84 Crewcab...AKA..Patches

[thrashingcows]

April 20/2018...

Well after several months of abusing my alternator with rocks, hammers and other blunt force trauma inducing implements it pretty much gave up the ghost today. Was out and about and every time I shut the truck off and got back in and fired it up the alternator would not charge, had to turn on off several times, or whack the alternator with something to get it charging again.....so finally broke down when I got home and swapped in one of my spare alternators. All seems well again.

Pretty sure it was the original Denso alternator from 1993 as well since it does have the chrysler/cummins part number still on it.

 

[thrashingcows]

Jan 16/2019...

Pulled Patches in for a bit of work last night. Found the loss of power to some of my added accessories was just a popped fuse....I had thought about it and was pretty sure that was going to be my issue.

Also replaced a rock shattered headlight, and changed my oil filter at the 5000Km interval, ODO is at 350500Km's!!

I also re-installed my softopper canopy, I had removed it before winter began thinking about last year and the heavy snow loads we had, but have not had them this year and really don't like the box just filling up with ice and snow.

I had picked up a truck storage box for free that need a little TLC, spent a few days and about $25 getting it back into usable condition.

Pic from back at the beginning of November

 

[thrashingcows]

Jan/2019...

My exhaust broke again...that darn 3" flex pipe was totally done this time.

So swung by an exhaust shop and got 3' of 3" pipe for the repair.

Love the band clamps....good for a few more years now.

 

[thrashingcows]

March 28/2019...

Pulled Patches into the shop for a greasing and fix a couple lights that burnt out. While crawling around under the truck I noticed a couple repairs that are going to be needed....Drivers rear hub inner seal is toast and leaking gear oil all over the place also the E-brake cable seems to be loose not aligned properly anymore...clip came off? So gonna need new seals and brake shoes of the rear, also another set of rear E-brake cables.....just did those two years ago.

Also for the last month or so while still using the 4wd this winter I noticed a vibration, well turns out two of the three U-joints in my Cardin-joint off the TC have one cup that was not getting grease, even though I greased it a couple times over winter and these were Spicer joints too. Not sure if some old grease dried up and got lodged and was not allowing fresh grease to get to those cups or what, but 5 years and it's toast seems a little short to me.

 

[thrashingcows]

April 07/2019...

Tore apart the front hubs on the truck last night since I burn through inner seals about once a year, sure enough the pass side was totally gone and the drivers side was bad but still in one piece, the grease was getting black and even a small amount of gray from water contamination. Did a complete cleaning and re greasing of everything with new inner seals, tried the National 415009 this time, and even tore the 4wd locking hubs down to clean and re-lube. Should be good for another year.

 

[thrashingcows]

April 14/2019...

Well just had the worst time ever redoing the rear inner hub seals and swapping on some new brake shoes. I had the LH rear hub seal go out a couple weeks ago, diagnosed things and put an order in to rockauto. Parts arrived friday so thought I would get to it this weekend...new inner seals, new brake shoes, new shorter intermediate cable on the E-brake system (more on that later), and a new LH E-brake cable.

Everything started well, go the driver side apart and started cleaning the oil off everything and was ready to start re-assembly so grabbed the new E-brake cable and it was not right! Checked multiple times against the current cable and nope wrong one....so did I order the wrong one or did rockauto? Well turns out I did not pay attention to where I was when i selected the rear cable....I was in the 93 Ramcharger section looking for a shorter intermediate cable when I selected the park cable. Went for a return and the shipping back was almost as much as the part....guess I have a spare for Sno-ball?? So then spent a couple hours farmerizing a fix to the current cable, couple old tractor trailer glad hand seals, and a small gear clamp got me back in business.

Then installed the new inner seals, new shoes and all the clean hardware, everything was looking fine until I slide the drum on....would not bottom out easily. Thought this was odd but just tighten the nut on the spindle and it went on OK, adjusted the bearing end play and moved to the pass side. Then couldn't get the friggin drum off! Spent another hour or more poking around to get the adjust lock loose so I could back the wheel off. Finally got that done and proceeded to swap the new shoes and new inner seal....same issue as the other side woth the seal.

