Working Man's Burbon

[FLYNAVY30]

Originally Posted by HO455

My only encounters with CV joints has been with a 74 Dodge power wagon 440 w200. That truck would eat the CV joint every 20-30 k miles. Ended up replacing it with a regular drive shaft with U-joints. It didn't last any longer but it was only $30 to fix instead of $175.
The drive angles aren't hard to measure and usually they aren't too tough to bring in to line, unless you have veered way off the factory playbook.

Fair enough...I also suspect it largely depends on how much power you're putting down, and the weight of the vehicle you're moving. All the guys having success with CV joints are running big horse power in highly modified cars (hence the angle issue), but all are well under 4K lbs....so gross weight may play a role in that.

When I eventually convert my truck to 4wd, I may run a divorced NP205 transfer case with a single piece CV driveshaft going both forward and aft....a lot of that plan is TBD however.

[HO455]

Originally Posted by FLYNAVY30

Fair enough...I also suspect it largely depends on how much power you're putting down, and the weight of the vehicle you're moving. All the guys having success with CV joints are running big horse power in highly modified cars (hence the angle issue), but all are well under 4K lbs....so gross weight may play a role in that.

When I eventually convert my truck to 4wd, I may run a divorced NP205 transfer case with a single piece CV driveshaft going both forward and aft....a lot of that plan is TBD however.

That Dodge was the exact opposite of a pro touring car. With 150 gallon diesel fuel tank, oxy-cetylene torch set, service boxes full of tools and stuff, 4 or 5 chainsaws, and 3 or 4 grumpy loggers on their 30 to 50 mile drive up into the woods. I'm sure we were running at or above the GVW. We also converted from the full time four wheel drive to locking wheel hubs to keep the transfer case the alive.
The frustrating part was the 70 K20 with the 292 the Dodge replaced never gave us any problems.

[HO455]

The seat project has not progressed as nicely as I would have liked. I reinstalled the foam and put a cover on the back and bolted it back together with the base before installing it in the truck. Now that it is in the truck I find I do not like it. The back is straight up vertical and the seat will not slide back nearly as far as the old one. The end result is I feel like I'm up against the wheel and there is no support for my lumbar.
On the plus side the seat is higher on my back than the old one was by about 2 inches.
I will try to figure out a way to measure and compare the seat bases better. They are quite different so it's not as easy as it would seem to compare them. Apples vs Oranges if you will.
On a different note the rear end has been repaired and reinstalled without problems. There is however a more noticeable clunk when going from forward to reverse than there used to be. It could just be me being paranoid. Lots of changes of late with not many miles driven.
Just a quick tip. When it came time to reinstall the Unbolts on the axle the bolts had taken a set and the ends were too wide to go into the axle mount holes as well as the rest of the brackets and trailing as arms. I had to use a woodworking clamp to squeeze the bolt ends narrower to get them to drop in. I don't have a large enough vice at the house to squeeze them together so I had to make do. The clamp was just able to get the 1/8" or so needed to get them to drop in without damaging the threads.

[crakarjax]

By the way, I used a solid crush sleeve replacement with shims when I did my rear axle, in part so that I wouldn't have to take it apart when I inevitably went to far with the preload. So I have a few crush sleeves here that I didn't use and I'm happy to send them to you if you want to try replacing it yourself!

[HO455]

Thank you for the offer. I delivered the rear end to the shop last Friday and hope to have it back any day now.

[Average Joe]

I’m happy to hear the driveline saga is all but over. That really sucks that companies think that behavior is acceptable. It also make me REALLY appreciate my local driveshaft shop!

[HO455]

Originally Posted by Average Joe

I’m happy to hear the driveline saga is all but over. That really sucks that companies think that behavior is acceptable. It also make me REALLY appreciate my local driveshaft shop!

I may drive down your way for my next one!

[Average Joe]

Originally Posted by HO455

I may drive down your way for my next one!

Do that!
Walker Driveline in Talent, OR. Great guy that always keeps my budget in mind. I have to stop myself from calling it “Walker Texas Driveline” lol

[Average Joe]

That’s too bad about the front bags. I totally get it though. I’ve always been reluctant to bag the front of mine for fear of the same.

[HO455]

Time to move on. I picked these control arms up a few years back at the Portland Swap Meet. They were part of a bunch of stuff in a package deal. I'm probably in to them 50 or 60 bucks. One is set up for some kind of air bag. Time for the blue wrench! 45 minutes later it's ready to have the ball joint pressed out.
I'm willing to bet the ball joints and the bushings are generic offshore units. I will reuse the Moog pieces from the old arms. That will also save me from having to re-index the control arm shafts. And with a little over 20k miles on them the Moogs should still outlast the other ones.
Now just waiting for the springs to arrive.

