Builds Family haulin'

[boots4]

Update

Spent a decent amount of time on the hydraulic system this week, found some issues, and am back to square 1... still no decent pressure. I might have to start throwing money at it.

I questioned the Hydroboost unit so I went to the JY and grabbed seals and another HB. I cracked mine open, inspected and cleaned it. From what I could see nothing was blocked and everything seemed to operate fine.

I then hooked the pump straight to the steering box, filled, bleed and tested for pressure and got none. I did however find I had the ram hooked up incorrectly (lines swapped) so I straightened that out. No pressure.

I researched a little more and found power steering fluid really is superior to using ATF and while I like the simplicity of one fluid for both I drained and flushed everything in the system to swap it over. This was very messy and I gave up trying to keep the drips off the concrete and let the puddles form. I'll have to do a clean up of the area and that side of the truck once I'm finally done. The use of compressed air in the high pressure lines made quick work of purging the fluid out the low side tubing. One note of advice, don't leave your air compressor set at 100psi , that will be most of my clean up. I got ATF all over my pants and when I came in the house for lunch my kind told me YOU STINK! so I had to eat outside.

With the system clean, all things hooked back up with the modded pressure relief assembly I got no pressure. One last ditch attempt included running to the junkyard with 20mins till closing during heavy rain and hail to grab another pressure relief assembly and in fact I walked away with two of them since it wasn't worth the cashier's time to ring it up. So I cleaned the assembly, removed shims and inserted a washer, filled and bled the system and while I "think" I felt some assist it was way below normal.

So Dora sits another week and I think I've convinced myself to just go buy a pump.

I tried both bleeding techniques and even tried one I came up with. Manual bleeding was taking forever (engine not running, cycling steering) so I turned down my air compressor to about 30 psi, covered the reservoir hole with a clean towel and made a hand seal with an air nozzle and pressurized for 5-10 seconds. I'd remove my hand and bigger groups of bubbles would come up through the system. This was an easy one person job and when the reservoir would get low I'd fill it back up and continue. Someday I'll actually drive this rig.

 

[brokenparts]

did you try running it without the modded pressure relief assembly?

 

[boots4]

did you try running it without the modded pressure relief assembly?

Yes. It is currently assembled with a stock assembly and producing no pressure. That's where I left off last night. The thing that gets me is that even with the modded assembly I got great pressure for that brief moment of time. That has turned into the dangling carrot.

 

[Tapage]

Dude .. did you ever try this pump with some heavy oil .. like 30 .. ?

if it's buiding pressure with heavy oil .. means that your pump it's just ready for rest ..

 

[boots4]

Just picked up a replacement pump tonight so I'll give that a try. I also grabbed an inline filter to keep things clean.

 

[brokenparts]

ok how about some stupid things..... like is the belt slipping? did you move the reservoir? Is the resevoir feeding enough fluid to the pump? Is there blockage somewhere else in the system? Is air entering the system somewhere else?

 

[Tapage]

thought also you are running a nice oil cooler .. ?

 

[boots4]

ok how about some stupid things..... like is the belt slipping? did you move the reservoir? Is the resevoir feeding enough fluid to the pump? Is there blockage somewhere else in the system? Is air entering the system somewhere else?

It's gear driven so there is no slippage, in fact that's probably why I was able to shear the shaft since I had no belt that could slip. Reservoir is in the same place and it never had feeding problems before, plus I can see the fluid flow into it when cycling the steering during the bleeding. Pump has been apart several times and thoroughly clean, air blown all passages. This was also done to the hydroboost unit. All connections have been double checked for tighteness and all o-rings for the ~AN fittings have been replaced with new ones.

However, I did find this while researching yesterday on pumps and it is pretty simple.

http://www.cardone.com/english/club/Products/STEERING/Protech/Tech_Bulletins/PT 20-0015.pdf

While the o-ring on my flow nuts that I've tested are in the right spot they may not be sealing well. If it is just this o-ring on the flow nut the new pump (decided on a ATSCO reman) was not a complete waste of money since they aren't very expensive plus it's got a new bushing wereas I just kept the bushing in the pump you gave me. Plus it looks like I probably scuffed up the new shaft seal when I pulled it from my old pump to transfer to the used pump as I noticed some ATF between the pump seal and the 4bt adapter mount meaning it's leaking. I might not have found this article had I not decided to throw money at it.

 

[Dirtgypsy]

Bummer to hear about the troubles Mike. I was hoping to return from vacation to see this back on the trail! At any rate give me a heads up if you need a hand.

