My First, '66 M35A2, Work In Progress Build Thread

[Jeepjake]

Nice looking bobber downeast! I will likely maintain a camo pattern of sorts bit perhaps omit the brown. Though I still have a nagging desire to have a somewhat accurate color scheme.

In other news... The backyard project that I alluded to at the start of the thread is coming along great. Sadly it is looking like I won't get to paint the deuce this summer, I will have to wait until next summer.
Hopefully I will have the pto all rebuilt along with the crane. I have at least found the time to clean it all up.

 

[Jeepjake]

Backyard is done, back to working on the Deuce!

Well my Deuce projects have been on leave for the summer as I have been working pretty hard on my backyard. I turned a patch of Central Oregon Desert into a useable space fit for drinking beer and throwing horseshoes. Most of the work was inaccessible with the deuce, so the heavy lifting was done with a 4-wheeled cart or a wheelbarrow when a bobcat wasn't practical for the task. Here are some before and after pics of the madness. The first is what the backyard looked like when we first moved in 3 years ago, sense then I relocated the fence to the back of the property, then did all the landscaping this summer. 35 Tons of retaining wall and patio pavers and 2500 square feet of grass. Sure would have been nice to have the crane on the Deuce for all that! The last pic is one of the many trips I made with gravel for the side-lot next to the house. It made me walking into the landscape supply place and asking for 3 yards of gravel (only down the road a few miles, so I didn't go to the quarry) They asked if I was going to make several trips, I insisted that the Toyota would handle it. They got a good laugh outta that, and were less worried about my sanity when I rolled through the gates in the deuce.

I now return you to your regularly scheduled program.....Deuce parts!

 

[Jeepjake]

Winter projects

As promised (threatened) i am back at it bit by bit, trying to get all the "outside" work wrapped up before fall has fallen and Old Man Winter sinks his teeth in. i won a minimum bid auction out of Fort Lewis for two 26" stroke x 5" bore lift cylinders. They will need new seals, but after initial inspection revealed little other issues. I will be using at least one of these for the dump bed, I will have to calculate what kind of leverage ratio i can get with the available room under the box. My hydraulic pump will allow the cylinder to generate roughly 50,000 lbs force, and i would like to have a fully capable 10,000 lb dump. If possible I will use one and build two scissor style dump mechanisms and sell one off to help fund the madness, otherwise I will mount em both, and utilize them directly, mounted between the frame and the box and reinforce the box to handle the force. One of the nicest features of these cylinders is the pilot controlled load holding cartridge. They won't drop if I blow a line. They require applied hydraulic pressure to allow the cylinder to lower. If a failure does occur there is a bypass circuit that will allow controlled retraction of the cylinder without hydraulic pressure, so I can't get stuck with the box in the air.

holding down the other side of the pallet is the 4th winter project..(on a list of 100s) i picked up a complete winch (in pieces) with frame extensions brackets, driveline, and the cases of at least two others complete winches. Of the cases, there is enough to make maybe one good winch if i run across another drum/gears/shaft. The others case halves have been damaged by improper installation with standard bolts rather than the special shouldered bolts, and the fastener holes are cracked.
So good times this winter, lots of cleaning, bead blasting and painting to be done!

Cheers all--Jeep

 

[Jeepjake]

Winch Installed!

I really shouldn't be left alone un-supervised with an impact wrench... Something lit a fire under me this weekend and i finished rebuilding the winch and got it onto the truck. The top plate of the winch was badly rusted and as well as having lost a few battles with bound winch cables, so I rebuilt one from a piece of box steel having the proper dimensions. I will have to order some new placards as the existing are irrecoverable.

With any luck, I will get the pto rebuilt in the next couple weeks (waiting on parts) and have a functional winch before the snow flies. With that out of the way, the next major task will be the dump box hinges and box reinforcements. Mixed in with that will be frame reinforcement/attaching brackets for the crane. More to follow.
-Jeep

 

[Jeepjake]

Time for an update

Well progress has been moving slowly, partially due to funding, but mostly because I spend my evenings in the office drooling over new MV schtuff rather than working on the one I have!

I have gone about aquireing more acessories. I ran across a deal on HEMTT wheels that was too good for me to pass up. a descent price and FREE SHIPPING! For a guy in the PNW this was a big deal!

I developed a 100% bolt on adapter for the Hemtt wheels LINKY , inspired by Kohburn in his thread 6 bolt to 10 bolt adapters, but after all the parts quotes and final cost of hardware it would be almost 200/wheel to go with a bolt on solution. While this adapter still has a lot of merit as an emergency device to us truck wheels on a deuce, I just can't sink another grand into the wheels on the deuce. As much as it pains me I will probably be turning the torch loose on the new HEMTT wheels and re-centering with either the Deuce wheel center or a CNC cut plate. Most likely the former as the latter will be an additional expense, this will produce a wheel identical to those made by DonkDonk.

