alwaysFlOoReD's race truck

[alwaysFlOoReD]

I've picked up some paint and sanding materials;
two gallons Valspar low gloss black @ C$50.00 ea
one gallon Valspar I-H Red @ C$50.00
one gallon and three quarts of yellow tintable [oil based] base C$17.50
Sanding and cutting discs @ C$20.00


And I bought both fiberglass sides of a flareside ranger including lights and wiring harness @ C$120.00
Then I bought five 10' lengths of 1/2" metal conduit and some clamps for C$40.00 to hang the box sides.

When I went to get my tools from the shop I found half the roof down! Luckily no one was around when it came down and the areas where I keep my good stuff weren't affected. Other than access to my shop.... Oh well, two steps forward, one back.
I'll post pics later,

Richard

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

Some pics of the damage;

Back to my race truck;
Here are some pics of the bed sides, they aren't permanent yet;

The shadow lines are off but it will have to do. I have the bed sides sticking out a few inches more than stock as I'm thinking of putting in a full size rear end to try to help prevent roll overs.

I screwed some 5/8"x2" square tube to the under side of the top of the bed sides and then attached some garage door ribs to the aluminum;

The ribs will give me something to weld to. I'm going to use some 1/2" EMT electrical conduit to build my supports with, it should be strong enough and light as well. I have to find some v-belt pulleys to make a bender from, and I think they are buried under the roof that fell

Later,

Richard

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

I got a little done on the truck yesterday..... I got the new drivers door interior panel cut out and hung the door. I had wanted to take the truck to get sand blasted and I can't. It's probably a good thing as I will be forced to slow down and think about what I'm doing.

Richard

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

I finally got the last of the roof cleaned up!! Unfortunately the race truck will be on the back burner as I will be making the house ready to sell. I want my own place where I can work on my projects instead of paying someone else mortgage and having to clean up his roof that fell in. I will put some time on it but not as much as I'd like. I'm planning to make the last race of the season.

Richard

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

Well, I've done a little to the ''soup can', I got passenger seat mounts built and welded in and am working on seat-belt mounting. That's pretty much done, I just have to weld in a few brackets. Piddly ass shit but I want it done before the truck gets blasted and painted. Next will be mounting the fiberglass bed-sides.
Material was free from the scrap bin at McClevins Welding and Time spent was ~ 10 hours

Richard

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

Some pics;
Here you see the passenger seat mounted in place;

and the bracket I built to hold the upper portion of the seat from moving;

It's starting to come together;

A view from the back;

and a close up of the NOT finished mounting;

I'm not going to blast and paint the frame like I hoped to do, I feel that I won't get to race at all if I take the time to do that. So the truck is going to look like a work in progress for quite a while...oh well, I like go more than show anyway.

Richard

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

I've done a bit more to the soup can. From memory;
-mounted passenger side seat
-made brackets and mounted five point harnesses
-drivers harness is a Hooker Harness with ratcheting lap belt. I haven't tried it in the real world but it sucks you down in the seat, I don't see me floating around in the seat at all any more.
-got the bedsides mounted better but still have some fine tuning to do.

Then last weekend I got to take it all apart again!! I took it down to the bare frame and cab. I couldn't get the cab off because of the roll cage. I sure wish that I had blasted the frame previous to putting the cage on, oh well.
Rolled out of the shop and into the barn and ready to pull motor;

I had a bitch of a time getting the fuel lines apart, I spent about 2 hours trying to figure out how they came apart.

If you take a close look at the previous pictures you may be able to figure it out. There is a spring in the female end that clamps on the male ends flare. The white plastic circular tool is used to push the spring back so the male end can pull free. I was using pliers to push/clamp the tool in as far as it would go and trying to pull the two ends apart. But that also meant that both ends were clamped together....doooh. Hopefully I don't forget by the time I need to do this again.

I knew It was getting sandblasted and I wanted to keep the lines clear of dust. Sandblasting creates a LOT of fine particles. So I used what I had handy to plug the ends of the fuel lines, ear plugs, and a little masking tape to hold them from falling out. The power steering pump lines I connected together with a short chunk of hose.

