Inter 170-952

[john.k]

I seem to remember that they used two standard  cables stuck end to end with an adaptor.Anyhoo,you dont bother with original spares,when you know the length you simply go to someone like Flexdrive ,and get a cable made.Any cables I had would have gone onto our own trucks,around annual machinery inspection time.Regards John.

[Ravvin]

I got a bit more done. Today I put a few litres of kero in the transfer case, removed the main mounting studs from the top of the box, and rolled it around the yard a few times to slosh it around. I found that the breather on top is working as I was leaving a trail of kero across the yard.

 I made a rough ladder with a couple of long planks by screwing some slats across them and leaned it against my work bench, and then rolled the transfer case up it. It's a lot easier to work on now it's at chest height on a clean surface.

I cleaned the last lumps of greasy sludge off the outside with diesel and the wire brush and got the sand-blaster out. It made short work of the flaky modern camo paint and even took the old dark green original paint off. When sand-blasting, I wear goggles, a hat, full face shield, dual filter breathing mask and a shirt with no pockets. The stuff gets everywhere. Shorts are ok, but boots were a mistake. Next time I will wear my safety thongs. In the end, all that was left was bare aluminium and a lot of the weird red primer that was under the dark green. This stuff is very hard to remove and seems to do a good job, so I left it and etch primed the entire front of the case.

I removed the seal retainer from the front-wheel drive-shaft and pressed the old seal out. It took quite a lot of pressure to get started, and I think there was some sort of sealant used on it originally. Once I cleaned the old sealant off, I gave it a smear of grease and the new seals pressed in easily. I used 2 narrow seals, facing opposite directions. This will give it 4 sealing lips and hopefully should last as long as the originals.

I'll take the drive flanges in tomorrow and get the correct sized speedy-sleeves.

[Ravvin]

I picked up the Speedi-sleeves during the week. They were very easy to fit. I marked each of the drive flanges before removing them, so I knew how far to slide the sleeve on. The instructions say to tap them on with the driving cup and a hammer, but I used my press as I could see the mark I'd made and slowly ease it down to just the right spot. I pressed the old seals out of the input and front-wheel drive seal retainers and fitted the new ones.
I undid all the bolts in the front input shaft housing and eased it out. There is a brass sleeve thing in there. (spigot bearing bush, the manual says), and I almost dropped it into the case. It was stuck to the back of the input shaft by a film of oil and dropped when I broke the suction by tilting it. Luckily, I was going slowly and trying to look inside and I saw it move, so jambed it back. Looking inside with a torch, everything looks spotless, all shiny and clean with no signs of scuffing, wear or rust.
The original gasket around the extension housing looks like it is made of some sort of plastic sheet. Almost like the acetate that film negatives are made of. Could it be some sort of phenolic resin sheet? It looked good, once I cleaned all the old Stag paste off it. I cleaned the mating surfaces of the case and the extension housing, coated the gasket with a light smear of non-hardening gasket paste and put it all back together with new bolts and washers. I did them all up finger-tight and torqued them to 16 foot-pounds after half an hour to allow the sealant to spread evenly.
After all this, I taped up the seals and splines with masking tape and gave the whole front a touch-up with etch primer. This should protect it all until I get the rest cleaned and primed, ready to topcoat.

[Ravvin]

Hi all.
I'm slowly getting there. I fitted all the new seals and cleaned up the back and sides of the transfer case. I ran a cleaning tap through all the bolt holes to clean the old Stag paste out and refitted all of the seal holders with new bolts and spring washers. The old bolts may have been reusable, but its cheap insurance to get new ones, and all of the old spring washers had lost their spring. All of the 5/16" bolts were re-torqued to 16 foot pounds and the 3/8" ones to 24 foot pounds.
As you can see in the pic below, it cleaned up pretty well. Still hadn't quite finished cleaning the outside when this pic was taken.



Before giving it all a final wipe-down with turps, prior to spraying it with primer, I drained all of the kero out that I put in to clean the old oil and sludge out. I drained it into a clean tray, then strained it through paper towel before tipping it back in for another quick flush. After doing this several times, and having to change paper towels as they quickly blocked up with the oil sludge, it finally got to the stage where the kero wasn't washing anything else out and it wasn't blocking the paper towel. I felt inside with a finger, (very scientific method), and I couldn't feel anything on the base, so its about as clean as I can get.
I'm thinking I might tip a litre of something like Wax & Grease Remover in to clean the last of the kero out, and then leave it in the sun with the bungs out to allow it to totally evaporate. I could either do that, or put a litre of left-over clean engine oil in and slosh it around before draining and refilling with the proper stuff. What do you all think?
Here is a pic of the interesting stuff that got flushed out.



