DieselDeere

On 10/4/2016 at 8:59 PM, GreenGiant2 said:

ok i did see the truck and tractors, was eyeing up the trailer your buddy had. your pic is at the end of the road here. nice tractors

my wife is in love with your family's 6030.  she took a bunch of pictures of it and keeps saying we need one.

got the passenger side of the frame smoothed and put on a quick coat of paint to see any imperfections.  I was able to pick up 4 Detroit mudflaps over the weekend.  2 for the rear, and I will trim 2 for behind the front tires.  once i get the driveshaft back, which will hopefully be saturday, the next hurdle is going to be stack brackets.  Having one stack hooked the cab originally still allowed the cab to move.  putting two up there seems to restrain the cab from flexing the way it wants to and creates some horrible rattles.  Im going to have to make a full stack bracket off the frame much like a cabover.  I kinda like the look of them to be honest plus it will give a meaningful place to put some rear facing utility lights.  I have not come up with a design yet and was hoping you guys might have some pictures of some.  I've collected a few pictures over the past few months of different styles but im still open to options.

15 hours ago, GreenGiant2 said:

very nice, whats the plan for the 400bc. was waiting to see if i saw the truck out at alexander this year.

Between myself and a friend, we only brought 3 tractors because we werent sure of what the weather would do.  So we just put my green one and his two red ones behind his 359 (especially since at the time i owned two Generals and they were both cut in half.)

as far as the 400, I've been looking for a buyer.  It spins over free. coolant is clean and oil looks decent.  turbo is oxidized and wont spin since it sat for many years without a downpipe. Aside from that I dont know anything more about it.  I just want 300$ out of it to cover the price of the truck. 

On 5/2/2016 at 7:01 PM, Underdog said:

Where do you purchase the aluminum bungs for the tank hydraulic fittings? I am looking for the same thing to convert a fuel tank.

Gregg

http://www.mcmaster.com/#bungs/=129h0xo

2 hours ago, fxfymn said:

Nice job; I guess it's a little late to tell you to use an impact to pull the stud into place.

Ha! i always use that as plan B when i cant get to the backside to press one in or when they dont want to start straight.

The studs were waiting for me after work, so i got busy and took the other three axles out and hubs apart.  drove the old studs out and pounded the new studs in.  I grabbed a piece of 1.5" diameter x 2 ft long piece of bar so i could pound on the head of the stud without being inside the drum.  I cleaned the brakes, lubed the pivots, and got all four drums back on and set the spindle nuts.  I took one lug nut and screwed it on all the way. plenty of thread engagement now.  Before i started this process on monday night I had to make the 4 airlines to go from the valve bodies on the frame rail to the junction blocks on top of the axles so i could charge the brakes and brake all the slack adjusters loose. i included a picture of old stud compared to the new stud.

Well.....upon further investigation i realized that it wasnt just a simple knock the drum off kind of job, the drum was behind the hub with the stud pressed through.  I only took one drum off tonight because i didnt have much time, so i knocked those 10 studs out and am now trying to find the identical stud but with longer thread,  on the bright side, the brakes and bearings look mint.

I decided to give up on the cosmetic work for a while and do some more important mechanical maintenance.  I put the truck up on blocks and removed all the wheels for easier access.  First step was draining the gear oil from both axles.  The rear axle was full of fluid but it was also full of metal.  At this point i just pulled all the plugs and diff temp sensor, clean those up and put a fresh 5 gallons of 80w90 in it.  Ill run it and see what happens.  The front axle had clean oil but only about 2 gallons in it.  Once again i pulled and cleaned all plugs and temp sensor and put a fresh 5 gallons in.  The rear most torque arm bushing on the driver side was pretty much missing.  I told myself in the beginning i would run it this year and adress it next winter.  OF course i coudnt deal with that so I decided to change it.  Upon investigating the other bushings, I figured I might as well change all of them.  The brakes are good, so once i address these bushings, there should be no reason to pull these wheels anytime soon.  So I enlisted a friends help because he has a lot more finess with a torch than I do so we torched out all 8 bushings/bolts and removed all 4 torque arms.  Sand blasted the arms, painted, and pressed new bushings in the axle end, then assembled the new eccentric bushings on the frame side.  I finished assembly yesterday morning so i figured I would grease all the brake components then start putting the wheels on with the new nuts.  My goal was to have all 8 drive tires on and torqued for good.  I put the two rear insides on. hand seated all the nuts, bottomed them lightly with my 1/2" impact then got the torque wrench out.  Started torqueing the drivers side to 400 ft/lbs. did 5 nuts then took all the threads off one stud.  F$%K. So then I started googling everything about dual alcoa setups.  Not a lot of hard facts out there but the numbers I came up with is that I should have 1.33" to 1.88" of stud standout off the drum face.  I have 1.125".  It looks like the only option now is to pull all the drums and change 40 studs unless im missing something again.  This has been been quite the learning experience.  On that note, anybody near Rochester have the tool to change the studs while the hub is still on the truck???

