E361T Progress - NEW PROJECT!

[oldspwr]

Hi Josh...

No, you didn't miss anything. We had to take a break on the 361 to finish up a couple of other projects. First, we finished insulating my garage. Then we moved on to a side project that I worked on for a friend of mine...




We'll be jumping back on the 361 next month is all goes well.

Tom

[Emery Johnston]

Tom, Somehow I missed your DEC 22 posting. I guess I was out of touch in Wyoming, skiing. Nice solution with mirror arm! Consistent results ! I probably would have destroyed several arms with a ball pein!
Emery

[oldspwr]

Well it’s been almost 10 months since my last progress post so I figured I better get busy posting some new pics!!! Things have been busy here at home and we just welcomed home a new baby girl last Saturday. Two weeks before she was born I decided to move the 361 to the ‘work’ side of the garage. As per my previous posts, the cab work is 90% done so I figured I would start on the frame. The frame of the truck became a ‘catch all’ for other stuff in the garage so I needed to clean it off first. Here is what I started with…



After a couple hours of straightening things out, the frame finally saw daylight again!



After some juggling around, we got it pushed back into the garage so we could start working on it…



The frame on this truck was in very poor shape under the 5th wheel. So a while back my Dad had (2) brand new rails made by PG Adams, 10’ long, along with l3’ long liners for the slice joint. So my intent was to get everything ready to cut the frame off. So I started with removing the stack, fuel tanks, and misc brackets that were in the way. Here you can see the frame damage I mentioned…





Since the truck is a single axle and the rails were 10’ long, I decided to splice the frame directly under the cab. After taking some measurements, here is where wound up cutting it…



Can you guess how long I took my Dad to cut through the 9” frame with this hack saw???



When all was said and done, we finally made it through both sides…



The we hooked the fork lift up to the back section and started to wheel it outside. Since we are going with a Neway air ride setup, I really don’t need anything off of this section except for the front most crossmember.



Then outside it went to make more room in the garage…



That’s it for now, more to follow...

Tom

[oldspwr]

Now that the frame was cut, we decided to strip the front end that we picked up from Stan. Originally we bought it for the power steering setup, but we may wind up using the front springs, etc. since ours look to be in poor shape. So we spent a few hours taking everything apart and putting all the misc. pieces on a pallet. At least then I can move things around a lot easier.





As a few of you know, I struggled with removing the pitman arm from the Sheppard box. When converting from manual steering to power steering, you need to notch the original frame rail to fit the large box, and then add a ‘C’ channel to add strength. I needed to remove the ‘C’ channel so this is why I had to remove the arm from the box. Here is a pic of the box along with the ‘C’ channel still attached to the original section of frame rail from the donor truck…



The pitman arm is on a splined tapered shaft with (2) 5/16x18x 1” long set screws. One set screw came out while the other I had to drill out. This gives you an idea of where the set screws are…



But even the largest puller I own it wouldn’t budge the pitman arm. I called Sheppard they had their own puller designed for their boxes, so I ordered one. It looks like a regular car puller but its 5 times the size…





Even with this puller I struggled getting the arm off. Once I had the arm off, it looked like a piece of the screw I drilled out had fallen in the hole and wound up getting wedged in the splines. Anyway, here is the piece of C channel I needed (still attached to the donor fame) . I will use this as a pattern to help drill the holes and notch my existing frame.



That’s it for now, more to follow.

[oldspwr]

This past Saturday we decided to cut the new frame rails to match the existing. So I brought the (2) new sections over and laid them out behind the truck.



I cut the original rails with a 3 ½” 1/8” thick cutoff wheel and surprisingly enough it didn’t really take that long. I did try using a sawzall but have no luck at all with it. To cut the new rails, a friend of my Dad’s let us borrow a Dewalt band saw. With a new 18 tooth blade, it cut right through the rails with no problems at all





Now that all the cutting was done, using a stiff cup brush I cleaned the existing frame rails where the liners will fit into.



After all the cleaning was done, we painted everything that would be covered up with self etching primer and paint. Here is a pic of the inserts…



While waiting for the paint to dry, we brought the Neway air ride cutoff over to the garage…



After moving it into the garage, we started taking everything apart. I wasn’t sure what it came out off, but after removing the shocks I found ‘Ford’ stamped onto the rear crossmember. ‘Ford’ was also stamped onto some of the shims for the various torque arms.

