The Hillbilly Deluxe dually build

[Tx Firefighter]

........can't talk...........


............polishing wheels..........

Update later...........

Thank you Billy. I really appreciate the kind words.

[Tx Firefighter]

Sanded till my fingers bled....

[darkhorse970]

Wow, those wheels are gone be nice when your done!

[68Timber]

Heh. Gotta say, I have no tattoos, but I do have what I think of as "body art" in the form of all the scars on my arms/hands/knuckles etc - but I've never seen my finger tips bleed from sanding. This outta be good.

[Tx Firefighter]

Flashback....



They have finger prints and smudges on them but I'm not going to worry about it until the tires are mounted. I'm pretty confident that when I get them outside they will pop.





Today I ordered two more tires. When they arrive, that will be four. I'm still saving money for the last two.

[Billy81]

Wow what a difference those don't even look like the same wheels.

[Low Elco]

We tried to do that on yeller, the plating shop burned down...the day we dropped our parts off.

[OutlawDrifter]

awesome job, i really enjoy the depth you go to in your threads.

that's what we are here for on these boards, to share info and ideas!

[GCncsuHD]

Originally Posted by Tx Firefighter

Flashback....



They have finger prints and smudges on them but I'm not going to worry about it until the tires are mounted. I'm pretty confident that when I get them outside they will pop.





Today I ordered two more tires. When they arrive, that will be four. I'm still saving money for the last two.

Great job, when you're healed back up, do mine next?

[Low Elco]

Wheels look great!

[Stoney]

Oh my, from the looks of this, I see the painting operation coming soon.

[MalibuSSwagon]

I got burns from all the hand sanding I did repairing my rally wheels.

[rs74]

Originally Posted by Tx Firefighter

They have finger prints and smudges on them but I'm not going to worry about it until the tires are mounted. I'm pretty confident that when I get them outside they will pop.

Well I think that they are just too nice for you to put on a truck. Better just send them my way for safe keeping. lol. JK. They look really nice. Hats off to you for putting in the time to make them look like that. Might have to send you mine.

[Tx Firefighter]

I've been a bit under the weather but I'm still trying to accomplish something every day. So, this morning I cleared out a spot on the shop floor, put down blankets and cardboard and spooned the tires onto the wheels. They're not terribly hard to do, but as I get older, it becomes less pleasant. Yes, I'm that cheap. I won't pay a tire store to do what I can do myself.







The tires are BF Goodrich Commercial TA 10 ply truck tires. I'm still saving to buy the last two tires as well as four new center caps and some new chrome lugnut covers.

[rs74]

Lookin pretty good! What size tire did you say you went with. 235/85's?

[83GMCK2500]

Those look sooo good. You have put a lot of hard work into those wheels and it shows. How will you balance them?

Yeah, I could definitely learn a thing or two from you. Was all of that sanding by hand?

[Tx Firefighter]

Yes. 235/85-16. They're 340 dollars delivered per pair. I bought them in two batches so far. Every time I get 350 dollars truck money I buy another pair.

I'm also looking at about 90 dollars for center caps and 20-30 for new chrome lugnut covers.

I'll keep plugging along till I get the money to go further.

I have this decal on the tailgate of my little stepside that describes my life....

[Tx Firefighter]

Originally Posted by 83GMCK2500

Those look sooo good. You have put a lot of hard work into those wheels and it shows. How will you balance them?

Yeah, I could definitely learn a thing or two from you. Was all of that sanding by hand?

When I mounted the tires I lined up the paint dot with the valve stems. That gets them towards being balanced already. I'll probably take the truck to a good tire shop like Discount Tire and pay them to do the final balance. I use a small town tire shop ordinarily and they're in the habit of working on agricultural tires and other things. They're not really particular enough with stuff to trust with my wheels.

I used an electric DA sander to do the 80, 180, 220, and 320 stages. After that I got a big rubber tub with some water in it, put down heavy blankets in the living room, stole every one of my wife's ghetto towels and wet sanded 600, 1000, 1200, 1500, and 2000 grit while sitting on the floor watching TV in the evenings.

She was patient with me wet sanding in the living room floor and I got to endure watching Dancing With the Stars, Faceoff, The Voice and other similar horrible chick TV shows.

[SCOTI]

Originally Posted by Tx Firefighter

When I mounted the tires I lined up the paint dot with the valve stems. That gets them towards being balanced already. I'll probably take the truck to a good tire shop like Discount Tire and pay them to do the final balance. I use a small town tire shop ordinarily and they're in the habit of working on agricultural tires and other things. They're not really particular enough with stuff to trust with my wheels.

