simply throw money at the build.

Friends, if you have odd leftover parts (odd things like bearing cones) you'll be doing yourself and your fellow gearheads a favor by dusting them off and offering them up for sale, rather than letting them languish in cardboard boxes under the tool bench.

So, while Dave sweated over the phone and the internet, I had fun and worked on the the odd bits of the command car and occasionally tossed him ideas on how and where we might find parts more cheaply. Some came to fruition. Some did not. The savings against what he might have spent came out to many hundreds of dollars and that is money that can go toward other things.

Cheers,
TJ

[m3a1]

We went on another MV recovery yesterday. Told my Dodge-loving buddy that, despite the fact that we cannot agree on the M37s, I would certainly make time to assist him on getting his next machine, a 1967 Kaiser Jeep M715, safely up on a trailer and back home....which was supposed to be on Sunday. So, naturally, he called me on Friday and asked me what time I would be ready to go on Saturday.

*Sigh* These are the kind of people I roll with.

So, I immediately called Dave and told him where he could find the bits of my long-defunct turkey fryer, because I was going to be gone by the time he rolled around to pick it up. The burner works like gang busters and is one of those that looks like it was built by the Russians. The stainless steel pot, however can only barely be called a pot as it has a tiny little needle-sized hole in it's base, is badly discolored, somewhat misshapen, and has a ring of cosmoline on the inside because that is what it has been doing most of its life...being used to boil water and melt off cosmoline, revealing squeaky-clean parts. And, if you're wondering about the tiny pin hole...well, whatever manages to drip out is immediately turned to steam and that's that.

Saturday morning, The Billmeister got in touch with me and when I told him I was going on an expedition with DodgeMan, he hurried over and volunteered to come along and supervise. So, we all piled in DodgeMan's Ford F350 crew cab 4wd, spread out, got comfy like a bunch of bull walruses on the seashore and commenced with the chinwag as we drove down a narrow back road to a place in the very rural outskirts of a town named Helotes. It is here that the road goes through a ravine with some real estate that has a whole bunch of verticality...

and I ain't kidding' ya.

DodgeMan parked his rig along the road in what was arguably someone's front yard and we began the long climb up the seller's driveway which is a combination of all different sizes of gravel and has not only 'verticality' but also yaws crazily to and fro depending upon the whims of whatever water finds its way to the driveway and then runs headlong down it to the street below whilst taking a whole lot of gravel with it. Anyone who dares to drive up this driveway needed to have his head examined because of the aforementioned plus the fact that Cedar trees are lining the driveway, very closely, on both sides. Texas Cedar trees are 'trees' only in some vague scientific sense. They don't grow UP like trees but rather, kind of spread out willy nilly like a stop-motion image of a howitzer shell exploding upon impact. When one cuts Cedar branches back in an attempt to reclaim navigable space (like that of this pseudo driveway) the limbs harden and remain pointed outward, threatening to harpoon any runaway machine that might be going, out of control, DOWN said driveway. I made note of all of this as I slogged up the Driveway of Death. MMmmHHmmm... Driveway of Death!

What could possibly go wrong?

We reached a cut-out which was just some narrow path going at right angles to the slope; a path which terminated in what had once been a sizable clearing and was now silted in with quite a variety of automobilia and parts thereof, topped off with another crop of Cedar and (my favorite) 'waitaminute vines' which made it nearly impossible to get up close to anything for a better look.

What had once been a 40 Ford 4 door sedan but was reduced to a mere shell - CHECK.
Mid 60s Chevelle - CHECK.
About 25% of a prewar civvy Ford pickup - CHECK.
A pile of rear axle groups with torque tubes - CHECK.
Engine blocks galore - CHECK.
At least fifty steel wheels scattered everywhere - CHECK.

For the sake of brevity, we'll stop there.

And then there was the reason we were there. Lined up nicely with the path was an ancient Ford 8N, freshly chained to the rear of the M715. The tractor was completely rusty...every inch of it but, every inch of it was still in use so the rust took on it's own oddly smooth patina. On the other hand, the 715 had the appearance of what I like to call 'eau de 80's slasher movie'. It brought immediately to mind titles like The Hills Have Eyes which is technically from the 1970s, but you get the drift. The seller, a fellow gearhead who was in his 80s, had already aired up the tires and made ready to pull the 715 backwards, out onto the Driveway of Death which would mean the tractor would be pointed uphill, leaving the M715 pointed downhill. All that was left was to find someone crazy enough to get behind the tiller of the 715 (clearly, we already had someone crazy enough to drive the tractor)...and the procedure of our warming up to the idea of implementing this 'Great Escape' was to pop the hood on the 715, and work around the fifty gadgillion Daddy Long-legs...

