Rust repair project (and a buch of other stuff)- my build thread?

Alright, whew, I got the rear axle off.

 

Do y’all think these are still serviceable?

we’re supposed to be doing the weld job this weekend but the machine shop said it would be a week or so till they could turn the bolts on the emu shackles. If I ordered oem replacements I’d be waiting on those instead, either way I’d be waiting. Would y’all reuse these or just wait? Or should I treat these like ubolts and ditch em? They weren’t hard to get off.

 

ditch em. time for new shackels

 

Yeah I’ll just wait for the new ones to come back.

 

Alright. This weekend, my brother came over and we grafted in the new frame rails. Since the old ones came off a reg cab, we could only use 16.5" of the material in front of the rear cab mount bracket. Past that point, the new frame widened out. This would be the 20 inch difference in the reg and xtra cab wheel bases. He made L shaped cuts on the rails, removed the 3rd cross-member, and we did one side at a time. I balanced the frame on concrete blocks, and wood shims behind the transmission mounts, and on both sides of the spring mounts. The cab was spaced off the rails about 4 inches with wood blocks and independently supported by jack-stands on the end. My main concern was whether or not everything balanced correctly. Once he cut out the rails, nothing shifted at all. So I at least got that part right.

The new rails went on square, plumb, and level against the old ones down under the cab and we dry fitted the bolt-in cross members to hold things together and get the spacing right. He welded reinforcement plates over the welds on both sides under the cab and on the outside of the welds behind the gas tank cross member. That's where he had to piece the frame back together bc they were cut for shipping. One thing that didn't go right was the tail ends of the rails are about 1 inch out of square bearing to the passenger side from the gas tank cross-member to the rear ends. This will result in what he referred to as "coonin". Its probably due to how he welded them back together previously. Or maybe they were slightly bent to begin with before they were cut. Who knows? He's going to notch them behind the gas tank cross member and bend them square and weld them back together. Of course, he might have to remove that reinforcement plate to do it. Some of you told-me-so and suggested framing it all up to ensure squareness before grafting them in. You were probably right, but I'm not worried. I'm sure we'll get it right. Anyhow, before disassembly, I could visually see the drive shaft was canted a bit in that direction at the 3rd member. So I don't know if it was square to begin with.

Its looking good though. All that's left is to clean up and finish some of the welds on the inside and weld in the 3rd cross member that supports the drive shaft center bearing. Besides the obvious holes in the rails over the wheel wells. None of the rust looked too serious and it all cleaned up to bare metal with a wheel. This gives me more hope for the front end. I wire wheeled the cross-member and gave it a coat of paint. He's going to weld the safe-t-cap end reinforcements on the cross-member for more strength. Structurally, this thing is going to be quite sound I believe.

The insides of the rails were coated with grease and oil. I had the hose ready and put out a few fires. Due to the grease, I don't think any of the insides are rusty. All the new metal got coated with rustoleum flat black enamel. I'll touch up the rest when he's done grinding and welding.

On one rail under the cab, he welded some backing plate (from the cutoff pieces) behind the L-seams on the inside to provide more material to weld to to close the gaps. He brought a mig welder for the thinner metal, but the spool wasn't working so he used the arc welder for everything.

Tools used included an arc welder, 6013 3/32 welding rods, cutting/grinding wheels, hammer, magnetic angle finder, square, and spud wrench. He recently bought one of those chinese yeswelders to see how it would do. (He's been welding for 20 years, just wanted to give this thing a try). Turns out it did pretty well. He said it worked like a miller (whatever that means, I'm not a welder). We ran it off my dryer outlet which was conveniently placed just inside the door from the carport.

 

Great write up and pics. Being off an inch is no big deal, it's amazing what can be done with cutting tools and a welding machine.

 

You reckon it would be alright to see how it rides as is before trying to square it up an inch? I’m thinking I might pickup one of those little welders and learn to do some light fabbin

 

Looks good!

 

Where'd he go? No updates for nine days, how's the project going?

 

I promised my wife a week break from the project.

Frame weld job took two more half days of work to finish. It’s finally done. My brother just needs to come back and gather his tools up. I haven’t had a chance to get final pics yet.

I’m going to crawl under there and touch up all the bare metal left from the grinding with flat black rustoleum.

I’m at the point where I have to decide what’s next. I have new cab mount bushings to put in while it’s up off the frame, but I’m putting that off bc I reckon having the cab up will help with the tranny drop. LCE gave me a 3-4 week delay on a new clutch and flywheel, that time is almost up so I expect it to ship soon. Tomorrow I’m going to try removing the t-case driveshaft. Should be the best time for a clutch job while literally everything is out from under the truck right now.

The machine shop still hasn’t gotten around to turning my emu shackle bolts, so I went ahead and ordered some OEM style from AST out of PA from eBay. They should arrive any day. I’ll get the emu ones back from the shop and return them to wheelers. I’ll get as far as putting rear springs on when they arrive and prop the frame up under those to give me plenty of room to move while dropping the transmission.

I also have a URD short shifter scheduled to arrive in time for the clutch job.

Today I wheeled rust and grime off the front skid plates and gave one a coat of flat black rustoleum.