Next I decided to straighten and clean up the bumper.  The passenger side of the bumper was pretty tweaked and creased pretty good.  I would really like a new bumper, but thats not in the budget at the moment.  I spent a few hours with a sledge and a welder and my skid steer getting it somewhat presentable.  They i polished it quick with the same compound i used on the tanks.  For how dirty and stained it was I was happy with how it turned out, until i mounted it on the truck.  I cant believe I didnt notice it before, but the holes are not symmetrical or straight.  Now that that bumper is straight its very obvious that the whole thing is shifted to the passenger side 1.5 inches.  Its almost like somebody at some point bought a blank bumper then just blasted some holes in it without caring.  The fact that it is not centered bugs me more than the ripples in it from straightening it.

The sliders on the inside of the hood latches were all cracked and broken so I had  friend of mine make me up some Delrin replacements.  Very happy with those.

Been making some progress but not as much as I would have hoped.  I got the roof buffed and the new cab lights mounted and wired. Very happy with those.  The new inner lug nuts for rear showed up really fast in 3 days (more on that later) so i would recommend Van Horn truck parts to anybody. I also started to collect the aluminum bungs and vent that i will need to put in the driver side fuel tank to use as the hydraulic tank for the wet line kit in the future.  I'm mimmicking the fittings and sizes off of a friend's Peterbilt since his works so well and I will most likely be using his low-boy or dump trailer.

1 minute ago, carlotpilot said:

what are they charging for them now ? last i bought new were around 6.50 each

2.69 a piece plus shipping

16 minutes ago, carlotpilot said:

no you don`t need all new hard ware just 40 of these little cuties

 

 

 

ok great.  I just ordered 20 lefts and 20 rights. hopefully i'll have them wednesday or thursday. Thanks for the help.

Today I got the new lock cylinders in and got all the mechanisms cleaned and lubed.  This allowed me to get the door panels on.  I was anxious to see how the passenger power window worked considering how it barely moved when i got the truck.  I determined most of the lack of movement was due to only 2 screws holding the regulator assembly into the door panel as opposed to the required 6, because it was flexing and binding.  Its no rocketship but it reliably goes up and down without issue so im pleased.  Since i determined (thanks to your guy's help) that i needed new wheel hardware, the outer wheels were going to sit around for a while so to get them out of the way I leaned them against the hubs. plus it just looks a whole lot better after seeing it for 3 months on 6 wheels.

6 hours ago, carlotpilot said:

diesel deere   the studs you are showing are for STEEL wheels only  i will post a picture of of the correct studs  if you intend to use alum rims both inner and outer I don`t have one handy right now but will get one up tomorrow         ps your wheels are not worn

Thanks for the responses. I knew something didn't seem right. So per this catalog i found, it looks like  should order all new wheel hardware. Front and rear?

Today i got the frame needle scaled and a painted.  I also threw on the inside rears just to evaluate my studs.  Now, im not very experienced with these style of nuts, but I think I will need to get some stepped nuts to engage on more threads since these aluminum wheels are thicker than the steels.  Also, I'm a little concerned how the nuts sit in the conicals of the wheels since the wheels are so worn. I included one picture of each situation.   opinions are welcomed...

9 hours ago, thomastractorsvc said:

Thanks for posting that info.  Not many posts with how something is done start to finish.  My hope is if someone starts reading this one they will not be afraid to tackle some of the work.

I'll be the first to admit I'm bad at documenting my work, and I'm even worse at teaching.  If anybody has any questions about something I did I'll be happy to answer them in detail.