And I was able to pull the motor, tranny, and t-case as one unit, I don't think I could have if the rad support was still attached.

Coming back from the blasters, trying to beat the rain clouds;

Beat the clouds, safely in the shop;

I'll be coating the bare metal with a chemical that's supposed to protect from rust. I'll report back on that later.

Richard

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

So I sprayed down my truck with a product from por15. It is called pre-primer. It has phosphoric acid, zinc phosphate,water and one other fairly innocuous chemical in it. I did like the directions said and sprayed and kept wet for 10 to 20 minutes. I looked at it yesterday after letting it dry for a couple of days and it looks like galvanizing that you see on fence pipe. There is a residue left that I'm supposed to hose off, I'll do that later this week. I've used something similar before on rusted metal and after wire wheeling the rust off, it turns black after being applied and drying. I'm guessing that if there is no rust [like my sand-blasted truck] that there is no reaction between the rust and product to turn black. Anywho, I'll update a little later this week.

Richard

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

September 25, 2011, 10:04:25 AM »

I also sprayed some small parts that were sand-blasted with Rust-off rust converter and those pieces turned black so there is different chemical compositions between the two products. I wish I had got the Rust-off for spraying the whole truck as I like the black better than the gray. I tried spraying a portion of the truck with the Rust-off over the other stuff, I'll see if it changes color later today.
Today;
I found that the Rust-off TRIED to change the color of the previously coated body and frame but did not change the color much.
I've been having a bitch of a time with manifold bolts. There was the one that connects the exhaust tube to the manifold, it was broken and had been for a loong time. I tried drilling out the stud in order to use an easy-out, broke the easy-out. So I took the manifold off. I tried heating the bolt and then spraying with w-d40 and removing with vice grips, nope. I tried heating the surrounding area and then spraying with w-d40 and removing with vice grips, nope. I tried welding a nut to the stud and using a wrench with heat and w-d40, nope. Finally I used the cutting torch and carefully cut the insides out where I had previously driil for the easy-out. Then I used a drill to try to remove what was left of the bolt and ended up removing some of the threads on one side of the hole, dope. So now I'm the proud owner of a heli-coil kit that'll do 5 different metric bolt sizes; C$130.00. A kit for just the bolt I was fixing was C$65.00 so I splurged as I have one more broken bolt of a different size broken in the head and with my luck will be heli-coiling that hole after I'm done screwing with it.
So it seemed like I got nothing done on the soup can yesterday!!! I did buy and install another cylinder [3-ton = C$40.00] in my engine hoist as the original is leaking worse than my pecker with the clap. Total time spent was ~ 8 hours before I finally said enough.
Later,

Richard

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

I've been burning the candle at both ends for the last week trying to get this truck ready for Saturday. It's looking promising. I got the engine,tranny,t.c. in yesterday with the help of my friend Don. Also started on putting the wiring back in. Did all the fluids;engine, tranny, t.c., rear diff. I pressure tested the motor before putting it back in because I froze it last winter;

I used a new tire valve in the heater line;

I knew about and replaced one frost plug, then found another in the head leaking;

I'm really glad I took the time to do the pressure test!!!

In case you haven't seen a picture of me before;

Engine ready to go in;

It sure makes it easy to slide the motor in with nothing in the way;

To get to this point has been about 30 hours! Lots of little detail stuff needed doing as well as sitting and thinking
Anywho, later,

