This past week was busy so I really didn’t get much done after work. I spent some time thinking about how to move the rear under the truck, and on Thursday I stopped at Harbor Freight and picked up a set of car dolly’s. They were fairly cheap (and not the greatest in quality…) but I figured they would do the job. So using the cherry picker, I picked the rear up one side at a time with a sling on the axle tube and replaced the jack stands with the dolly’s and two 6x6’s. Then I replaced the jack stand under the pinion with one of my snowmobile dolly’s.



Now that the rear was mobile, we were able to roll it towards the frame. We did have the jack up the frame another 2” or so that the rear would clear…



The we finally rolled it in place…



After the rear was in place, we slid the beams under it and into the front hangers…



After the beams were in place I dug out the new bushings for the transverse beam. Here is a pic of what the old ones looked like compared to the new ones. Since the inside of the bushings were bare metal, we gave them a quick coat of paint before we installed them…



The Neway catalog I scored off of eBay recommended using Sil-glyde to install the equalizing beam bushings, so I also used some of this on the transverse beam bushings (and I figured it would help prevent any future rust as well, just in case…)



Then finally we set the equalizing beam in place…



After we were done with the beams, etc, we moved onto the air bags and shocks. When we finished with those we jacked the truck up, slid 6x6’s under the beams, removed the jack stands and set it back down. This gave us a little more room underneath to work. In the meantime my Dad was working on the fuel tank mounts. I used a piece of 1/2x13 threaded rod to keep them in place while painting and forgot to tape the exposed rod. So we had to run a die over the rod to remove the mounts. This is why you see lots of tin foil and tape on all the chains and hangers I use for hanging stuff for painting.



On Sunday morning Russ and Sam stopped by to check up on our progress so we started working on installing the hubs. I ordered a pair of Stemco Grit Guard wheels seals and ironically they are the same seals as on the 761…



Shortly thereafter we had both hubs on, adjusted the bearings and we were good to go…



Tommy was spending the day with his Mom running errands so Maddie spent the day in the garage with us… So here she is checking out our progress while we were getting the axles ready to install…



So by the end of the day we had just about everything we painted installed with the exception of the brake drums. I ordered new brake hardware kits and should have them shortly… So here are a few pics from the end of the day…





That’s it for now!

Nice Tom!! Appears to be coming together quickly. Maddie is growing quickly as well. She's a cutie Pie! Are ya gonna keep her?

Emery

Slowly all the piles of parts become one complete truck. Must feel good to have some legroom in the shop again. Looking good Tom!

Hey Tom,a lot of inspiration in that truck! Is that your red Brockway parked in the driveway?

Nick

Lookin Good boys!!!!

I just blew pass your place a couple of hours ago, was gonna stop by, but I am nursing the tail end of a cold and don't need to spread to your 'Little ones".

Did some tinkering this weekend on my truck as well.

I noticed the spray gun your using...high pressure siphon feed????

I just picked up a "EL CHEAPO" HVLP two gun set from Tractor Supply this weekend to paint a fuel tank. Other than gravity top feed....it actually works pretty good and no overspray.
It was on sale for $39 bucks. Came with a large gun, small touch up gun, two large cups and a small one for the touch up gun and a regulator (that regulator ain't too good) but the rest worked nicely.

Just a .."for what it's worth"

And if you have used the gun you got now for all the fantastic work so far...well if ain't broke....

See ya,

Stretch

Stretch, Those are the guns I used on my chassis. Nice work, no runs whatsoever. Recommend them to anyone who doesn't like cleaning stuff

Emery

Emery - if you're talkin about not cleanin stuff, you ain't talkin to the Millard's !!! There isn't one part on that truck that hasn't been cleaned or polished!

Right Stan, I was talkin to Stretch! Those guns work well and you can justify throwing them away or giving them away when you're finished painting and let someone else clean them. It's a pain. I don't know about Tom though, did you see the paint he used on those brake shoes??:-)

Emery

I wanna know why the air bags haven't been Armoural'd yet???? (did I spell that right??? )

Just kiddin....looks great Tom. Emery...cleaning the guns is no big deal. However if you use thinner it can get expensive. A good gun cleaner ain't cheap either.