By this time it was after midnight so called it a night, but that inner seal bothered me and my brain was munching on it until this morning when I got up. I just felt something was not right so I checked my order packing slip.....turns out I ordered front inner hub seals (SKF 27452)...Dooh!! So make a call to the local jobber with the seal number I "thought" needed, made the 70 min drive into town and back and went to install the new seals but thought I should try them on the spindle first.....good thing I did because these were wrong as well!! I had looked up 93 W350 inner hub seal with 12 x 2.5 rear drums (SKF 24917)....turns my axle is a factory 12x3 set-up so runs a bigger inner hub seal (SKF 28754)...so another 70 min drive back to town to swap and grab the correct seals.

Once the seals were worked out it was just a few minutes to assemble everything, then about 30 min to set-up the rear drum adjustment and get the E-brake system adjusted properly.

So moral of the story, check, double and triple check your on-line orders before placing them....I am usually pretty good about this but clearly I was brain farting that day.

 

[thrashingcows]

April 14/2019...part 2

So the story on the intermediate cable is that I had been buying the 84 E-brake cables for the rear diff previously, but last set I ordered I mixed up and order them for a 93 1st Gen. Didn't realize until I Installed them and the intermediate cable was about 6" too long! So I pulled out my back yard engineering degree and made something work....not pretty but did the job. When I was searching for park brake cable I noticed a few shorter intermediate cables....so went out and did some measuring and found that a 42" cable (Raybestos BC93028) would allow me to use the 1st gen axle cables and hook up to the OEM crewcab main cable perfectly. I had never come across anyone mentioning this in all the years I have been reading and researching SRW long box crewcab builds.

 

[thrashingcows]

July 03/2019...

Last little while I have been getting "the death wobble" when hitting some sagging section on the down hill road from our place....not too bad but enough to cause me some concern. Today out and about with my daughter and it happened 3-4 times in town....

Decided to crawl under the truck and see what was going on.

Well turns out the pitman shaft on my steering box is leaking, and the nut started to back off on the pitman arm and allow a bunch of slop, also my steering shaft couple is worn out again, and the drag link is starting to get weak. So tightened up the pitman arm nut and put in a rockauto order for a new drag link, steering coupler rebuild kit and a re-seal kit for the pitman shaft on the steering gear. Should get things back in shape.

 

[thrashingcows]

July 03/2019...part 2

Also pulled my front bumper and side steps since after 3 years of winter driving they wee looking a bit rough....

Going to strip them down and then prime, coat with a rubberized undercoating and then paint.....hope it last a little longer this time.

 

[thrashingcows]

July/2019...

And now back to our regular programming....

My youngest daughter....16 now....loves old vintage stuff, fashion, decor etc and wanted an older car for her first vehicle. I found a 79 Mercury Zephyr we drove 10 hours round trip to go look at but it turned out to be in pretty rough shape compared to the pics and info I was given.

So continued the hunt and eventually found a 1988 Aries K car with a 2.5L motor, auto, A/C, buckets and am/fm WITH cassette!!

One owner car, always garaged and said to have 183K original KM's.....but I think it's only 83K by the condition of the car. Car was almost 10 hours from me but had a friend who lives close by go look at it for me....said this thing is still brand new and worth the slightly higher asking price.

So loaded up patches and hooked to the trailer we made the trip down to go get it. It was everything it was touted to be so the purchase was made!

Original owner and the car...

Pics oft he car....

She tossed in the pillows for free....

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[thrashingcows]

Part 2...

Car drives amazing not a single squeak, rattle of clunk and is smooth as silk going down the road!!


Couple neat things on the car....original dealer plate on the back.

And can't say I have ever seen these still intact and in place...

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[thrashingcows]

Loaded up and at hotel for the night....

Patches made the drive home with no problems, we did 1517Km's in two days and about 18 hours of driving for me.....Pulling the loaded trailer home I got 16.5 mpg through the mountains!

Only issue I had was leaving a lot and pulling out onto the road the trailer jack got bent backwards.....

Oh well there are worse things that could have happened so i will take this with a shrug and figure out how to repair it later.

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[thrashingcows]

July 20/2019...

Got a bunch of stuff done on the truck last night.

I was going to rebuild the steering coupler since it was getting bad and I had over 45* movement in the steering wheel before it would affect the tires, but I was out looking at the parts truck and it had a steering shaft with a large U-joint so decided to clean it up and use that one instead. I also installed the new drag link.

Also since it's been 5 years and over 100K km's I wanted to change my tranny fluid and filter. I run one of those string filters that sit inside a housing on the RH PTO location....works very well.

A comment by Oliver stuck in my head that he runs the same fluid in the NV4500 and NP205...which makes some sense to me.