Clint

 

[40hazjo]

Mike any luck over the weekend with your hold up? Thanks again for sending me to quality diesel. I liked there prices way better. I got all my main bearings replaced and made a tab for the KDP. Wednesday i am picking up the Rod bearing even though they look fine. The main even looked great. Thanks for the all the tips. I have a pump on my self your welcome to.

I hope you find a fix soon.
Joe

 

[boots4]

I've got something to try today so I'll post up my results. It's actually very simple.

 

[boots4]

Update

PRESSURE!!! Gobs of tire-turning, rotor-grabbing, wholesome pressure!

Yes, I finally figured it out. It was very simple and pretty crazy that this one little thing stopped everything. It was the simple placement of 1 tiny little washer.

In my pressure relief assembly I used a 3mm washer to increase tension on the spring to increase the pressure needed to push the ball seal out of the way to bleed off pressure. This was how I set that up with the washer behind the ball hat.

All combinations of stuff I tried used this piston relief arrangment, and even though I tried different pistons I had set them up the same way. The more I ran into no pressure results from the various combinations the more it lead me back to the pump and back to the part that I changed. I thought it had to do with that flow nut and the size I drilled it out so I tried different sizes and again had no or at least very low pressure. I kept reading over those who had modded this part before and none of them mentioned putting the washer in the spot that I put it in. No big deal I thought since I was achieving the same thing by increasing the tension on that spring. They all mentioned putting the washer behind the spring like this:

I worked out this conclusion with a friend and we tired it. At first I didn't build any pressure after bleeding it and then I gave it a small increase in rpms and it finally pushed that air pocket out of the pump and I started gaining pressure. Come to find out my original hook up of the ram was right in the first place and now the steering box and ram were trying to fight each other when I slightly turned the wheel. I quickly swapped the lines back (with the engine off of course), cycled the steering and enjoyed the use of hydraulic pressure. Yes, placement of that small little washer is IMPORTANT! In the wrong spot it was bleeding pressure way to soon. This cost me 3 weeks of frustration. Lesson learned.


So, to get to that point I'd pulled off the hydroboost unit and checked it for seals and blockage.

I even checked it with my old one to look for differences and problems.

I even picked up another HB unit just in case along with some seals from other various HB units in the junkyard. It was less than $20 so now I have another spare.

I grabbed the better seals from the junkyard and tried those on my pressure fittings that convert to 6 AN.

Other mods I did to the system were to port the High pressure fitting coming out the HB unit and going toward the steering box for increased flow.

I drilled out the flow nut for increased flow. The one of the left is the original one I drilled and is compared to a stock sized hole on it's right. I'm actually using a nut that I drilled to .250" which is bigger than this one pictured.

This is the wrench I turned into a stubby to get access to that lower bolt on my power steering pump. The bolt head is actually an 18mm so I filed this 11/16" to open it up just a tad.

I rerouted my cooler lines so fluid entered the bottom first and then goes out the top returning towards the pump. The idea was to eliminate this as a possible air pocket trap. I also inserted a power steering filter on the line going into the pump.

A below pic of the filter.

And finally two pics of where I put the cooler.

On the piece that covers/protects this area I think I'll cut in a little air diverter to ram the air up towards the cooler.

With the hydraulics squared away I made sure I was ready for a trip so I could get my first part of the engine break in started. There are different camps on how to break in an engine so this is the format I'll be following:

• First 50-100 miles keep it in high gear and rpms between 1500-1800.
• For the next 1000 miles keep it below 2000-2100 and drive it around.

I got on the road on Monday and took care of the first requirement. It was hard because at that rpm without my lockup wired up yet I was barely doing 55mph. Semi's were blowing right by me, but I kept my foot out of it. I did find that my alignment was toed-out pretty good so I toed it back in but think I overshot it so I'll probably just take it to a shop where they can get a computer on it and get some finer measurements than I can with my tape measure for a better adjustment.

The next round I will split up like this: The first tank of fuel will be mellowish and the second will be towing my trailer around empty. After that I'll romp on it like I normally do and drive like normal.

For oil changing I'll change this first batch with 6-8hrs of operation. Then run it for about 30hrs and change again. After that I'll change on a normal schedule. I'm really looking for the engine to last 15 years and I figure probably sometime before that I'll have another comutter so the lifespan should lengthen. I do have a turbo mod planned but will obviously wait until it's ready to go before cobbling that together.

 

[GLTHFJ60]

Wow that's frustrating. It's always the smallest little detail...

 

[brokenparts]

told ya it was something simple.


Glad it worked out.

 

[Dirtgypsy]

The next round I will split up like this: The first tank of fuel will be mellowish and the second will be towing my trailer around empty. After that I'll romp on it like I normally do and drive like I STOLE IT

there fixed it for you!

sweet! now you can come over and work on my junker!

