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Sandspider-
Awesome job!!!
How do you like the mirrors? Are they worth the money?
Goose neck ball and greasable receiver in an inverted y on the same plain. The y being two upfront in order to keep the box more inline to the cab for a pass thru and multiple center attachments to distribute weight and create clearance for rear articulation. Contemplating air over gas shocks for an anti sway while on curvy roads, adjustable with air value from cab.
The mirrors are totally worth the money. Got a pair on fleabay for less than $300
Sounds good, post a lot of pics along the way of this process if you can, I would be very interested to watch the design unfold...
You are going to get beat to death by the rear tires with no weight on it. My tractor will bounce and feel like an out of round or flat spotted tire running 70 empty. With 24,000lb on the drive axles they ride great. The rear springs on a 1088 are designed for 44k weight. You have probably 8000lbs on those rear axles if that.And we now return to our regularly scheduled broadcast.....
Some forward progress and some stagnation: radiator was successfully removed, repaired, and replaced. I didn't take many pictures during the process and just followed along with the TM, and it pretty much went right along with how I would have logically done it if I went in blind. There were no tricks, which was nice, and it all went back together fairly easily with just the shroud bolts being finicky.
While I was in there, I discovered I have what appears to be the updated fan (no rubber to degrade and toss a blade into the rad) and I took the opportunity to replace all the belts and check the nut on the compressor (was tight, yay!). All in all, things went well.
Next up, I replaced the OEM shocks with the Fox offerings from Grigsby, which came in from backorder in February.
New shocks:
Where I haven't made progress is in dealing with a persistent shimmy while driving at speed (~55-60 MPH), and I have compelled myself to resolve it prior to moving on to any other chassis work or the actual camper build.
At this point, I have swapped all the tires for the new ones I got when I bought it, had all the driveshafts completely rebuilt, installed the new shocks, rotated the tires through different positions around the truck, and statically balanced all the tire/wheels assemblies on a balancer which I made.
The static balancer:
The balancer is made from VW Bug front hub with an adapter plate I had laser cut from 1/2" steel plate. I added a few studs and things seemed to work out pretty well.
Front view, the taped on spacers were used to make up for brake drum thickness and keep the lug nuts on the threads:
In practice, I mounted up the tire assembly to the drum, let it spin til the heavy side was down and then would move it 90° one way and add weight on the light side until it wouldn't spontaneously spin with gravity. I would then check that it remains static through 360° and adjust accordingly and I had figured this to be good enough to address any major imbalances. The weight I had to apply ranged from ZERO(!!!!) on one assembly to 3.6 pounds, most of them being in the 1-2 pound range. I then used some adhesive to secure the slab of lead to the inner surface of the wheel.
The left rear wheel about to be reinstalled, 2.25# of lead on board:
Despite all this work, I still get to mid-50's mph and there is a pronounced vibration which feels like it's gotten better below that but seems like it's gotten worse once I get there. It almost feels like one of the tires is severely out of round but the shimmy also fades in and out as I progress through bends, which makes me feel like it's phasing in and out with other tires. If it was an out-of-round unit, it wouldn't matter what the speed- it would always be lumpy and I should always feel it.
Speaking of which, while I had them on the balancer, I started checking how concentric the wheels/tires were but managed to forget to do it after the 2nd tire. I was very disappointed when I realized I forgot to keep checking this and I intend to pull them off and check them sometime during the remainder of this week. I anxiously await seeing where that leads me.
If anyone has any suggestions of how to better address the shimmy issue, I am all ears. If I am missing something in my balancing procedure, please point it out to me. I certainly don't feel like an expert but am willing to try anything to knock this out. Thanks in advance!
It helps on a loaded truck. I have them in my tires. 14 to 16oz for a 395 tire. Fluid or beads. Beads are available at napa
I read somewhere that the fluid can cause problems with the CTIS.....