Yesterday I did the same to the ubolt mount plates.

Yesterday (or Sunday I can’t remember….whatdayisit?) I pulled off the grille and front bumper, scrubbed em down and coated them in rustoleum hammered black, which comes out a sort of gunmetal gray.

 

Two days ago, I got the front driveshaft and exhaust header removed (to make room for the LCE header).

Yesterday I got the shift levers out and the wiring harness and clutch slave cylinder disconnected from the transmission. The shift seats were completely disintegrated and the shift bushing was worn through so that it slipped up the shaft like a sleeve. I picked out the bits of the seats real carefully but a little bit dropped down inside the transmission and t-case. It’s soft and I’m sure it’ll flush out. I think I’ll get new seats from marlin crawler. My URD shirt shifter also arrived. I’ll install it while the transmission is out.



Today, my spring shackles arrived from ATS and I dry fit my new springs. Do I need to put washers on the forward eye bolt? The nut and bolt came from rock auto without washers, the original bolts were flanged and I can’t remember if there was a washer on the original nut.



Also today I successfully removed the first of 8 u-joints. The cups exploded into peices and one of the bearing holes is marred in the yoke. Trying to figure out how to fix that. Looking for pointers. I hope this is fixable. I’m taking a break this weekend because it’s my wife’s birthday.

 

The pic of the frame with the springs installed looks sharp, need more pics and info on the driveshaft.

 

i miscounted ans meant to say 1 of 6 u-joints. The driveshafts all came out fine themselves, got the old carrier bearing off too. It pretty much fell apart once I got the staked nut off. The problem cited above is just the marred burr in the u-joint bearing hole in the slip yoke. When I pressed the joint out, the last bearing cup exploded into peices and I then saw this burr in the hole. I don’t know the best approach to getting it smooth again bc I’m just an amateur DIY’er not a machinist.

 

I'd use a fine curved file or a light touch with a Dremel sanding drum on the burr to just take it down to the hole diameter or slightly under. There's still a good bit of seating surface so no need to try and build it back up, you just want to knock down the burr.

 

That’s what I was thinking. I’ll give it a shot.

 

I got this bad boy out today. Was easier than I anticipated, but still wasn’t easy. Hardest part was getting it off the alignment dowels. Getting the bolts off is what turned out easier than expected. Having the cab lifted 4 inches helped to get those top bolts through the shifter hole. Anywho, next job is to remove the old clutch/flywheel and replace with new. New stuff should arrive this week. I also have a new clutch master and slave cylinder and clutch lines going in.



I filed down the burr in the yoke u-joint hole, sanded em down and got the first new u-joint reinstalled. All that happened yesterday. I got a new u-joint puller tool in the mail today that should make doing the rest just a little bit easier.

 

Did nothing yesterday..,
Today I got the clutch and flywheel off, took about 10 minutes, impact wrench made short work of things. Clutch disk aint all that bad but it’d need replacing eventually anyway. Flywheel and pressure plate have some worn spots. I’ll be replacing it all with a heavier flywheel from LCE. The packages arrived today.



What did I do with the rest of my 2 hours of free time today? I spent about 30 of it removing the sway bar bushing bracket bolts. 3 were easy, one rounded and I had to use the extractor socket. They presoaked in ATF for about a week or two.

Spent a couple minutes getting the bracket bolt that holds the EGR tube on the back of the engine (doing an EGR delete).

I then spent the other 1.5 hours fighting the drivers side cab bushing bracket bolts. The ones that hold it on the frame. There was a good write up on the forum about those. But this was ridiculous. I could only get so much space between the cab and frame and the bolts rounded off so I had to use the extractor socket with a wrench and another wrench on that for extra leverage. Itty bitty turns at this angle and that. Couldn’t fit a socket in there. What I needed was a crows foot and/or a ratcheting wrench. But I didn’t. Anyway they’re off now. But there’s still no room to move the bushing assembly out between the cab and frame. I’ll probably need to disconnect the steering. Shoulda done that already and I’d have probably had an easier time with the bolts.

 

Good show, lotta work.

 

I forgot I had a pic of that ordeal with the cab bushing bolts.

 

I think I’ll be able to get the transmission back in by the end of the week.

I made short work of the other cab mount bushing on the passenger side. Last Thursday and Friday I tackled wheeling off the grime and rust from the frame from the middle where we grafted the new section forward to the front wheel wells. Whatever I couldn’t reach with the wheel I scrubbed hard with a stiff wire brush. I then primed everything with corroseal and painted over with rustoleum flat black enamel. It looks like garbage bc it’s oil paint on a hot day with cheap disposable brushes. Big whoop, I don’t care how it looks. The metal underneath is clean and it’ll be protected from future rust. It doesn’t snow here but once a decade and we don’t salt roads. I’ll give the rest of the front frame the same treatment once I take the front suspension off. I finished the rustoleum on the driver side today.



I got the camshaft seal out but need to pick up some bread to push out the pilot bearing. I’ll do that tomorrow, and clean off and repaint my donor transmission crossmember. I have new mount and hardware. I expect the clutch/tranny/etc will be back in by the end of the week or next week at the latest. I can see the light.