The black lumps are bits of the silicon that was in the bolt holes. No sign of metal flakes but the black stuff covering the paper towel was the remains of the sludge in the bottom of the case.
Before refitting the drive flanges and torquing them up, I'll give the whole thing a few coats of Wattyl Super-etch.
Before refitting it, I will repaint it all with the Protec Camo Green. No point doing it now as it will likely get knocked around while getting it down off the workbench and back out to the truck.
First I have to clean the chassis rails and cross-members, prime and paint them, as well as run new air lines back for the winch actuator, transfer case interlock actuator,
rear air brake couplings and the tractor protection valve. I'll probably need to drop the winch out and give it a good overhaul as well.
I've only got a week off over Xmas, so it will be interesting to see how much I get done.

Greg.

[Mick]

Keep up the posts Greg,

Really interesting stuff . Great job 👍

Cheers,

Mick

[Ravvin]

Thanks Mick. 

I gave the transfer case it's first coat of primer, so can't do any more to it today.
During the week I will run around town and see if I can find anyone who has a length of channel or can fold one up for me to replace the transfer case cross-member.
I'll have to cut off and re-weld the hand-brake pivot assembly, but I need to do that anyway as I need to soak it in diesel for a few days to loosen up a bit.
I went to try cleaning up the fixed cross-member that sits in front of the transfer case but ran into some issues.
Its badly rusted and I can't get the grinder with wire wheel in there to clean it. I'd like to remove it so I can clean what is easily accessible and sand-blast the rest,
but it is held in place with rivets. I checked further along and there is another down behind the rear diff area and it has them too.
See pics below.


                                                            Fixed Cross-member                                                                                                                                   Cross-member Rivets

I'd like to grind them down and punch them through, replacing them with high-tensile bolts of the same diameter or larger if necessary.
I know there were some EMEI's covering the replacement of other rivets with bolts due to the issue of twisting of the chassis when crossing very uneven ground,
but I don't know if these ones could be changed.
What are everyone's thoughts? Would it be safe? is it likely to be picked up in the vehicle inspection?

After taking the transfer case out and working on it up on a work bench, I'm a total fan of doing this with anything else that can be removed.
It's so much quicker and less painful than trying to work on things while still fitted.
Have a look at the pic below. This is the inside of the passenger side chassis rail. Most of the rust you see is what is left of the steel in the tray.
No matter how much I clean off, more drops down to get in my eyes and down my overalls.



When I get back to the winch, I think it will be fairly simple to remove. If I can get the pins out of the air actuator and remove it,
I should be able to disengage the winch mechanism so I can pull all the cable out. If not, I guess I will have to wind it out by turning the driveshaft.
That sounds painful. Once the cable is out I can kick some extra holes in the wooden deck and wrap some strops around the winch body.
Then I can run a beam across the top of the frame fitted to the sides of the truck and lower it down with a tirfor.
You can just make out the cross-member that the winch is bolted to in the pic above. It's a different setup to the transfer case.
The cross-member is too long to fit through the chassis rails if I unbolt it, so I will have to unbolt the winch from the cross-member
and lower it onto my ATV lift. Should be lighter than the transfer case. If I had a 6x6 FI with the Abbey crane I could park next to it and lower it that way.
I wish. 

Greg.

[john.k]

Unless the rivets are loose and can be turned with the fingers,dont even think of trying to remove them.They are cold pressed into place and spread out between components,and swell into the holes.Unless you have experience of removing chassis rivets ,and a magnetic base drill,forget it.An expert can also blow a hole thru the rivet without damaging the chassis,and wash off the head.A beginner will end up with ragged holes way oversize.Actually,I didnt realize the truck was so rusty.Merry Christmas.Regards John.

[Chazza]

I agree with John regarding whether the rivets are loose or not; generally speaking it is best to leave them alone, unless they appear to not be doing their job, which is to clamp the parts together tightly.

One possible problem with removing them and the cross-member, is that the chassis may well spring apart and then you will have the devil-of-a-job to realign everything. If you do need to remove them, drilling through the centre should work and the head can be cut off with a cold-chisel, or ground away as you suggest.

None of this solves your rust problem though - have you thought about a portable sand blaster to do them in-situ?