My friend Mike, his son Dustin, and his Dad Stew (aka Mr. Brown) stopped by to check on our progress. So I figured we could use their help setting the new rails into place. After taking a few quick measurements, clamped the liners into place…



Then we slid the new rails into place. Now it is started to look like something again!!!





So I need to take some more measurements and get everything lined up better. Here is a quick pick of the gap we would up with…



I am hoping that in (2) weeks or so I can get everything welded up. It feels great to be working on the truck again and both my Dad and I are anxious to keep on it.

Tom

[Brockway Express]

Thanks for the update! That is the kind of work that makes us all envious!
1. the shop
2. the tools
3. the know how to pull it off
4. the end results....which we all know will be stunning!

Nice....

[quadbox]

Tom As always Top Notch Work. Congradulations on the new Baby. Joe D.

[BrockwayMT]

Nice work. Fortunately there are enough people like me around to keep spoke wheels alive. On that note what size are the tires and wheels you took off?

[Emery Johnston]

BrockwayMT wrote "Fortunately there are enough people like me around to keep spoke wheels alive."
Count me amongst them!! Real Trucks need spokes!
As usual, nice work Tom, thanks for sharing, you inspire me! (Right down to but not including the wheels!)

Emery

[Huskiedrive361]

Congrats on the new family member Tom! Take it from me, girls like trucks too! My youngest daughter helped clean and paint wheels, wire brush frames and even degrease parts! She always makes the show and has driven "Blackie" in the back yard. (she wants a class one license someday) As for the truck - perfect as usual! There is nothing better than working with nice new frame rail. Stan

[oldspwr]

Ok, last time we left off we had just slid the new frame rails over the liners... The next thing I had to work on was the crossmembers. I slid the liners back so that the middle crossmember, the one that holds the carrier bearing for the driveshaft, would line with the end of the liner. The only problem is that the cross member was too wide, so I needed to section 1/2" out of it (since the liners are 1/4")

Here is what I started with:



I decided to section the crossmember right in the middle of the mounting holes for the carrier bearing. In this pic you can see where I marked the center line of the crossmember, so I didn't make sense to section the exact middle, since two of the new holes would wind up right on the weld.



After cutting the section out, I clamped everything back into place to make sure it was true...



After welding it up, I put it in the mill and straightened the holes out.



For whatever reason, someone had torched the corners off of one side of the crossmember...



So I spent some time and cleaned those up as well...



Not that I finished that crossmember, I moved on to the rear one. The middle and rear crossmembers are from the donor Ford frame with the Neway suspension. The original Ford rails were 10" tall while the Brockway rails are 9" tall. So to make this crossmember fit, I had to removed the top bolts since they were going to hit the frame. So the first thing I did was disassemble the crossmember...



The middle section was a little tweaked from a chain, so I put it in the press and straightened it out. Since the top bolts were in the way, I knew I had to weld the crossmember back together, so I sandblasted the areas where the sections met and then painted them with weld-through primer.



So I bolted everything back together, lined it up, clamped it in place, welded it, and then removed the inside upper bolts.



Then I trial fit it to make sure everything fit...



Everything looked good so I moved on to the middle crossmember. If you remember my post about Neway suspensions, Peter mentioned that the middle crossmembers seems to be always repaired several times, and I believe this is because the original suspension in Brockways only had one torque arm which ran from the rear to this crossmember. This put a lot of stress on that crossmember. The newer Neway's have two torque arms, and the second one ties back to the inside of the pass. side rail. So this middle crossmember is made from 3/8" plate instead of 1/4". I did work on this crossmember but we'll save that story for a later date...

That's it for now, more to follow!

[oldspwr]

Two weekends ago I decided to mark all the holes that needed to be drilled in the new rails. This took some time, and I had to take measurements from the existing frame as well as the Ford frame. In the pic you can see the Ford driver side rail on the floor, and I was using this for a pattern....



After finishing the driver side, I moved over to the pass. side...



