Builds Family haulin' (1 Viewer)

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Hey, I had one of those fun times with my first car- '77 Rabbit diesel. The hood insulation keeper is a metal strip and it drooped, touched the pos battery terminal, caught the insulation smoldering, and gave me minorly melted engine bay, and practice painting a wicked flat black stripe on the hood.



I have a very possible buyer needing a 60 body/frame. Send Kevin (wagongear.com) a PM. It will get a pretty sweet build up when he is able.. he's gone for a month.
 
Ditto with all---glad to hear things were this well-contained Mike! Though it probably wouldn't matter, I kind of wonder if this could have been worse with a gas-powered rig. I mean fire is fire and diesel will catch .... but it's the vapor from gas you know.... Who knows, maybe the diesel 4BT may have also been part of it NOT being worse?

Either way, nice to work out the bugs in this fan controller harness (if cause) in parking lot.... not in some remote trail!
 
Nice update. That sucks about all the unfortunate things this summer. Luckily there was the OBCDR and McGrew runs to keep your spirits up!

:cheers:
 
I had the 1st generation SPAL fan controller and it went up in smoke one day, luckly I was working on the truck at the time and cut the power wire. I noticed they have re-designed their controller so I'm guessing there were some major issues with the first design. I like their fans but doubt I will ever use one of their controllers again unless its proven reliable. I went with their coolant temp probe on/off switch, which worked fairly well for some time. Mechanical radiator fan setup followed not long afterwards.
 
It's interesting seeing and researching the issues with the spal controllers. Sounds like a few more problems with those than normal. Elbert-glad you caught it before anything happened and thanks for sharing.

On a bright note my new dual fan controller from painless showed up today that was suppose to be on a 2 week back order. If I can get my brake plumbing, controller wired, and a new driveshaft made today Dora will be sporting a few notable updates soon.
 
boots4 said:
It's interesting seeing and researching the issues with the spal controllers. Sounds like a few more problems with those than normal. Elbert-glad you caught it before anything happened and thanks for sharing.

On a bright note my new dual fan controller from painless showed up today that was suppose to be on a 2 week back order. If I can get my brake plumbing, controller wired, and a new driveshaft made today Dora will be sporting a few notable updates soon.
Click to expand...

wooohoooo! I miss Dora. :)
 
CreeperSleeper said:
10 days til CTW... Not any pressure or anything.
Click to expand...

Out of those 10 days I only have 2 real days to get the fan controller wired, a rear driveshaft built and other general tightening of parts. I should be able to get that done.
 
Update

Continuing the 14bolt swap. Got Dora ready for some changes. Had to use the only place flat enough without a roof so I could do some lifting. I thought it was great waking up in the morning seeing my rig right out the back window. The :princess: didn't quite agree with me.

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Here's a comparison to the Cruiser axle.

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The 14bolt third might be just a little bigger.

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Slid the 14bolt underneath and started measuring for side to side and deciding on pinion angle. The angle really depends on what kind of drive shaft I was going to run. I originally planned to run just a simple two joint shaft using parts from cruiser and stepvan drive shafts. Ultimately I decided to run a DC jointed drive shaft so I set the pinion pointing at the tcase flange. This is done with the weight of the rig on the springs.

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I slept on the set up to see if anything came to me. Dirtgypsy (clint) showed up in the morning to help me finish off setting it up.

It's not a straight shot to the tcase flange but with the 14bolt pinion being offset on the differential chuck it lines up reasonably fine.

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Happy with the numbers I tacked it, we yanked it and then welded up the perches. Slapped some paint on those parts and stuck it back under there.

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I was waiting for some more ruffstuff brackets and those go on behind the hubs so I moved on to the new fan controller. I bought the Painless F5 dual fan controller that Clint and his brother are both running. It's a true dual fan controller and I got it on a labor day sale at 4wheel Parts for a great price. It was on back order but shipped out a week later and conveniently in time for my little project push.

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The parts were nicely packaged and the instructions were fantastic! It was the best electrical set of instructions that I've read so far and they made it easy to understand and follow.

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I mean each individual wire was even labeled!

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The little black box had screws on it so I couldn't resist peaking inside and was happy to see that the board is sealed from the elements. It uses it's own temp probe and is simply set with a low turn on and a high set point where both fans start at 50% and increase to 100% depending on where the set point is.

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Overall it's a little more expensive than other controllers but seems to be worth it.
 
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Looking good Mike... I almost went with that controller too.

Did you point the pinion right at the case or did you leave a degree or two for the pinion deflection under load? Planning on building a traction bar?
 
Deflection for pinon under load calculated in. As for the antiwrap bar I'll have to move it over since the 14bolt chunk would be in the way but plan on reusing my existing bar. I have removed the crossmember mount and picked up new wrap brackets from ruffstuff with that axle swap kit. I did have to open them up just a hair to fit over the 14bolt axle tube and Clint opened up the bolt holes for me for my current bar bolt size. Really I just need to clean up the crossmember mount and then weld it back up. Something I could easily do in an enclosed shop if the weather turns bad ;)
 
Update

Before Clint left he cut off the axle side shock mounts from the old axle and we set them up on the new one.


Took a caliper with me to Portland Oil Filter service for some brake line ideas. Ended up going with the 3~AN conversion and got banjo bolts and fittings to 3~AN stuff. Got their longest pre-made braided coated line at 48" along with a short side at 12". I grabbed a 3~AN Tee and an adapter to my metric line.

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Made and welded a simple mount to the tee.

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Then welded that mount to my passenger side spring plate. I wanted it removable for whatever reason.

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Passenger side line routed over the spring. Clearance is OK between the caliper and the spring pack. There's still enough room to get a ratchet in there to tighten down the banjo bolt.

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Driver side ready for some wheels.

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Mounted some wheels and got the rear on the ground. It was late but I thought I could get the front down too so I took off the old spacers, installed the new 8 lug converters and slipped a tire on to find that the studs were too long for the lug nuts I have. So I ended the night and got back to it the next day.


I did some measuring and trial fitting and found how much I needed to shave off. Afterwards I took a small triangle file and dressed the threads.

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Thanks Chad, I still haven't done any laptop tuning to that controller so I'll have to plan a time to come play on your laptop.
 
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