I enjoy your reports so much, please continue posting them,

Cheers Charlie

[Ravvin]

Thanks for the advice.
I hadn't planned on drilling them out. I was thinking of grinding the heads down flush with the rail and them pushing them through with a drift. If the holes in the chassis rails are even slightly larger than the holes in the cross-member, I wouldn't be able to punch them through though. I could spread the chassis rails slightly, which would give me enough room to get the cross-member out. Then I could cut the rivet stub off flush and remove them.
If the chassis rails bow out, I could pull them in with sash cramps, at least enough to get a couple of long bolts started, then tighten them up to pull it all into position. If they bow in I could use a jack and timber to spread them enough to get the cross-member in place.
I'm not too worried about the difficulty getting the rivets and cross-member out or in. I'm worried about the structural strength of the chassis if I replace the rivets with bolts, even high-tensile ones. The fact that they replaced the original rivets in much of the chassis with bolts to allow it to flex after twisting the original chassis (chassises?) when crossing uneven ground while loaded tells me that the rivets must hold it more rigidly. Will the bolts allow it to flex too much? Are they likely to break?
I'll go through all the EMEI's tonight and see which rivets they replaced. There is a chance these ones were also meant to be changed, but my truck missed a lot of the EMEI's that I have read about.
The chunks of rust that are visible in the pics are all from the steel runners in the tray, between the planks, and the actual cross-members that they bolt to. The tray mount U'bolts are still usable and the chassis rails only have light surface pitting. I believe they used the truck as a fire truck as it has heavy steel sheets fitted to the sides to reflect heat, and the additives they used in the water were corrosive. I've fallen through the deck once already and now have the steel sheets covering it so I can walk around. None of the steel runners that hold the timber in place or the cross-members that sit on the chassis rails are salvageable, there's not even enough left to use as a template if I wanted to make new ones. I've hesitated to remove the tray altogether as I am renting and was given permission to keep the truck in the paddock out the back, but don't want to wear out my welcome by having a rusted-out eyesore sitting there as well.
The pitting and surface rust isn't too bad in the chassis rails. It cleans off easily enough with a wire wheel on a grinder, it's just awkward to get at. I'll post up a few before and after pics to show how it comes up.
I tried sand-blasting, and it gives a very good result. You can get into all the nooks and crannies. The problem is the equipment I have available. The first gun I tried worked off suction and it was great at first, but it used a heavy rubber pick-up hose that the grit roughed up inside, which meant I was always getting blockages, even when I had the grit supply in a bottle hung above my head. The second one I tried used a hopper on top of the gun. It works fine when working level or downhill, but is useless when angled up. This one also goes through easily 5 times the amount of grit that the suction one did. The grit I am using is garnet grit. It’s not cheap at $30 for a 10kg bag, but is better than the sharp sand I sieved and tried. The sand still had the fines in it and while it worked, I was working in a solid cloud of white dust and couldn’t see what I was spraying. It clogs the filters on my breathing mask quickly too.
I think I’ll try the suction type one again, with some clear plastic hose for the pick-up. That way I can see when it blocks, can replace the hose when it gets too badly roughed up, and uses far less grit. I’ll also try to track down where the local grit blasting companies get their grit. Hopefully I can get a couple of 20L drums of it off them cheaply.


Greg.

[john.k]

First a warning/blasting with white sand and breathing any of the dust will give you silicosis/very nasty/Last year I had pneumonia[caused by breathing grass dust kicked up by my slasher],anyhoo I had to get a chest xray and they picked up an area of "consolidation" which is apparently medical talk for "bad news" caused by sandblasting with white [silica] sand.I have done industrial blasting,and there is nothing better than steelgrit for removing rust.But it needs to be recycled.You can easily build your own sandblast pot[suction setups are hopeless] but you need a compressor of minimum 75cfm.A 120 cfm is better,but the guys who come with truckmounted plant generally use a 335-350cfm.By the way ,in the good old days,we used to drive the tiptruck onto the beach,load up with white sand and blast with it.Wouldnt the greenies love that?Regards John.

[Ravvin]

Thanks John.
I was using garnet grit, not silica sand, but I still wear a twin-filter respirator mask when doing any grit-blasting. The grit I have been using is too expensive to consider for a larger scale setup. It is $36 for a 25kg bag, which doesn't go far, even with the little system I have with a 5 cu/ft a min compressor. We actually have a monster of a compressor that is no longer used at work, but it's 3 phase. Ideally, I would take the truck to work and blast it there, but the landlord, Council and a dozen or so neighbours in the middle of the city are sure to complain. If I pinched it, I suppose I could set it up to run off a petrol engine, but the actual compressor is not designed to run like that. It's setup to shut off the electric motor when pressure hits a set point and I really need one like in the trucks, that holds the valves open and allows the engine to continue running.