Stretch

OK Stretch! Next time I paint I'll send them to you!

Emery

Thanks for everyone's comments!

I have been using my buddy Mike's Accuspray HVLP paint gun. This is a really nice gun and I seem to get much better results that with the Devillbis Finish Line III gun I was using. I use lacquer thinner to clean it, and we guys 5 gallons at a time from Napa (Martin Seynour brand). It's not terribly expensive and we get at least a year or so out of it.

This past week we attempted to install the wheel studs in the hub. In hindsight, I should have pressed them in with my press, but just figured I could draw them in the lug nuts. I quick realized this wasn’t that easy to do and didn’t want to damage the threads beyond repair. So the first thing I did was clean the paint out of the holes with a sanding drum on the Dremel…



After struggling with the first stud, I realized that Lisle made a tool for the job. I did a quick Google search and found the tool on eBay for $24. The list price was $75 so $24 was a deal. Basically is a thrust bearing that your tighten the nut up against…



I bought it Wednesday at 10pm and it was in my mail box on Saturday! So with a little bit of grease we quickly put it to work…



After we finished all 20 wheel studs we moved on to the rear brakes valves, including the relay valve and the quick release valve…



I then mounted the two valves to the original bracket. This bracket originally had a Ford antilock type relay valve installed on it, but the R12 fit right in its place…



After I had all the fittings installed I mounted it under the truck…





We also worked on installing the brake shoes. I picked up a pair of hardware kits on Thursday so we had all new springs and rollers…



And then we were finally able to install the brake drums… Two more things out of the way now!



So that’s it for now… I’m not sure what I’m going to work on next but I’ll keep you posted

Neat tool Tom! Thanks for sharing. I thinks it's great of you to supply your Dad with all the right tools he needs to do all that work!

Emery

Tom, only one more week of Pennsylvania travels for me and all of it is out west.
I was hoping to get by one more time ...oh well. I may just have to do a road trip specific to the Daleville area.
The truck is progressing nicely.
I forgot to use your trick of wetting down the floor before spraying though.

My house garage floor now has a tinge of Ford tractor gray on it. Your photos reminded me of that. I won't forget next time.

Hope to see ya this weekend.


Stretch

You gotta wet the floor so you don't get dust in the paint! Although I always seem to end up with dust in my paint anyway... It's a real annoyance! Looks good Tom!

Wet the Floor!?!?!?! That's what grass is for!


Emery

Since we have the fuel tank mounting brackets painted and installed on the frame, I thought it would be a good time to start getting the fuel tanks ready (Also I knew one of us was going to walk right into one of these brackets and whack their ankle… ) So we started working on the passenger side fuel tank we got from Stan…



This tank is in great shape so all we had to do was clean the back and bottom of it, so my Dad went to work…



We finished by cleaning the tank with hot soapy water and some SOS pads and this is what we wound up with…



I found a guy locally who polishes wheels and fuel tanks, so the next day I met him to have him look at it and see what he thought… Over the phone he was concerned about the diamond plate, but after looking at the tank he felt it was in great shape and would polish out great. So I decided to have him do the tank.

The night we finished cleaning up the tank, Bigdogz posted a handful of parts for sale in the Classified Section. He listed a set of bud hubs for a Rockwell axle, so I got in touch with him to see if he had S cam brakes to go along with the hubs. Sure enough he did, so I decided to pull my axle in to check the bearing numbers.

If you remember, I bought a front clip from Stan a while back for the power steering. This was from N760TL-90680 and had budd hubs but no brakes. We planned on using this axle, but I left it outside covered up until I needed it…



I used the forklift to set it at the edge of my driveway but with the snow there was no way I was going to get it out of there with the forklift… So with the help of my Wife’s Yukon I drug it up to garage door!



