The Truck Project Thread

here's a pic of the visor i made for it. the raised roof COE can't use the standard coe visor,and the stock visor sticks out like a ball cap visor,and looks awful. whipped this up in the garage. i may redo with a little more drop.





also,i wanted lights in the back of the cab,but didn't wanna cut holes so i made a filler panel for the lights.








both the visor and the rear panel were made fron the homemade,awful looking fairings the PO had on the truck,made from heavy sheet aluminum.

 

well,you can't go wrong with polished aluminum either....

 

That's odd, but something tells me if you check your VIN, that truck would have been built in the Canadian plant...thus having the mix of steel and aluminum. Mine was built in Seattle and is 100% aluminum, other than the roof cap and the hood of course.

We got the Unibilt rings all done yesterday in both holes...no turning back now, lol. I've been working on switching out air lines behind the dash, what a PITA. So far I have TWO lines totally unaccounted for. One I disconnected from the red trailer emergency valve in the dash...pulled ever so slightly to see where it goes and it came apart from somewhere with no end on it...and have no clue what it goes to. Another issue I had is I replaced the manifold pressure line from the aftercooler first, fed the line back up into the dash and innocently went to connect it to the gauge...and found the gauge has a flared fitting with a lock nut. Loosened the lock nut and the flared fitting just flops around inside the gauge...so I can't simply just change the fitting to nylon line. Looks like I'll be replacing that gauge with a fitting that will accept nylon now. I'm going to celebrate the day I am putting the screws back in those dash panels.

 

Keep up the good work...love to see a guy using his imagination like that...I'm the same way. Recycle what you can, build what can't be bought...and make lemonade out of lemons!

 

The picture was deceiving. The ring appeared to be way wider than the two seats. I hear you on the corner braces. I hope you are keeping a rough estimate on the hours to do this. LOL

 

It's not a rough estimate...it's an "anal" estimate, lol...

 

Hey NM...I have something here that might help us both. I reached out to another antique truck forum for some electrical system diagrams, and the guy was nice enough to display the pics out of a KW service manual for me. I saved them, copied them, and my wife brought them to Staples to have them blown up so I can easily read them as I was working on the wiring. Problem was, the print is distorted and not even readable.

Lo and behold...I was in my basement yesterday working on something, and I looked over in the corner on top of my toolbox and said "Holy ****!"...there sat a big, thick KW Custom Service Manual that I got when I bought my rollback 3 years ago that the seller gave me with it! It's the exact book that the guy copied the diagram out of that I couldn't read after I blew them up...I almost fell over. The book has to be 6" thick, tabbed in alphabetical order and what the service guys used in the shop back in the day. No wonder why the copies don't come out good...the print in the book itself isn't all that great to begin with.

But hey, if you need any info out of it, let me know and I can try and scan it for you.

 

Well, you asked for a truck project thread...I guess this is officially one now.

Friday I went to do an innocent little job with the rollback, loading an old Lull lift (which was basically a Minneapolis Moline tractor with the lift setup). I arrived and set the deck on the ground and heard BANG!, and looked under there to find a river of hydraulic oil running out of the slide ram barrel. The packing gland blew out of the barrel and there I was...in trouble.

The old fella selling the Lull and the buyer were standing there, and I thought I was going to prison for the 10 gallons of oil running down the driveway. The seller, a veteran trucker and hardened mechanic himself stood there, and I asked him "what do you want me to do Pete...what do you have to clean this up, I'll start now..." He said, "ahhh, I'll back drag it with the loader, it's dust control"...I instantly loved that old fella...old school thinker like me.

He and I worked about 6 hours after I ran and bought an internal snap ring from a JD equipment dealer that I knew wasn't the right diameter nor thickness. He took a grinder to that thing and shaved .50 off the thickness after 2 hours of grinding, cooling, grinding, cooling (so as not to make it brittle.) Then we tapped in on the vice head until we spread the circumference enough to get the right diameter.

We installed in back in the end of the barrel, but when I went to run the hydraulics, the pump wouldn't move any oil. I was defeated at that point, so I just packed up, washed up, and drove home. Spent yesterday all alone removing the ram from the rollback, and it's headed to the hydraulic shop Monday morning to try and convince them to cut a 1/2" off the end and regroove it to accept a new internal snap ring, instead of $1,800.00 for a whole new ram. It's 12 feet long when retracted, 5 " barrel.

Never a dull moment.