 I did some checking with local grit blasters and they all use silica sand or steel shot for the really big jobs and they gave me their supplier's details. Unfortunately, being Xmas, they were shut early. All I got out of them was that they sell a few different sizes of grit, either in 20kg or 1.2t bags. No prices until they are back on the 4th.

I did get a new toy though. Its a Skillmeister portable sandblaster. It has a tank that holds up to 40 litres of sand and is actually pressurised. It has a 10' hose and a selection of ceramic tips for different sizes of grit. I priced them locally and they were $297.99. I got mine for $70 and a 2hr round trip to collect it. It has only had 10kg of grit through it and there isn't a mark on it. I think it should be a big improvement over my current gear.

The transfer case is pretty much ready to repaint and refit, but I have to clean and paint the chassis rails and a lot of other things first. Today I got started on that. I already took the driver's side fuel tank off a while back and today I took the other side off. Eventually. It seems that over winter/spring, all my tools migrated from the truck back to the house and my car. Every time I went to do something, I found I needed something that wasn't there. The 2 straps that hold the tank on the support brackets were almost rusted through, so I cut through them with the grinder and took the tank off. The support brackets are still solid, but the shields are pretty much stuffed. I got 2 of the bolts out of the first bracket, but the other 2 were too rusted so I cut them off with the grinder and knocked them through with a punch. The 4 bolts on the rear tank support are behind the winch and it was too hard to get at them, so I cut the heads off with the grinder. See a pattern?

I tried to get the air actuator for the winch off, but the clevis pin is stuck in the fork on the end of the actuator arm and it's not positioned where I can tap it through with a punch. I gave it a good spray with CRC and will try to turn it with vice-grips tomorrow.
I finally got the last bolt out of the rear drive-shaft flange. Last summer, 3 came out easily but the nut on the fourth was very pitted and I couldn't get a socket or spanner to grip it. Today I jacked up a rear wheel and turned it until I could get at the nut better. After heating it up with a LPG torch, I tried again but the nut was too deformed to get a socket on, so I ran a thin cutting disc on the grinder through the side of the nut and split it with a cold chisel. Even then, I had to knock the bolts through with a punch as they were seized too. At least its done now and I have more room under there to work.

Whoever used the winch last wound it in so far that the eyelet on the end is tight up against the cable guides at the front. The cable doesn't have enough slack in it to lift out of the guides so I can run it out the back and then wind it onto the drum before dropping the winch out. I tried pulling it out using my car, but just dug holes in the ground. I had a look at the winch and the actuator shows the winch is in the "engaged" position. I tried to disengage it, but even with a 24" set of Stilsons on the actuator rod, it didn't budge an inch. I was worried about breaking something if I used more force so tried winding it out using the drive flange. After removing the short drive-shaft, I used a 3' length of flat steel across a couple of bolts through the flange, and there was no way it was going to work. The flange would turn about 25 to 30 degrees and stop. I suspect it is the slack in the worm drive. Either something is seized on the winch drum shaft or the brake band is locking on. Tomorrow I will pull the back off the brake box and pull it's guts out.

I took the drive flange off and gave it a clean and prime. The threads in the shear-pin hole were badly damaged when a previous owner sheared the pin, then welded it back together. He damaged the threads on the pin when grinding down the weld, which allowed the pin to move in the hole. I only had a straight sided bottoming tap, and it was a real bugger getting it started without it cutting a new thread, but I finally got it done. I tried it out with one of the new shear-pins I got from Mick_Marsh and it screwed down firmly with no movement. After I cleaned the drive-flange, I found it had a big letter "A" stamped on the edge, showing it had the EMEI mod done that called for it to be bored out slightly so that if the pin sheared and the winch drive-shaft kept spinning, that the flange wouldn't seize on the winch-box shaft.

Got the week off between Xmas and New Year, so I hope to get lots more done. Maybe some pics next post.

Greg.

[Ravvin]

Nothing is ever easy with this truck, unless its breaking things.
The first thing I did today was drain the oil out of the winch drive box in case I had to pull the worm gear out. As it turns out, I didn't have to. The oil was surprisingly clean, but I don't think it was the right sort. It is supposed to be the same oil as in the gearbox and transfer case, which is a 50 grade non-EP gear oil, but it was a lot thicker and had that nasty gear oil smell that is really hard to get out of your clothes.