I used an electric DA sander to do the 80, 180, 220, and 320 stages. After that I got a big rubber tub with some water in it, put down heavy blankets in the living room, stole every one of my wife's ghetto towels and wet sanded 600, 1000, 1200, 1500, and 2000 grit while sitting on the floor watching TV in the evenings.

She was patient with me wet sanding in the living room floor and I got to endure watching Dancing With the Stars, Faceoff, The Voice and other similar horrible chick TV shows.

You do realize you didn't have to sit in front of the tv to do this task (especially when that programming was active).
The good thing is I'm no longer concerned about your love of Urban Cowboy chic.....

[Tx Firefighter]

A little bit of geek tech here....

When I pulled the new 14 bolt rearend apart, one of the brakes was soaked in gear oil. The seal had been leaking a while. So, once I got it all cleaned up, I looked closely at the surface where the seal rides and it was rough and grooved. The problem is, this is the main housing of the rearend here so there's no replacing it.

So, Speedi-Sleeve to the rescue. This is probably old news to most of y'all but maybe it will help someone who hasn't dealt with this stuff before.

Rough surface where the seal rides. This is after I've already polished it up with crocus cloth.




Speedi-Sleeve. Not cheap at 21 dollars each, but what else are you gonna do ?





This is the Speedi-Sleeve held up into place. We're gonna drive it on over the axle stub to sit where the seal rides. This gives us a nice new smooth surface for the seal to bear upon. Notice the Speedi-Sleeve is belled out on the end. That give you something to drive against to tap it into place. Notice the little groove around the sleeve near where it flares out, this is important later.



I used a piece of 3 inch exhaust tubing I had in the shop as a driver. Its the right size to bear against the drive bell on the Speedi-Sleeve.



Tap, tap, tap with a mallet to drive the sleeve all the way up onto the housing.



Now, you have to remove the bell part once you have the sleeve driven into place. The manufacturer made a groove around the sleeve where the bell meets it to allow the thin steel to tear away.



Right about here is where I went back into the house with blood running down my arm and dripping off my elbow. Snap to it wife, bandage this sh1t up. No pictures of that part. Suffice to say, that sliver of steel is damn sharp and I have a filleted index finger.

The final product once the drive flange has been removed with side cutters. A nice smooth seal surface.



There is much discussion about putting some sort of sealer beneath the sleeve before you drive it into place. I never have and have always been successful with stopping the leaks. Right or wrong, I install them dry.

[83GMCK2500]

Speedi-sleeve for the win!!! I had to put one on my balancer a couple years ago, bad groove...well preserved underside of my truck. I like that drive flange on there, that is a well designed part.

[rs74]

That is pretty cool. I had never seen that before. Thanks for putting it up.

[flashed]

Thats a new one for me too ,thanks Tex .

[Tx Firefighter]

Roy and Flashed, I'm glad you enjoyed the geek tech. They make Speedi-Sleeves for most any application where a seal rides on a machined surface. I found the part number for these on Pirate 4x4 then looked them up and ordered from Rockauto. They were 51 dollars for a pair of them delivered.

I've just been unmotivated today. But I can't sleep at night if I don't make some measurable progress so I chose an unpleasant task and dove in this afternoon for a few hours.

I'd showed pictures of my underbed conduit earlier. Today I finished all of that by bolting it to the bed structure, putting split loom on all the wires and running the wires through the conduit on both sides. I have all of the front bed and headache rack lights fully wired, soldered, heat shrunk, and loomed with the extra length hanging out at the back of the bed to be tied in to the rear bed harness.





I'd bought all of that split loom at Delcity when I ordered my wiring supplies. It worked out real well. A pair of wires gathered together in the split loom and then slid through the conduit makes a pretty bombproof setup. I won't worry about wiring issues ever again.

After looking at the pictures, I can see I need to pressure wash under my bed again. That scaly looking stuff is pretty much all mud. The bed only has a bit of superficial surface rust here and there. Certainly nothing to need addressing for another 30 years or so.

[Tx Firefighter]

Something else I just thought of when looking at the pictures.

In this picture, you can clearly see the difference between a dually and a cab and chassis truck. Mine is a cab and chassis truck and its drastically narrower than a normal dually. In the picture you can see that the rearend is so narrow that you can't fit your hand between the tire sidewall and the leaf springs. On a dually, you'd be closer to fitting your head in there than your hand.



So, you can see that even though they each have four rear wheels, one truck is like a foot and a half narrower than the other. I like skinny butts so I chose to build a C&C.