A few pieces of 2" angle C clamped to the bottom rail and a carpenters square helped me keep everything square...



We had talked about renting a magnetic drill for the weekend, but since the rails weren't welded on yet, I decided that it would be easier to drill them in the milling machine. So this past week, we unbolted the rail, used the forklift for a support, and started drilling away...



Each rail needed over 20 holes drill each, and it took us about 2 hours or so per rail. After we were done drilling, we cleaned each rail the best we could to get all the cutting oil off...







Then we put the rails back on, fit the front and rear crossmembers into place and squared everything up...





That's it for now, more to follow!!!

[anthony masone sr]

Nice work Tom!
I sure wish I lived closer to you.
You sure have the right equipment to do the machine work.
But I manage to get mine done in a bench vise.

Looking real good

[Huskiedrive361]

Nice work Tom - and thanks for taking the time to post your project. It makes our website something very special. Stan

[pops brock]

where was s23 sitting at the brockway show. by the way nice brock

[oldspwr]

Things have been extremely busy both at work and at home so I haven't had much time to post any update pics. I'm on vacation all week so I figured I would take some time to update my post. Over the past two months we have made a ton of progress.

In my last post, we just finished drilling all the holes in the new frame rails with the milling machine. I fit all the crossmembers in, but the middle one from the Neway / Ford donor frame needed to be moved up at least 1/2" or so. Remember that Stan noted that the Ford rails were 10" tall while the Brockway rails are 9". So I had to spend some time and modify the middle crossmember. These pics are from my second time around since the time I did it, it still was too tall (oops...)

Here is what we started with...



My plan was to cut the crossmember and weld in 3" wide 1/4" thick angle iron to provide the additional clearance I needed. So out came the cutoff wheel and I started cutting...



After cutting the angle iron, I tacked everything together. This pic should give you a good idea on what I was trying to achieve...



I quickly realized that I didn't cut it enough so I wound up cutting everything again and moving the top holes in about 1" towards the center of the frame.



Before the final welding, I trial fit it again just to make sure it would fit.



Then I moved on to the final welding...



After I finished up the crossmember, a good friend of mine came up to stick weld the frame. I had everything cleaned are ready to go, so when Mike showed up all he had to do was suit up, plug in, and start welding!









Here was the finished product!





That's it for now! I hope everyone has a nice Christmas!

Tom

[oldspwr]

After the frame was welded, we decided to start disassembling the rest of the frame. So my Dad and Tommy grabbed some tools and went to work...



You can see that the front section of the frame is rusty and crusty... So my intention was to have the rails sandblasted along with all the other misc. parts of the frame, including the crossmembers, etc...



While collecting the parts, I noticed the front fenders mounts were cracked. They was also shimmed with (2) 1/4" aluminum plates that were heaving corroded along with another metal spacer. So I found a set of better brackets that I had in my collection of parts that match the ones on our 761. So we are going to use these instead, but I will probably have to make a 1/2" spacer to replace the stacked (2) 1/4" spacers.








Since the transmission mounts are located where the liner is (where we spliced the frame rails), I need to elongate the holes in the angle piece that is used to the tranny mount...



We then moved on to the bracket that runs under the bellhousing of the trans and connects the two rear mounts for the front springs. This is the bracket that the fuel lines also connect to. When I started cleaning the oil and grease off of it, I realized it was worn through, probably from the exhaust at one time...





It turned out it was plugged SOLID with dirt, etc...



I then remembered that this same bracket on the 761 was completely broke on both the passenger and driver side.... (notice the minor oil leak... and no, it isn't a Detroit )



So I decided to remove and rebuild it for the 361. For the time being, I will use the original 361 one on the 761. Here is what we started with...



I picked up a piece of 2x2x1/4" box to repair this bracket and I cut it with this old Racine Hydraulic hack saw I picked up a while back. I just hooked it up a few days prior and was anxious to try it out. Here is a pick of it in action...



After cutting it to size, we marked all the holes and started drilling...





I also decided to cap the ends so no future dirt, etc. could build up inside...





Now on to the hard part... cutting the 2x2 box off the original ends...



Notice the quality welding from a previous repair attempt...



I lined everything up, clamped everything and place and started welding...