I got a really nice new(er-than-mine) hood personally delivered by goodguyzy, he was in the area and dropped it by in his A3. Thanks Zy!

I tossed (rolled, shoved, cursed) one of the wheel assemblies up to the duece to get an idea of wheel clearance issues with the 15.5s, plus I just HAD to see how it would look.
I will bust the Torch out sometime in the next few weeks and
In the midtst of all this computer driving and pocketbook draining, I managed to go out and actually USE my truck. He he he, we went christmas tree hunting in the mountains surrounding Bend.

In my ever present quest to over-think everything, I have been slowly documenting the M35a2 in Solidworks to make it more difficult to finish my projects in any sort of reasonable time frame. So far most items are cartoons that will require precise measurements to be complete. maybe someday I will have enough information recorded that it will become useful, for now cartoons are fun.

Jeep

 

[clinto]

Your backyard looks awesome. Love the retaining wall.

 

[Jeepjake]

backyard

Clinto,

Thank you for the compliment on the backyard. My wife and i really busted our butts on it! We did about 80% of the work ourselves with the generous help of friends. It was a great project and a good learning experience. it really was a transformation.

I can't wait for this summer when I can actually enjoy it! Last summer it was a slave camp!

Your backyard looks awesome. Love the retaining wall.

 

[Jeepjake]

Recentering the HEMTT wheels

After reaching the conclusion that the 6 lug to 10 lug wheel adapters I had designed were just too much of an additional expense right now i decided to recenter the HEMTT wheels in a similar fashion to all the others out there with the requisite 'I gotta do it my way' twist.

The wheel centers of the rivited wheels remain thicker toward the perimeter of the wheel center than the welded wheels do, so I decided to make all my HEMTT conversion wheel centers from the stock rivited wheels, since I happend to have 6 of them. Unfortunatly 4 were still on the truck. So I went to work "harvesting" the rivited wheels from the truck this afternoon, which i will have to dismount tomorrow Or later before i cut the wheel centers out of them. I borrowed a friends 1" Ingersol Rand impact gun, this thing is just mean looking! it looks like a baby M134 Minigun (well, with my imagination it does ) It made very short work of removing the wheel and tire assemblies from the deuce.

having already rough cut the wheel centers out of some old wheels I had, I started testing the best methods of cutting the wheel centers to size. I wanted to machine them out for asthetic and precision reasons, so I first tried to make a single pass with a 5/8 roughing end mill. It became apparent VERY quickly that this was not going to be the best course of action. My small Square column CNC is just not rigid enough to handle the task and it would have taken forever as I would have to manually rotate the rotary table since my Y-axis is not large enough to allow me to just interpolate the circle. Multiple passes would be way to arduous, I will have to cut them with a torch... dang.

I pulled the rotary table off the mill and set it on a 15x8 wheel as a small workbench that wasn't too tough to heave the HEMTTs onto. The rotary table will grab the deuce centers by the hub pilot without problem, so those are easy to cut down. I tested this by cutting what will eventually be an alignment tool out of one of the thinner wheel centers that I won't be using.
My supervisor "Cash" checked out the setup and gave me the goahead, so I gave him a dog treat and sent him back into the house while I made the cut.
It turned out better than I had hoped and required almost no cleanup after tapping the slag off with a hammer. the rotary table and torch fixturing worked out well to make a perfect circular cut.
The alignment tool barely fits (actually a light press fit) between the heads of the studs on the backside of the HEMTT wheel, I will use this to align the new center to be welded in, just incase the cutting is imprecise enough that I have a gap in the other centers.


To cut the centers out of the HEMTT wheels it will be a bit more interesting. I had an old Freghtliner hub lying about, this will work to lift the wheel high enough that I can still turn the rotary table worm drive and will help keep the wheel centered during the cut. Cash also approved of this setup, so I will get to that in the AM.

 

[Jeepjake]

HEMTT wheel build

My back hates me.... these things arn't to bad to move..once, but you get to loading em on and off a cutting fixture, rolling them around with tires on em and flipping them over to weld and grind and it flat wears a guy out! course it doesn't help that the darn wheels alone literally weight only 10 lbs less than me. ok enough whining.

i will let the pics speak for most of the progress. The cutting fixture continued to work better than I had hoped for producing cuts that required very little cleanup other than just grinding off the slag/glaze for weld prep.