Clint

 

[Tapage]

Congrats Mike .. but keep on eye this ..

maye a little too much .. .250" it's a bunch.

 

[boots4]

update

About 3 months ago right when I decided to pull down the engine and do a rebuild we also decided to buy a house. We wanted to see if we could get that tax credit. The and I are the kind of people where we need to see all our options which is good and bad, good because we don't just settle for the first thing we find but bad because that takes time and we only had two months to make the first deadline. We poured over lists, filtered through satellite and bird's eye view images of addresses, researched value, did drive by's and finally walked through the ones that made our list. We found a place and made the first deadline. We are set to close next week and start our move. It'll be a great first time house and it's even got a detached garage that I'll turn into my shop! It's been crazy juggling all that's going on but that's what's been going on.

So Moab was canceled due to the truck and the house since it was the last week in April right before the deadline that we finally had a contract that worked.

Anyways, before the engine rebuild I was working on a new control box for the tranny and an electric way (meaning using the force motor) to regulate line pressure. The control box is almost done and I had been regulating line pressure simply by hooking up the force motor to a switch. I'd turn it on to the preset amps I had it at and then turn it off once the tranny reached 120F. I had always planned to make that automated and I found I could use a temp switch to do that for me. There is a temp sender in the wiring loom inside the tranny but what I came up with is much simpler, cheaper, and probably more durable. I'm using a simple bimetal temp switch that I special ordered normally closed until 120F. That means it will pass current which will feed the force motor which will reduce line pressure until 120F at which point the switch will open interrupting the current and thus turning off the force motor. At 120F the tranny will default to full line pressure and at that temp we believe the tranny can handle it.

The beauty of the switch is that there are no electronics needed to interpret a voltage signal for when to turn on or off from a sending unit. It's just simple with less to go wrong.

I ordered this switch from a local supplier with the 120F set point.

I stopped by tacoma screw since it was on the way home and picked up a bung that I could weld to the tranny pan.

With all the fluids I've dripped on the driveway the past two months I figured why not add some more tranny fluid. I drained it, dropped the pan, and let it drip for a while.

I hunted for some connectors in the shed to make the switch removable from the harness and found the old floor/rear heater that I pulled out had something I could use so I cut those off and soldered them onto the switch. I'm getting better with soldering.

Then I shrink wrapped them.

I was planning on getting some pics of how I cut the bung and welding it to the inside of the tranny pan but a kid's birthday party took precedence over camera usage. I didn't feel like waiting so here is the end product. The other end of the connection I soldered to the power supply and the tranny harness. After this I zip tied the wiring out of the way. The only thing I'm thinking of doing different is tagging a signal for an LED and putting that near my tranny gauge so I know when the switch is active or not.

After my steering issues where finally resolved and not being too confident in my alignment I took it in. Well I paid to find out that I can do the alignment just fine myself with a tape measure as the toe was already set to spec. I'll have to get the sheet to make sure I remember the other numbers but I did find that my cut 'n turned caster ended up at 6 degrees with them being spot on together. Camber wasn't as close together which does result in a slight pull to the right (I only notice it now because he said something). I can't remember what the thrust was. Anyways, I gained my confidence back.

Heeding to the warning Mace gave about leverage on the rear crossmember/shock tube I've been watching it. I had some cracks develop so I welded them up. I've had more cracks develop so I'll redesign my upper shock mounts and probably put in another thicker crossmember. For now I melted a bunch of metal on it and braced it in two other spots to get me by until after the move.

Phase 2 of the engine break in is done with 8 hrs run time logged on the engine keeping it around 2000 rpm. I love having a timer on that tiny tach to help with servicing. I changed the oil and filter yesterday and am starting the 3rd phase. I cleaned out my trailer and hooked it up to tow around empty during phase 3 so I'd have a light load (good thing since we'll need it when we move). So the break in continues.

I also ordered some tube adapters for the front bumper; a pair for me and a pair for Dirtgypsy. These will go between the fender protection and the front bumper. I played with the fender tube yesterday but wasn't getting it lined up where I wanted to so I decided to put it down and come back to it later. For now I just tacked a pair of these adapters on my bumper.

While I anticipate yard projects at the new house to dominate summertime fun I am planning to attend a run with some Californians in August so I'll have that to prepare for.

 

[Tapage]

Congrats for the new house .. I'm in the same boat .. ( new house for us .. )

 

[brokenparts]

cool Mike... trying to move some stuff around to help you out on the big move day. Shouldnt be an issue though.

 

[boots4]

cool Mike... trying to move some stuff around to help you out on the big move day. Shouldnt be an issue though.

Thanks Zack, I'll get a hold of you this weekend.