And here is the old with the new...



That's it for now, more to follow!

Tom

[oldspwr]

Well Madeline is sleeping and Tommy is playing with his new toys, so I have some time to add another post...

We them moved on to the bracket that supports the rear cab mount. There was a piece of 1/4 plate steel located underneath it that the welds had cracked and it was bowed out from rust. So I cut it off and straightened it out in the press...



So I cleaned it up, painted it with weld through primer, and welded it back in place...



After that we move back up to the front end, and started with removing the steering box. We are going to install power steering, so we won't be needing some of these parts. But I took a ton of pictures for reference before taking everything apart...



Lots of grease / oil / dirt!!!



While my Dad was working on the front end, I moved on to the clutch pedal which was wore in one spot...



So I cleaned it up a bit and filled it with the mig...



And then I ground it smooth...



Here are some of the front end parts that were piling up on the work bench...



To finish up the weekend but getting the tranny ready to be pulled...



When then realized the input shaft on a 10 speed Roadranger is about 3' long, and spent 10 minutes jockeying the forklift around to get it separated from the motor...



After setting the trans down, we packed it in for the night...

That's it for now! More to follow!!!

Tom

[oldspwr]

After pulling the trans we stacked a bunch of parts on a pallet to get sandblasted and loaded them in the back of my Dad's truck...





I called our sandblaster and my Dad was able to drop off the parts the next day. Even though it wasn't snowing, he has trouble sandblasting under 25 deg or so because his air lines keep freezing up. I was just getting ready to make plans to work on something else when he called and said they were done! We were glad to hear that so my Dad picked everything back up...





I used to sandblast most of the parts myself in my booth, but it takes way too long and the compressor runs forever. Our guy is more than reasonable with his pricing so it only makes sense to have him do as much as possible. We picked up the parts on Friday and planned on priming everything on Sunday. So early Saturday we decided to pull to motor...

One of the motor mount bolts was rusted solid so we pulled out the fire axe... As you can see from the photos, my Dad is an excellent torch operator!





We figure the 671 Detroit weighs about 2500lbs or so, so I picked up some heavy duty chain to pull it with. So we hooked everything up and the engine finally started coming out of the frame...



The forklift couldn't raise the motor high enough, so I set the motor back down and shortened the chain. It still wasn't high enough so I wound up lowereing the rear of the frame.



Finally, the engine was out!



We then started to disassemble the rest of the front of the frame, including the spring hangers, etc. The rear pins of the front spring were badly worn so and we had a heck of a time getting them out.



After all was said and done, we finally had the front axle out and took a break for a quick picture! You can see the rails laying on the floor in the lower left hand corner of the pic.



That's it for now, more to follow!

Tom

[oldspwr]

Late last Saturday we started hanging all the parts so we could prime them Sunday morning. We had over 60 some odd parts so we wound up make some hooks with some old welding rods that were given to me. We scraped the flux off and made a quick jig to bend the hooks on the ends. Then all the parts went up in the air...





My good friend Mike came over to help out with the spraying work. He started off by mixing some self etching primer...



We the proceeded to shoot two coats of the self etching primer. These parts were really rusty so I wanted to make sure they were well protected.



After the self-etching primer, we moved on to one coat of high build primer. For this truck we decided to buy all of our supplies from Pethicks in Scranton and use mostly PPG products instead of Dupont (remember the issues I had getting the Dupont paint locally for my 155W) My Dad is not 100% sure about the color of the truck yet, but we do know the frame will be red. I took a sample sprayed piece from the 155W to Pethicks and they shot is with their paint camera and mixed up two different samples to spray. I would like the red on both trucks to match as close as possible.

We also decided to tint the high build primer for this truck, just like we did for Mike's sons Firebird. So for every gallon of primer, you mix in 1 pint of red. Tinting the primer supposedly helps with overall paint coverage. Here are the products we used...



So we started spraying all the parts and what we didn't realize is that red and gray makes pink. So now we have pink parts!



After all the spraying was done, I stacked everything up on the pallet again so I could easily move them out of the way.



Well believe it or not, I just ran out of pics to share, so that's it for today! Hopefully we'll be able to make some good progress this week!

Tom