So decide to also drain my transfer case and move the older Castrol Syntorque from the tranny into the TC.

 

[thrashingcows]

Aug 30/2019...

Rolled up another 5K km's on the truck...365K km's now...so swapped in another new filter, that's over 15K km's since about April, rolling some miles this year.

Also decided to change the air filter since I couldn't remember when I did it last but was sure it could not have been more then a year and a half....well I put the date and mileage on my filters when I install them so I was a bit surprised when I pulled the air filter out and I installed it back in November of 2016 and mileage was 302K km's. So 33 months and 63K km's it was definitely time.

Also put some new summer skins of the truck, the old ones were worn down to almost slicks. Couldn't afford high end tires this time since I have had to buy 2 good sets of winter tires for the daughters cars since their winter driving safety is very important. But these tires are made by Cooper but are sold through Canadian tire under their Motomaster brand, and they were having a sale on the 235/85/16 tires so got a screaming deal on them as well. Read a bunch of reviews and they all said they were pretty decent tires of thread wear and ride quality....we will see I guess.

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[thrashingcows]

Nov 30/2019...

Pulled the front driveshaft and dropped off at a local driveline shop for a rebuild. All three U-joints were toast which is a little disappointing since I paid good money for Spicer U-joints when I rebuilt it the first time and it was still sporting the OEM units at that time, so I only got 5 years out of them.

 

[thrashingcows]

Feb 03/2020...

When we had the super cold arctic temps here a couple weeks ago I hopped in the truck after work, gave the shifter a tug back and forth to make sure I was in neutral and the shift boot shattered! Guess 25 year old rubber and -40*C temps conflict with each other.

I never had an inner boot so I was dealing with the cab pulling in exhaust fumes....my exhaust is very old and starting to sport a few holes here and there. I spent several hours searching for an OEM NV4500 shift boot but could not find one so finally researched aftermarket shift boots until i found something I thought might work.

I went with a small shift boot that said it would cover a 4"x5" hole for the inner boot...

And went with a larger one that said it's outside dimensions were 7.5" x 8.75"...

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[thrashingcows]

Now the install...

My NV4500 is still running the old "bottle top" top and shift tower so I had to force the boots over the shift ball. I used my heat gun and some fluid-film spray to get the boots onto the shifter stock without damage or tearing the new rubber.

Small shift boot installed...

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[thrashingcows]

Then came the big boot. I did not want to drill new holes so I used the OEM boot retaining ring to mark out the current screw locations, then punched the rubber and drilled the retaining ring. Oncew that was done I used my trick of placing nails through all the holes and down through the carpet to get everything aligned.

Once aligned you just remove one nail at a time and place a screw....works pretty well.

Screwed down and in place...

And managed to get the OEM plastic trim piece in place as well....

Been using it now for a week and it's not too bad, the new rubber is pretty stiff though in the cold so not sure how it's going to stand up long term but at least I'm not choking on fumes anymore.

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[thrashingcows]

Feb 27/2020...

Pulled the axle shafts last night since Pass side had no end play in the hub bearings and was running 5-10*deg hotter then the other side, not sure how that happened after my last brake/hub/seal service but it did. So reset both sides and crawled under neath looking for culprits for my driveline noise/vibration, well it to be Fair amount of play in one cup on the axle U-joint, little bit on the U-joint at the transfercase and the carrier bearing appears to be going south as well. I greased everything up for now but guess 6 years and 115K km's it's time for driveline servicing.

 

[thrashingcows]

April 07/2020...

Been putting off a bunch of work to poor old Patches, been concentrating pretty hard on getting the shop finished.

But the carrier bearing has been getting worse and worse and the other day it made a horrible growling sound when I was driving so figured I better suck it up and bring the truck into the shop for some needed maintenance.

I pulled the drive shafts and then decided since I was under the truck I would do a couple other things as well, pinion seal and new biscuits on the tranny mount. Once the drive shaft was out of the way I did the pinion seal, only been leaking for close to a year now.

First time I have done one myself, not too bad of a job but having a big impact would have made it a 15 minute job as opposed to an hour+ struggle.

These are the tools I used for the Re/Re...my grandfather old HD 3/4" drive Socket and wrench set, cheater bar and a pipe wrench.

Wedged the pipe wrench around the yolk and against the floor and then heated up the nut with the torch then big ratchet and socket and cheater bar to wrestled it free, once the nut was off it was a pretty simple swap.