Richard

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

It's been a while since I updated. I wasn't able to get it running for the last race of the season, I was so depressed!!
My father in law, Al, helped out immensely with all of the following;
One of the reasons was when I was cleaning threads in the front drive yoke I busted a tap in the threads I was able to get it out, luckily the tap was protruding enough that pulling the yoke off the front diff and with a little grinding on the tap I was able to grab the end with some pliers and turn it out through the front. But that cost me about three hours.
Once I had the engine, trans and t-case installed, I did the wiring, installed the rad, and then went to install the spark-plug wires and coil. For the life of me, I could not remember where I had put them. I wasted another 1/2 hour searching high and low for the damn parts but never did find them So I took the parts off of my exploder, glad I bought that a while back.
Also installed, with a bit of modification, an Air-raid cold air intake from my '97 f-150 that was stolen and bought back by yours truly.
Installed the fuel cell and pumps. I had to do a bit of wiring to clean up the mess I made last time I was in such a hurry. I also moved the high pressure pump so I would have room for a rad that I'm going to install in the back, just in front of the rear end. I'm going to install it flat, in between the frame rails, with an electric fan blowing downwards. I'm thinking that this will help the COG [COG=center of gravity] as well as take some weight from the front.
So when I went to start the sucker, it wouldn't I pulled codes and got these;
51; ect [engine coolant temp] sensor out of range indicated/circuit open [may be because there is no water in the system yet]
63; throttle position circuit fault below minimum voltage [tried back probing but not sure I'm doing it right]
54; intake air charge temp sensor circuit open [?]
67; air conditioner clutch [not applicable]
57; neutral pressure switch [? I think I don't have it plugged in at the trans/t-case]
85;canister purge circuit failure [not installed]
95; fuel pump secondary fault [not applicable as I have low and high pressure pumps on their own circuit]

So I haven't looked at it in two weeks but am now in the fix it mode. Any input would be appreciated, especially on the codes.
Thanks,

Richard

 

[LameDuck]

Nice to see you stepping it up Richard! Wink Wink!

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

I spent last weekend in Calgary, Alberta at a school for rally race driving. It was great and I learned about "left foot braking", how to apply brakes in order to help the car corner better and the dynamics of front, rear and all wheel drive vehicles in cornering in a rally race. I think that this will help me out immensely in my efforts to win in short course off road truck racing and I think it'll help in all styles of racing that I attempt.
Here is a letter I wrote to the school, Vertigo Racing;
"Hi Jorge,
I wanted to thank you and all the others for a great week-end of learning. I hope that you can find another spot to use. I've thought of approaching Red Deer city and/or other close by towns for help in acquiring land for racing and practicing purposes, but I'm sure you have already pursued that line.
You asked for feed back on a sheet that you handed out on the last day. I'd like to add to that. I mentioned that it would have been less waiting time for us if you had two sets of cones to practice the first two exercises, though it did give me some time to review my last pass in each exercise, so maybe thats not a big deal. I wish I'd known that it would have been OK to bring my race truck out for the winter session as I think I would have gotten that much more out of your teaching.
And finally I'd like you to pass on apologies to [sorry, I can't remember his name, but the tall, blond, frenchman] for not realizing that he hadn't finished putting on his seat-belt. My inattention could have caused a very real problem and I will not do that again. Kudos to him for being able to still give advise after what I'm sure was a scary ride.
Again, thanks for teaching me and I hope to race against you in the future."
Yeah, I was a little excited and took off with-out checking to make sure that the passenger was ready....ooops.
I'd highly recommend a course like this for any one considering racing and even just to be a better driver. In fact, I think it should be a prerequisite for anyone getting their drivers license. But I also think that the insurance companies and provincial and federal governments should sponsor the training as they are the ones that reap the most benefits from such a school; the insurance companies pay less because there would be less accidents and the government would pay less in medical expenses.

Richard

 

[prerunnerwannabe]

Here is my 100th post Great work on the truck! I might have missed it (and I'm too lazy to look), but why not throw a dana 44 TTB under there? That should help keep the wheels on the ground and not in the sky BTW the splash bedsides are a pretty sweet idea.

 

[alwaysFlOoReD]

I finally got my truck running so there should be some regular updating in the next few months as I get it ready for racing.
@prerunnerwannabe;
I'm trying to keep the unsprung weight down as much as possible. If I find that the 35 isn't up to the task then I will look at the 44 outers.

Richard