As a side note the shortening of the cups that I did in the previous posting did in fact stiffen up the front suspension feel. It is more of a change than I expected. The truck now has more of a 70's Trans Am feel when entering a turn. I believe that it is possible that with the bags being stiffer at a lower height is keeping the suspension in a sweeter spot for the alignment.

[crakarjax]

It's a moot point now, but Slam Specialties bags have an internal bump stop so you can totally ditch the OEM one. I haven't put any serious miles on mine but I'm banking on the internal stop being sufficient!

[HO455]

I put the time and energy on the bump stops since I had been advised not to rely on the internal bump stops. Apparently over time little bits of material from the bump stop will break off and make their way out of the bags and into the dump valves, eventually causing them to malfunction. This may not be a concern for vehicles that aren't driven daily, but I felt it was worth the work to avoid the issue if i could.

[crakarjax]

Originally Posted by HO455

I put the time and energy on the bump stops since I had been advised not to rely on the internal bump stops. Apparently over time little bits of material from the bump stop will break off and make their way out of the bags and into the dump valves, eventually causing them to malfunction. This may not be a concern for vehicles that aren't driven daily, but I felt it was worth the work to avoid the issue if i could.

I hadn't heard that, in fact the internal stops were a selling point of the bags for me! After some digging I came across this on their site though:

"All Slam Specialties air springs are supplied with an internal bump stop. This has been designed into the air spring to protect the rubber layers when fully compressed. If a vehicle is using the internal bump stop on the air spring as the primary bump stop all defects arising from this type of installation will not be covered under warranty."

I guess I'll fab up some adjustable bumpstops next time the control arms are out...

[HO455]

OUCH!!!
My test drive didn't go as smoothly as it seemed. (Photo #1) I thought 5/16" of clearance would be enough, but obviously I was mistaken!
Doing the caster modification to the lower control arm moved the lower shock mount forward causing the problem. I had forgotten that was the reason for the shock mount modification on the old control arms.
I fabricated some new mounts. Photo 2 shows the spacer I used to set the distance between the two tabs of the mount.
Photo 3 the completed mounts. And last one of the new mounts installed with a ton of clearance. I turned the lower part of the shock 180 degrees and will run them for a hundred miles or so just to be sure nothing touches.
The upside of this is that I haven't been happy with the shocks for some time so I'm looking forward to getting better ones.
I forgot to mention I also installed new outer tie rod ends and a new Pitman arm.

[Dieselwrencher]

I'm currently trying to come up with a creative but not gawdy way to put bump stops on my MII on my 40 Ford. Maybe should have left it a lone. IDK. haha

[HO455]

I have discovered that bump stops can be a big pain. At least with the air bags and tuning ride quality on my Burban.

These finally showed up yesterday! I wasn't expecting to see a pair of bump stops with them. Down the bump stop rabbit hole again!

I went with the 2 inch drops as the other option was 4 inch ( I wanted to stay with Hotchkis as I have had better luck with them in the past over others)
I know that they will sag with time. If they just stay too high maybe a larger engine would solve that.

[Average Joe]

Originally Posted by HO455

I have discovered that bump stops can be a big pain. At least with the air bags and tuning ride quality on my Burban.

These finally showed up yesterday! I wasn't expecting to see a pair of bump stops with them. Down the bump stop rabbit hole again!

I went with the 2 inch drops as the other option was 4 inch ( I wanted to stay with Hotchkis as I have had better luck with them in the past over others)
I know that they will sag with time. If they just stay too high maybe a larger engine would solve that.

Iron headed BB will fix you up!

[HO455]

Picking back up where I left off in post 678. I want my rebuilt seat to have a taller back so I am cutting 2 backs to make one. First step was mocking up where I wanted to be. Which was 3.5 inches higher than factory.
It was important to make the cuts low enough on the bar to avoid the deformed areas below the 90 degree bends. It is important to be able insert a piece of tube inside to strengthen the weld joint. I also thought it better to have the joint as high as possible since there would be less leverage on it than there would be at the bottom.
After deciding where I wanted the joints to be I added an extra inch in each direction just in case. I took my 9" grinder with a cutoff wheel and had things apart in no time.
My caution in the layout paid off immediately when I looked at the cuts. For some reason there are tubes installed inside the tube frames. (Photo #2) They seemed to be in the bends and at the bottom where the flattened bends are. (I have to admit I didn't spend a lot of time examining them.) I was lucky in that I only had to adjust the location of the joints by 1/2 inch to be clear of the inter tube.
Once I had ground the ends square, I cleaned up inside the tubes with a file to allow my stiffeners to fit. The ID of the tubing is just over 7/8" which isn't a real common OD for tubing available on a Sunday afternoon. Fortunately I managed to scrounge up two 1 1/2" long spacers, which I feel will work fine but I really would have liked some longer ones.
I drilled some holes to allow me to plug weld the spacer to the tubing as well as the weld at the joint. I'm shooting for a 1/16" gap between the upper and lower tubes that will allow the weld to penetrate all three pieces.
My spacers may look a bit rough but that came from grinding the galvanizing off so I don't poison myself welding it up.
The rest of the afternoon was spent removing paint and rust from all of the wires on the back that will have to be welded.
Oh and I ground down the ends of all the wires where they are welded to the frame. Every one of them had poked through the upholstery. (The last photo.) I want to avoid that in the future.

