Light At The End Of The Rabbit Hole

 Hello Gray Ghost Fans!

I've been able to get out into the garage this week and do a little work on replacing that worn out front shackle.  As you may remember, I was waiting for delivery of parts.  They came in and looked pretty good:

NOS Parts Box

NOS Front Shackle Parts

Nothing like using NOS (New Old Stock) parts.  You know they'll fit, assuming that you bought the correct version and no one, over the last 70 years, put the wrong parts in the box that services your truck!

Time to get to rebuilding!  First up, pressing in the bushings.  To do that, I'm using the same tool that I used to remove the old ones.  It's a 5/8" piece of all thread with a washer and nut on either end and a piece of 1" ID pipe on the far end.  I'm using the old bushing as a spacer to help drive the new bushing into place.  The tool assembled, both the spring eye and bushing pre-greased and ready to press the new bushing in, it looked like this:

Seating the new bushing 

Both bushings installed looked like this:

Bushings installed

Next up, pre-greasing inside the threaded bushing and the shackle pin, then threading it onto the shackle bushing.  It looked like this when installed:

Shackle pins installed

All of that was the easy part....  Now to add the sides to the shackle.  This will entail aligning all of the openings and pins and getting the shackle bolt installed to hold it all together.  

Try #1 did not line up!  Somehow, the spring had moved about 1 1/2 inches inboard....  Can I move it by hand?  No, I can not!  What to do?

Try #2: get creative!  Down to the basement, back with a C clamp and an extra long bolt.  The thought here is to get the shackle sides in place on one pin each, use the extra long bolt to keep the sides from falling off and them use the C clamp to move the spring outboard and (hopefully) into the other pins.

Did it work?  Yes it did!  It was an incremental process, requiring some gentle taps with the ball peen hammer (hey, the shop manual says to do that!) and further tightening of the nuts on the extra long bolt.  Once the space between the shackle sides had been closed enough for the regular bolt to fit, I switched to that bolt.  At that point both shackle sides had engaged all four points on the shackle pins and it was just a matter of properly tightening the bolts.

Oh yeah, I forgot to mention what started this whole evolution....  Did you remember?  Yup, the darned cork grease seal!  Thankfully, I only forgot to mention it here.  In the assembly process I remembered!  The Factory Assembly Manual requires 8-10 ft lbs of torque on the bolt.  Got out the old torque wrench, did what the FAM requires and when said and done, it looked like this:

Fully Assembled Shackle

Here's a shot looking behind the shackle at the neoprene grease seals:

Neoprene Grease Seals Installed

With the right (passenger) side completed, it's off to the driver's side for the same process.  I already have those parts, so it's just a matter of disassembly and rebuilding.  Sounds simple, right?  What could possibly go wrong....  I guess we'll all have to stay tuned to find out.

While I was waiting for my NOS parts to arrive, I did manage to find some time to test out the process of drilling out spot welds.  All in preparation of the next phase (rot removal and sheet metal repair).  Here's a shot of the first piece of rot removal!

Rotten Piece Over Replacement Piece

As the caption says, I set the rotten piece that I removed on top of the replacement piece to show what had rotted and what was left to be replaced.  This is the inner front cowl on the passenger side.  This view is from the inside of the cab looking at the part.  To put it into perspective, this is what you'd see if you sat in the truck and looked down at your feet and the inside of the cab.

That's all for now.  I'll wrap up the whole engine bay cleanup/front end suspension rebuild when I get done with the process.  Stay tuned!

The Rabbit Hole Gets Deeper....

Hello Gray Ghost Fans!

A quick update to keep you posted on progress towards the "great welding experience."  As you may recall, I've decided that I'm tired of getting all the old crud on me, every time that I crawl into the engine bay.  To fix this, I'm cleaning off the muck.  In the process, I discovered that the grease seals on the front shackles had to be replaced.  Well, today, I got the passenger side shackle disassembled....

What I found was that the shackle pin and bushing on the bottom were severely worn and in need of replacement.  The pins are shown below, with the upper pin on the left and lower pin on the right:

Passenger Side Shackle Pins

It's pretty obvious that the pin on the right is damaged.  I haven't removed the bushings, yet.  I'll need the replacements to help drive the old ones out of the springs.  At this point, I'm down hard, waiting for parts.  Hopefully, it doesn't take too long to get them in.