The next step was to get the 5 slotted screws out of the brake band box. I had sprayed them with CRC last night and cleaned the slots out with a hacksaw blade, but I couldn't get them to move with a normal screwdriver. I got my impact driver out and had a go with that. As you can see in the pic below, the bits that come with the impact driver must be made of pure Chineesium. The first hit twisted the smaller bit but the bigger one took 3 hits. I straightened them out with a few taps with a hammer, but they are just rubbish. I'll get a decent hardened set tomorrow.



I used the grinder to cut the heads off and popped the back off the brake band box. It looked like some idiot had packed it with grease many years ago.


 

The brake band has a lot of meat left on it, but it was locked on tight. I loosened the adjusting bolt and freed it up, which allowed me to turn the worm drive shaft backwards and forwards about 45 degrees. Even with a 3' bar across the drive flange, it wasn't going to turn any further. I suspect that the shaft that runs through the winch drum is seized in the aluminium housing at one end or the other. It's looking like I have to drop it out before I can roll up the cable. I'll undo the bolts locking the eyelet on the end of the cable and pull it out the back.

Of course, the dramas didn't end there. The winch body is bolted to a pair of cross-members at the front and back with a couple of massive bolts that need a 1-5/16" spanner or socket. Typically, my socket set and spanners only goes up to 1-1/4". These cross-members are bolted to brackets at each end with more of those massive bolts. These brackets were bolted through the chassis rails with smaller bolts with 3/4" heads, so I attacked these. There are 4 on each of the front cross-member brackets and 3 on the rears. I soaked the front ones in CRC and after lunch I hit them with the LPG torch. They came out easily. The rear ones were a lot harder. The nuts are hidden in the chassis rail behind the winch. I cut a section out of the wooden floor boards so I could see and was able to spray them with CRC, but I couldn't get a spanner or socket on them as they are too close to the side of the cross-member. The heads on the outside were a bit worn and the socket just slipped so I cut the heads off with the grinder. That was a mistake. When I tried to punch the bolts through, I found that the Army also had issues with accessing the nuts behind the winch, so they welded the damn things to the back of the brackets so they couldn't turn. Now I have bolts with no heads stuck in the chassis rail. Luckily, I only cut the heads off on one side of the truck, so I can still undo the bracket on the other side and then remove the huge bolts that lock the bracket to the cross-member. This should give me enough wiggle room to slip both brackets out. Once they are out I will have about an inch free-play between the ends of the cross-member and the chassis rails. This should be enough to drop the winch down. I have to remove the actuator arm before I can lower it though, as it sticks out over the top of the fixed cross-member. From looking at the RPS, it seems that all I have to do is remove the split pin, (part 13 in the pic below), from the back end and tap it through with a punch. This will let the selector yoke, (part 30), drop down, but as I can't turn the drum anyway, it shouldn't matter.



As you can see in the next pic, I managed to get the clevis pin out and the air actuator removed. It's in pretty bad shape, with the 4 long bolts almost rusted through. In one of the EMEI's I recall seeing that they were replacing the main steel barrel of these actuators with a brass one when they got pitted after moisture got in. Mine definitely isn't brass, so it looks like my truck missed that EMEI, which was issued March 1966.



Tomorrow I will see if I can get a socket and spanner to fit the huge bolts. I sprayed them with CRC today, and they don't have any thread sticking out past the nut so I think they will undo fairly easily. With them out, I should be close to dropping it all out.
Nothing goes quickly with this lately.

Greg.

[john.k]

I used to go to the suppliers and get 6 x two ton bulker bags of WA garnet every couple of days when we were doing a tank at the refinery.Pretty costly.There is an interesting story about the West Aussie garnet,which is a pure pink garnet,unlike the dirty Indian garnet that the tool merchants sell.By the way,I have been banned from mentioning anything commercial on the forum.So no more Tupperware ads.Regards John.

[Chazza]

By the way,I have been banned from mentioning anything commercial on the forum. Regards John.

I have always found your comments very helpful and I don't recall any Forum Rule, which prohibits mentioning a commercial enterprise, other then the advertising rules.

Would you mind explaining what happened, so that I don't make the same mistake?

Cheers Charlie

[THE BOOGER]

no problems here good suppliers are hard to find so go ahead it's bad comments that can cause problems and I haven't seen any of then from you