I beat the fuel fitting... And a thread for all the other mods to my deuce

[lino]

First, Merry Christmas

Second, back to regular programming...

Hopefully today, and certainly this weekend, I'll be getting the air-ride seat mod done - with some adaptations. Pics shortly.

I also have all the gauges in-hand, so hope to do those too. Fuel sender tweaks might happen this weekend also.
I'm using the same gauges as Peashooter, the SW HD series.

The mechanical gauges (Oil press, water temp, air press) don't care what voltage the vehicle is (aside from lighting, which I'll get to).
The Voltmeter is available in 24v.
But the fuel gauge needs a SW sender, and that's only available in 12v. HOWEVER, since those are just resistive, it should be reasonable to add a resistor in series or parallel to the sender and get the gauge to a happy place.

I'll keep y'all posted.

The compressor stuff will keep moving slowly in the background...

ciao
lino

 

[Jeepsinker]

My post was in regard to another thread that was useful being locked. I said it because this thread is also useful and informative. Nobody here did anything wrong.

Sorry to cause confusion.

 

[lino]

So, I mentioned I did my headgasket recently...

I collected a bunch of notes and parts, but figured it was worth it's own thread. In the non-hotrod section.

If yer interested, here ya go.
http://www.steelsoldiers.com/showthread.php?148514-Head-Gasket-Repair&p=1811376#post1811376

ciao
lino

 

[lino]

Well, switching the driver's seat over to the folding MRAP type and converting to air-ride from spring ride took a little more work than I anticipated...

Here are the details.

From an older thread about the conversion:
http://www.steelsoldiers.com/showth...ir-ride-seat&p=1349561&viewfull=1#post1349561
I tried to buy the 3 parts necessary to switch the springer to air-ride:

• 277148 Bendix PR2 air brake pressure protection valve
• National Seat# GT134-3 Standard 3 way valve push/pull control
• and AIR BAG 329666-01 FIRESTONE

The first two were easy finds on eBay. The bag itself was available, but was now running about $100, and not easy to find. So, as was suggested in other threads, I looked at other bag options.

There's an ebay store called Expedited Parts that sells replacement airbags. Their lowest price point for seat-type airbags was $35 (free ship). There were several options at that price, so I looked up each in the Firestone catalog to look for appropriate size.
Firestone p/n W02-358-7081 met the specs best. So, I ordered one of those.

Then I tore into the stock seat. I opted to pull out the spring tensioner that has the crank in the front as well. Mine was jammed anyway. It was a pretty big pain to cut its mount off the seat because of limited clearance.

Once all that was out, the trick was to figure how to get the airbag to stay where the old spring used to live. On the top, I had a piece of 3" OD .063 wall pipe that fit around the outside top of the airbag (after a little bit of grinding).

You can see the ring in place. On the airbag, I cut off the air nipple, sanded flush, and re-tapped 1/8 NPT. Harder to see is that I also ground off about .020" on the OD of the endcap above the steel clamp. That was just enough to let it fit into the 3" pipe.

On the bottom of the airbag, there's a pillar with a 1/2" female thread:

I didn't make any changes to that end.

For the spring to move thru full travel of the seat, which is about 7" compressed to 10" extended I needed the "pillar" extended so that the bag could roll over itself properly.
I needed the base of the pillar about 1.3" above the base of the seat. So, digging around what I had, I found some tube that the bag pillar (which is tapered) fit part way into. I made a plate at the proper depth down the tube and welded it onto the base. A pic will make things much more clear...


Next, I mounted the air valve into the hole that the tension crank used to use and painted.


Here are a few pics trying to illustrate the rolling of the bag as it moves thru its travel.


And here it is installed.



Seat bracket and seat mods in next post...

 

[lino]

Seat Bracket and Seat Mods:

So once the airbag conversion was done, I now needed to mount my MRAP seat.
There are several threads on ways of doing this. Usually a flat plate does the trick. But that seemed way to easy and direct...

Looking at the seat, it's an interesting combo of metric and SAE hardware, and the frame is made of both steel and aluminum.
The apparent mounting holes are on a steel section of the bracket that ties into the major load points of the seat. I wanted to use those mounts. The plate-mount method usually ties into aluminum sections of other brackets closer to the center of the seat. Probably nothing wrong with that, but I decided to use the outer mounting holes in the steel bracket.

Being a tall fellow (6'3") I started by putting the seat mount as far back on the sliders as I could.

The four outside holes in that plate are for the seat. But it turns out that this holds the seat WAY too far back in the vehicle for the backrest to have any angle. So I added two more holes and use the forward 4 of the 6 holes. Here's the finished bracket.