And with the help of some large bars and my new wheel dolly’s, I was able to bring it in the garage…



Fortunately there was still a tag on it but it was hanging on by a thread…



After a quick Google search, I found two pages that decoded the Rockwell number…





So based on my tag which reads FF931 RDA X5, the first ‘F’ is for front axle, the second ‘F’ is for 12,000lb, the ‘9’ is for series, the ‘3’ is for large centers and knuckles, and the ‘RDA’ is for Wedge Brakes, Dual Air Chambers. I found a quick release valve on the front cross member, so I thought someone may have removed the front brakes, and sure enough they did! They had installed a ring to keep stuff out of the seal area, and you can see how the rust was buckling it, so they must have been removed quite some time ago… I also checked some of my factory paperwork for 760’s, and the FF931 was the stock axle in the truck. So after reading the code, we removed the hubs…



And then I drew a quick sketch of the spindles with the bearing and seal info…



So that’s it for now, more to follow…

As usual, great pics Tom and a reminder that I "got the hell out" Just in the nick of time!! See you suckers in the spring!

Emery

Tom, Can't wait to see how that fuel tank polishes up. Some aluminum seems to polish better than others. I spent many hours polishing pontoons this last spring with varying results. See if you can discover what this guy uses. I'm glad for the posts! It was getting so slow on here that I took advantage of an opportunity to take a few shots at the Super Secret Zigmeister over his facebook posts!!

Emery

Emery... I believe he is going to DA the tank with 400 or 600 and then use white rouge with a buffing wheel (at high rpm) It won't be ready until after Thanksgiving so I'll keep you poster.

Last week we also worked on installing the various valves for the Neway. When I originally bought the cutoff, I started looking on eBay for the right valves. Within a short amount of time I was able to find the leveling valve and regulator/filter valve. We also wanted to use a dump valve, so 2 weeks ago I found one of those on eBay as well…



So after installing the valves, I started working on all the fittings I needed to plumb everything up…



Since we didn’t have a dump valve to begin with, I Googled the Neway part number on the valve and found this diagram to work from…



And after some time getting everything lined up correctly, this is what I wound up with… I am going to run a gauge to show how much air is in the bags, and that’s why there is a 1/4” cross on top of the dump valve. Each side goes to a bag and the top of the fitting will go to the gauge. The copper tube is where the air will dump to…



When I finished with the rear, I moved onto the front quick release valve… There are two spots to mount this valve, where I have it shown here and down lower on the cross member. I chose this location since this is where the valve was mounted on quadboxes 361, but I had to make a 2” spacer to make it work.



If you notice in the last pic I am running the correct colored plastic line. Jon Eldridge (KMR1) helped me out with a complete Eaton assembly that was intended for a new truck installation. This is what we started with…



My Dad and I removed all the tape and ties and carefully wiped the adhesive from the tape off of each piece with enamel reducer (which won’t remove the lettering, etc. like thinner…) Then we bundled each size and color up and we have been starting to install the lines in the frame as necessary…



So that’s it for now, more to follow…

On Saturday I decided to work on the battery box covers. When I bought the battery boxes from Paul P. (almost a year ago…) he didn’t have any extra covers at the time so I decided to make a pair like we did on the 155W. I bought aluminum covers from Paul for the 761, so I had one of the steel covers in the garage and it fit well on the new box, so I decided to use that one as a reference. I also dug out the driver side aluminum fuel tank and set it in the pass brackets just to compare the height of the tank verses the batt box cover…



I bought the 1/8” diamond plate off of eBay from the same guy I bought the aluminum for my 155W from. He shears the pieces to the exact sizes I need and it winds up being much easier than getting it locally… So here is what I wound up with after marking down all the measurements taken from the original cover…



Then with the help of the cutoff wheel I cut out all the notches, etc…



Then we started bending…







The first one fit both boxes well so we moved on to the second one… An hour later both were done and installed… All I need to do now is have them welded, mount the latches and fabricate the stops that fit in the 1/4 “ slotted holes…





That’s it for now!