I know what you're thinking, what about the cleaning?  Fair enough.  Here's a shot of the before and after on the passenger side of the frame:

Before cleaning

After cleaning and primer

A keen eye will notice that the shocks are removed in the "after" pic.  I have replacements that I'll install after rebuilding the shackle.  The primer is my favorite Rustoleum Rust Converter.  I'll lay down a coat of satin black after all of the other work is done and before the shocks are installed.  Frankly, it's a "10 foot" paint job, but that's ok.  Most of this will be covered up by the inner fenders, so it's just for me and keeping it from rusting too much more.

I'll do a complete write up on the cleaning with lots of pics, once all of the other work is done.  So stay tuned!

 

Shackle(d) To A New Project

  Hello Gray Ghost Fans!

As I told you in my last post, I'm retired!  So that means more time to be in the garage!  Making good on that strategy, I did spend some quality time out there this past week.  My goal, get the front end (chassis, steering linkages, etc) degreased so that I can work on removing the floor pans.  Why is this important?  Because everything up there is caked in grease and consequently, I get a good coating of it on me every time that I climb into the engine bay.  It was time.  So off I went, putty knife and dental picks in hand.  What awaited me?  Here's a pic to show you what i was up against:

Steering gear assembly and pitman arm

Passenger side front shackle

Even for Gray Ghost standards, these are pretty gnarly!  If you look closely at the picture of the shackle, you can make out the bottom grease zerk.  What other hidden treasures could there be?  The factory assembly manual has a clue for us:

FAM Sect. 3 Sheet 4.00

In addition to the zerk on the bottom, there is also one on the top...time to get cleaning!  After about 15 minutes of digging with the pick and putty knife the top zerk comes into view:

Top zerk starting to show

This pic really gives you an idea of how much grease and crud was really built up.  There definitely was old grease and mud in this lump, but I don't think it was all old grease.  Just like other areas of the truck, it had tons of old oil mixed in.  It further reinforces my thought that this truck was used on dirt roads that were oiled to keep dust down.  That would explain the layers of oil/mud with pockets of grease...but back to the main attraction, stabbing at that lump of crud.

After another half hour or more here's where I got:

Front shackle freed from the lump

What's really interesting to me, is that there are traces of green paint on the shackle!  I assumed that the factory painted them black, like the other suspension parts.  But you can clearly see the same green paint that the cab and fenders were painted.  Not important, but still interesting.  Here's the other side:

Passenger side front shackle inside frame view

Now, I know what you're thinking.  Good job, now you can move on to the cab floor project!  Not so fast....  Why not so fast?  This guy:

Cork washer bits

Referring back to the FAM, you may note that the diagram clearly shows a cork washer that acts as a grease seal.  As you can see in the above pic, mine are shot.  Ugg.  That means I'm in for either a shackle rebuild or replacement.  That also explains the pockets of old grease.  Those seals weren't working during one (or more) of the times that someone greased the truck.  Follow where the pick is pointing to see where the the cork washer should be:

Pick pointer to missing cork washer location

This is on the wrong side of the shackle, given what the FAM shows, but where I actually removed the chunks of washer shown in the pic above.  Maybe there is a washer on both sides?  The FAM is unclear, so I'll have to ask the truck forum or look at replacement shackles to see how many washers they come with.

Oh well, I'm retired, I've got the time.  So that's the next step in the process, after finishing up the degreasing.  You see, I've only shown you the front shackle and steering gear assembly.  Of course, there are rear shackles that are just as gross as the front ones.  They'll need to be done before I move on to the rebuild or replacement.  As for that steering gear assembly, it now looks like this:

Steering gear assembly first pass for cleaning

You can see that at a macro level, the crud is gone.  However, at a lower level (I won't call it micro) it still has a ton of gunk on it.  The little picks can only get so much of the crud off, given the texture of the cast iron part.  That's ok, the chemical degreaser will work just fine, when I get around to using it.

That's all for now, fans.  Plenty more of this kind of work left to do, so I'll get on it.  Once I know whether to rebuild or replace and get that done, I'll make another post.  Thanks for reading!

bp