A plate certainly would have been simpler.... And the bracket installed on the sliders


Next it became painfully obvious that the fixed recline angle of the MRAP seat was way too far back to be usable in the deuce (at least for someone my size). Other threads had mentioned a similar issue and solved it by removing the lower of the two bolts (on each side) of the seatback, allowing it to pivot to new angle, then re-drilling lower hole.

I removed the seat flip up springs (don't need it on driver's seat) and the lower bolts, installed it in truck and played with seating positions.
I then removed the upper rear bar for the shoulder restraints. It used up more than an inch of available recline. If and when I decide to put in shoulder harnesses, I'll have to make a lower profile version of that bracket. So basically, I tested positions with the seat back "floppy" and reclined such that it was sliding on the back of the cab. Once I found a combination of seat height, slider position, and recline that was the most comfortable for me, I spaced the seatback about 3/4" from the back of cab, and marked the position for the new hole.


Here are a few pics of the stock position of the seatback and the the bolt holes and the new reclined position
and a view of the bracket from inside

Okay, so far so good.
Only problem now is that the new hole will be partway off the steel bracket that the original went thru...
(cant seem to get this image to rotate...)
I've marked the arc for the new hole position. The new hole centerpoint is very close to the edge of the bracket. Oh, and this is a good pic (if maybe too close up) to mention the steel and aluminum. The bracket in the foreground is steel, the one behind it is aluminum. I didn't want the new lower bolt hole relying on just the strength of the aluminum...

So... I made my life a bit more difficult. I decided to add reinforcement to the steel bracket...

and it all started with a hole saw...


Then I took that slug, cut it in half, and began fitting and welding...

I did that on both sides of the seat (of course). It's a bit of a no-no to weld while the seat was assembled, but it was a fast weld, and it worked out well.

So then, and the part I'm least happy with, was repainting. The MRAP seats have a nice thick textured finish. The closest thing I had on hand was some wrinkle finish paint.
While it didn't come out stellar, it will protect it just fine.


And that folks, is the long story of how I mounted my MRAP seat in my deuce...

A Happy New Year to all!


ciao
lino

 

[peashooter]

Nicely done as usual! I finally got around to looking up your signature's latin quote and be live it fits you well. "I shall either find a way or make one."

 

[peashooter]

Lino, Here are some pictures and measurements of the larger compressor I got that has the base oil feed option (midland KN13060) Others that should have the bottom feed oil option are: Bendix 279356 (279356x), 227320 (227320x), 283690 (283690x), midland EL13060 (EL13060x), KN13060.

It looks like the main thing you are after is the orifice diameter for the oil supply. This compressor has a brass fitting with orings that restricts the internal oil passage diameter down to 0.078". The base oil feed hole has an unused thread that appears to be 5/16"-24 which I'm guessing is to plug off if you don't use the base oil feed? Anyway, hope the pictures help....

 

[peashooter]

More pics

 

[lino]

Ahh. Very interesting. Looks like the restrictor also acts as a seal between the block and the end cap. That is a little harder to duplicate, but I'm not sure it's necessary.
Also, for what it's worth, the datasheet on mine EL13020, mentions putting a pipe plug in the base hole if you aren't using base oiling. Must be same function as your 5/6-24 thread. If you decide to oil feed that compressor from one of the two other optional places, you'd need to plug that hole so that all the oil doesn't go back out that hole, instead of lubing the compressor.

Aside from that little oil hole, your compressor looks just like mine.

The angle of that connecting hole is very helpful!

 

[daytonatrbo]

Lino,

Top notch work!

Can I ask what software you are using for the 3D modeling?

I've been planning on doing up a solidworks model of the frame and cargo bed so I can work through my ideas on mounting my bed crane.

I don't know if you would be willing to share some of your models to give me a leg-up, but I would appreciate anything you might be willing to share.

Thanks!

 

[lino]

Lino,

Top notch work!

Can I ask what software you are using for the 3D modeling?

I've been planning on doing up a solidworks model of the frame and cargo bed so I can work through my ideas on mounting my bed crane.

I don't know if you would be willing to share some of your models to give me a leg-up, but I would appreciate anything you might be willing to share.

Thanks!

The modeling I've done so far has been in ProEngineer. However I'm switching over to Onshape (see www.onshape.com).

I'd be happy to share the models I have, though I have very little of the frame modeled.
I need to model more as well, because I'm getting started on converting mine to a dumper...

PM with an email addy and I can send you what I have.

ciao
lino

 

[letssled]

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