[HO455]

Another major truck failure happened on Monday. I was driving down the road at 40 mph the truck died. Fortunately I was able to coast to a nice safe place to troubleshoot the problem.
After verifying I had fuel pressure, and the accelerator pump was spraying fuel. I pulled a plug wire and found no spark.
I ran a jumper from the battery to the distributor and still nothing. So I called my buddy and he brought me a HEI module and a complete distributor. By the time he got to where I was I had the HEI module removed. (I love my Gerber Multi-tool) I installed the module he brought to no avail. So I pulled the distributor and installed the spare distributor he had brought and the truck fired right up.
At this point I don't know if the module he brought was also bad or if the coil in the HEI failed. It doesn't really matter at this point as I am done with HEI's. I had planned to remove the HEI since I got the truck, and had finally started on its it's replacement several weeks ago. All that was left was to have my buddy curve it. After he came and rescued me my distributor went to the front of the line.
I picked it up Wednesday night and will get it dropped in hopefully Saturday. If the heavy rains predicted don't happen.
Early cast iron distributor with a basic Pertronix point replacement installed.

The upside was I met several really nice folks who stopped to see if I needed anything. One gentleman in a 51k mile 1966 Super Sport Impalla stopped and talked for a while. His Impala is a truly original car that looked better than some restored cars. The only non original parts on the car were the interior door look knobs and the radial tires. It had the 283 four barrel engine, dark blue poly paint, with a black interior. He bought it from the son of the original owner. Including a box of paper work that had the payment coupon book. The payments were $83 & some change a month.
Not an actual picture of the gentleman's car but one I found on the interweb.

[72MARIO]

I bought ride tech fox single adjustable shocks for my suburban. Absolutely insane the difference they make. Went from driving a boat to a slot car. I think you would be very happy with them.

[HO455]

Originally Posted by 72MARIO

I bought ride tech fox single adjustable shocks for my suburban. Absolutely insane the difference they make. Went from driving a boat to a slot car. I think you would be very happy with them.

Thanks for the tip. Would you have the part number handy?

[FLYNAVY30]

I would measure your static ride height, from the ground to the bottom shock mount and from the ground to the top shock mount, then call Ride Tech and give them that info. I'm also running their shocks, but the shock is set up to run in a given range, so knowing the static ride height will ensure they get you the properly sized and valved shock for your application. Having a rough vehicle weight will also help.

[HO455]

Thanks. I was hoping for the easy way. But never the less, I will wait until I have finished adjusting the springs. At present the driver's side appears to sit higher than the passenger side. I have yet to put a tape measure on it so it may be just my imagination.
I have the weight though. I finally made a run to the dump without a trailer and now I know the WMB weighs 4780. That was without the 2nd row seat installed so it should be about 150 lbs more with it installed.

[HO455]

Thanks guys. I'm glad took the time to retake the photo. My being in the right location on a day when Mt Hood is that clear are very rare.

[HO455]

I finally was able to complete a little project I started months ago on the WMB. I relocated the Gearvendor auto/manual switch and the indicator lights. The first photo shows where they got stuck (literally with double sided tape) during the installation of the GV unit. They got moved over slightly as I kept bumping it with my shin. The other reason for the redo is the indicator lights are too bright at night. After some head scratching I came up with a nice out of the way location where the lights won't be pointed straight at my eyes.
I decided to put all 3 components in the ashtray so I could operate the switch without opening the ashtray and the lights would shine downwards so I would only see the reflection during the day and just a soft glow at night.
I laid out the 3 holes and drilled them before cutting 3 sides around them with a dremel. Then I bent the tab so the switch was angled for easy operation with one finger from under the the ashtray face plate. Bending the tab also made the switch sit flatter (More space inside) and it moved the switch lever up out of sight.
I used 5 mm LEDs with surface mount adapters. The adapters were metric and I did not have the perfect drill bit so they ended up a bit loose. But a couple drops of super glue seemed to lock them down nice and secure.
I failed to get any pictures of how I wired the LEDs. But basically there is a 470 resistor soldered inline with positive lead of each one. All the leads are protected by heat shrink tubing. (Photo #3) Also not shown are the crimp terminals I put on the ends of the leads to allow me to plug them directly into the GV connectors.
And the final result.