Scientific name: Pholcidae
Class: Arachnida
Domain: Eukaryota
Family: Pholcidae
Infraorder: Araneomorphae

They were all in there having a Daddy Long Legs rave and our intrusion apparently didn't bother them in the least. They all just stood there and vibrated. So, we shooed them away from the stuff we wanted to point out to one another and just basically ignored them because they were about to go on a long ride and these would be their final moments of Arachnid camaraderie. Aside from the spiders, everything was pretty much where it belonged and despite the corrosion and flaking paint, it simply OOZed goodness. Eventually the humans ran out of OOHs and AHHs and 'Will-ya-look-at-thats', closed the hood of the 715 and began to contemplate the long trek down the Driveway of Death in this prize. Naturally, DodgeMan was going to be doing the honors. Billyboi and I would do what we did best.

Direct traffic.

Bill took the tractor end and I took the front of the 715 because DodgeMan had no mirrors and navigating out of the path and onto the DoD was going to be a bit tricksy with all the unyielding Cedar spikes sticking out. It occurred to me that what this place was really missing were the huge crucified hides that marked the edges of the Forbidden Zone (Planet of the Apes, 1968). So, I called out steering corrections that would allow the 715 to navigate out of the path and onto the DoD without getting mixed up with the Cedar. We got it done in one fell swoop.

Now, the initial idea was that the 715 would go down the Driveway of Death, hanging precipitously at the end of the chain with the old Ford 8N acting as the anchor. On the 715 we had a clutch and manual trans and an engine that might turn over, or it might not....and a questionable, unproven trans brake. That was the plan. Simple. Direct. Fraught with danger... and within moments of the first effort to get down this hill, Old Gearhead Dude announced that his tractor "suddenly" had no brakes. Well, it surely had brakes but with the weight of the 715 at the end of that chain, OGD was (wisely) reassessing his decision making paradigms. There was a modest box blade on the back of the tractor that might be employed in the event of failures or simple errors in judgement but OGD wasn't sure he wanted to be a part of this.

Oh, goodie.

Dodgeman pondered the situation out loud. "Well, I could go get my truck.."

"Which would assure you of having TWO wrecked trucks, should things get out of hand." I replied. "I could get us some extra slack on the chain and you could go a few feet very slowly and see if the 715 has what it takes to halt itself. The seller said that the tractor has enough clutch that he could stop you all the way down but I'd rather not risk that. If we keep it at a walking pace, I reckon it's doable without being hooked to anything and otherwise, putting things in front of these tires on THIS slope just isn't going to stop you. In a worst-case scenario, you can just drive off into a Cedar tree to get stopped."

Such a composed estimation of what to do...from a guy who's not actually IN the truck. RIGHT?

But, in my defense, I figured he actually had a very good chance of getting to the bottom without anything getting out of hand. I honestly can say I would have attempted it. So, we tested the theory. We went a few feet and before the chain went tight against the tractor I had him use the clutch and the trans brake to stop the 715....and stop, it did. We were golden. For the moment. And so, in this way, we eased our way down the Driveway of Death without the tractor and went hard right at the very end without getting onto the roadway and made room for the tired old 8N to get by, pass the the 715 and prepare to tow from the front. Bravo! Totally anticlimactic.

It was clear sailing. The Billmeister and DodgeMan set out the ramps while Gearhead Dude and I approached the rear of the trailer with the 8n pulling the 715 off-angle and it went up in one try with DodgeMan calling for minute adjustments.... and suddenly, we were done...

which is to say, DodgeMan would be left downstairs to tie down his 715 while Bill and I were done. Time for a bit of fun. We went back up the DoD once again, this time to the tippy top, to take Old Gearhead Dude's nickel tour. I knew it was going to be good when I saw a classic British phone booth on the guy's patio, with a female mannequin inside, dressed in a Rod Run tee shirt and a Santa hat. Yeah. THAT kinda good. Among his many things, there were several gems (he prizes 40 Ford convertibles above all else and he had more than one) and everything else that was there, finished or unfinished, was evidence that he was a long-term gearhead, now in decline and his lifestyle had pretty much been Cars-Trucks-Cars, 24,365,7,52, for the last 70 years or so. Yikes.

Such is our mania sometimes. Anyway, after that was all over, we had a victory lunch (BBQ, of course) and then got the 715 to its new home and unloaded with no difficulties and... yup... no more Daddy Long Legs.

Sometimes stuff just works out, despite the Driveway of Death.

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Cheers,
TJ

[rickf]

You DO realize that you are going to be that guy in 20 years or so. Actually you are going to be a cross between him the Nice Lady since you have half of her yard in your yard now. I really wish I had taken pics f the place where I picked up my generator last week. It was a club compound with the military collectors belongings of many different people. I did not take the tour since I had about four and a half hours drive to get back to the hotel, after the 5 hour drive down and 1.5 hours of loading time.

[m3a1]

So, what you're saying is, I should sell it all off and live out my remaining years on a cruise ship?

[rickf]

Nope, you would never be happy in that kind of clean environment! Cruise ship virus's notwithstanding. You would always be trying to get into the mechanical room so you could get dirty and work on stuff.

You could come out of retirement and go back to doing your last job, plenty of dirty there.

[m3a1]

Oh heck no. Nobody in their right mind would want to be a cop now.