Interestingly there was a remarkable difference in the way the two materials cut, the older wheel centers did not cut nearly as well nor as clean as the new hemtt wheels, I am not sure why this is, but it must be a metalurgical difference, since i removed all paint in the area of the cut on the older wheels.

1. old wheel center cut out
2. new HEMTT wheel with old center removed
3. 6 lug wheel center bolted to welding jig, and clamped firmly to wheel. parallelism and runout is within .016 thou.(.39 mm) that should be plenty close for a wheel, considering the assembly lock ring has more tolerance than that built into the fastener holes.
4. fit check exhaust (closest point)
5. fit check drag ling (hard lock right turn)
6. Wheel reversed ( to simulate rear drum clearance if I don't flip the hubs. the wheel assembly studs are CLOSE but not touching, .020 to .030 in clearance
7. Front side weld before I molested it with a grinder
8. Backside weld (left unmolested )
9. with paint. I didn't get the weld beads completely smoothed, but 90%, a quick glance does not reveal that they were ever welded, which is what I was hoping to accomplish.
10. A days work, two wheels completed... now only 4 more to do!

cheers all
Jeep

 

[Jeepjake]

More wheel work

Thanks Jim, she is getting there, I am really interested to see yours when you get her out of the shop!

I got the remaining 4 HEMTT wheels cut up. The rotary table cutting fixture really made this easy. I still have to dismount the stock tires from the last 4 donor wheels so I can harvest the Wheel centers.

I am not looking forward to busting the beads on those wheels. Any advise out there. The best tool i have found to date is a piece of angle iron as a wedge, and a 10 lb sledge hammer (simulating a duck bill hammer)

I mounted the two front wheels to make my driveway look better I will have to upload a new pic when there is light.

The wheel offset should allow me to run with factory position rear hubs. if I mount the rear wheels dish out, they will have a track width that is only .875" narrower per side.... of course the other option is to flip the hubs and run all wheels the same.

decision decisions.
Jeep

 

[Jeepjake]

Singled Out

ok I got the Super Singles on the truck this weekend.

I have not yet balanced them and they have a pretty good shimmy at about 34 or so so I haven't pushed it any faster than that. I have tried different tire pressures as a quick fix, but I don't want to run 60 psi in them as it will wear out the center of the tread. 35 was too squishy for an out of balance tire.
I am weighing my options for balance. i willl likely start with a static balance with lead on the wheel and see where that gets me. then possibly try a dynamic balancing option.

 

[goodguyzy]

Looks good, I like to run 50psi

 

[Jeepjake]

Looks good, I like to run 50psi

Thanks Zy, that is a good recomendation. I put 60 in the front the other evening and ran around the block, it took the death wobble out of it (at 35), but I would like to get them balanced to the point where I can air them down so they will maintain even treadwear. Gringeltaube has, in an unrelated thread, recommended 45F/35R for 14.5/80s unloaded. with an increase to 50 when loaded. I might presume due to the slightly wider tread plate and same diameter of the 15.5s that this pressure would only be slightly increased, if at all. For safety's sake I will keep them aired up to have a bit more positve control until I tear them down and get them balanced. Honestly though I doubt I will even go anywere before I balance them. They aren't terrible, but they aren't good either. After balancing I will bust out the tell-all grease pencil and adjust air pressure untill treadwear is flat across the tire, then placard the wheels

Go to Wally world (Wal Mart) and get some of the heavy weight plastic BB's I plan on using one jar per tire simply because the tires weigh so freakin much. I have used this for many years on smaller tires with great results. DD's too. Jim

Thanks Jim, i have read that suggestion in many places, along with antifreeze, dynabeads, equal..... The airsoft pellets seems to be the cheapest solution that doesn't dramatically complicate a field patch repair (antifreez will prevent any vulcanizing patch from sealing to the tire without significant surface preparation) I will probably go with a belt and suspenders approach.

1. hand select the most round tire/wheel combination to go on the fronts to keep the steering wheel wobble to a min.
2. statically balance everything using the method demonstrated by Gringeltaube < here.
3. add some beads to take care of the dynamic changes in the tire, (cold flat spots, gradual uneven wear....

I figure a static balance will take care of the lions share, and the small remaining can be taken care of with maybe less than 8 oz of pellets per tire.

A special note, it has been observed by some that the "latest generation" of airsoft bbs are biodegradable and will melt in the presence of moisture for extended periods of time, I guess the recommendation is to get the "high performance" bbs which are harder and actually made of a petrolium distillate of sorts, thus non-degrading.