American in Austria 83 Build

[44boggers]

Got some break lines bent up today. I have both front lines and the rear brake line from the prop valve down to the frame. I have the rear line already made up but I am switch everything to stainless steel line and fittings. Nothing to exciting to report, just a few pics. I still need to install a plug for the second front brake line out on the prop valve since I will only run one line out.

I still need to run a few more brake line clamps, but I would say the front brake set up is 99 percent done. I think it came out pretty clean on from the prop valve down to the frame. I really didnt want brakelines all over the place like the stock set up.

These pics show how much dust has collected over thel ast couple years of sitting. Driving my OCD crazy

Thats it for now.

Paul

[44boggers]

Ok, got some stuff done but also realized I made a big mistake 2 years ago. First the stuff that looks good. I finished cut and buffing the AC delete cover so it will match the firewall perfect.

Now for the big mistake. Two years ago when I drilled a hole in the firewall for my spark plug firewall pass thru thing, I just happened to mount it directly in the same spot where part of my heater box (interior) will be. So now the end of the box hits it not allowing me to bolt down the box or keep the spark plug on.
I really dont want to remove the spark plug pass thru because it will leave a big hole in the firewall which is in final paint.

One option might be to modify the heater box. Basically shaving the end of the box and using some epoxy to seal it back up. But also the vacuum actuator is also in the way. I would also need to shave that down and hopefully the epoxy will do the trick.
Or another option would be to ditch the bulk head fitting altogether and just put in a larger grommet that would cover the hole plus screw holes and just run the plug wire directly from the MSD coil to the dist. That way I dont need to mess with the box or mess up the box. I dont think its possible to shorten the bulk head fitting. Basically to shave down the copper prong.
The pics are below. Let me know what you guys think. Basically it was piss poor planning on my part and I did not double check everything that would be on the inside.

[44boggers]

Alright, got it sorted out. Its not the 100 percent best solution but the less invasive. I am not sure if I will be able to get the plug wire off if I have to but at least i know it wont fall off.

I ground the edge of the heater box and bent the vacuum actuator edge over a bit and it all fits now. Now on to the next project.

[44boggers]

Ok finally finished the heater dilemma. I removed the the studs that are attached to the box for two reasons. With the AC delete panel it was difficult to line up the holes that hold the box to the firewall and the stainless steel button head bolts look better in my opinion. Im not sure what most people do to seal up around the heater core inlets but I had some grommets that fit perfect and will seal it tight once the hoses are installed.

Happy new year

[twinturboc10]

What kind of AN hose are you using for power steering pressure line? Not many of them are rated for that kind of pressure (1200 psi). It would suck to have one let go after all your work!

[44boggers]

Originally Posted by twinturboc10

What kind of AN hose are you using for power steering pressure line? Not many of them are rated for that kind of pressure (1200 psi). It would suck to have one let go after all your work!

I’ll have to double check. It was a long time ago I bought the hose. But I thought u remember it being ok for high pressure. But I’ll double check for sure. Thanks for the insight!!

[44boggers]

Originally Posted by twinturboc10

What kind of AN hose are you using for power steering pressure line? Not many of them are rated for that kind of pressure (1200 psi). It would suck to have one let go after all your work!

Good call. Just checked, its an Earls braided line rated up to 500 PSI. Guess I need to find something else!

But thanks a lot, that would have been a huge mess.

[44boggers]

Got a few more little things tied up. I replaced the power steering hose with a 3000 PSI rated hose. One thing you will have to do when using actually power steering hose opposed to fuel braided hose is get steel fittings. I battled for a long time to get my standard aluminum AN fittings to fit over the power steering hose, but this also entailed shaving back the out liner of the hose. But I did not trust it and figured it shouldnt be this way. Then I thought about my hydraulic steering on my rock crawler and the fittings i have for them. So I found some Earls black steel fittings. Those ended up fitting perfect. The outer diameter is larger on the outer sleeve and the part that slides into the hose is smaller (the ID on the power steering hose is smaller than standard -6AN hose.

The other problem i encountered is that it is basically impossible to expanded power steering hose, so I could not get the return line to slide over the barb fitting coming out of the pump. Yes I know I could have used standard hose for this but my OCD would not allow me to have two different hoses next to each other.

So what I did was use a few inches of my fuel hose, put on a 90* fitting, then mated that with a 45* degree fitting to the power steering hose. So now you will just see the same power steering hoses. I know this cost me another $30 but its worth the cost of satisfying my OCD.

A few other things I got done were installing the TV geometry corrector on my FITECH throttle body and installed a lokar TV cable (my stock TV cable was a bit messed up)

Also installed the Air ducting in the cab. I am removing all the chrome on the vents and painting them black.

[44boggers]

I picked up a sand blasting cabinet and powder coating set up a few weeks back so I could take care of some smaller parts I needed done. I figured the convenience of having my own made it all worth the money. I was able to get all my engine pulleys coated as well as brake pedal assembly, gas pedal and parking brake assembly.

I had to make some slight adjustments to my new power steering brackets, cause as they came from the manufacturer it would not allow me to get the correct angle on the pulley. Meaning that when the pulley was installed it was laid back a few degrees compared to the crank pulley. I ended up having to grind the top part of one bracket which allowed me to tilt the pump forward, add some washers for the spacing and now everything lays at the same angle. And since i have my own powder coating set up i could just sandblast and recoat the grounded bracket.
I also drilled and tapped the boss on the pass side of my intake for the temp gauge for my dakota digital dash. I did not want to mount the sensor in the head and have wires so close to my headers.

Its nice to get some of these small things finished up. I also used some stainless steel button head bolts to mount the parking brake and gas pedal so I didnt have studs sticking out into the firewall. I think it made a cleaner look.

[44boggers]

continued pictures.

[44boggers]

And last one of the parking brake assembly mounted.

I am also switching to an 1984+ parking cable cause the original style would have run into my exhaust. Ill post some pics of how I will have it all mounted up and attached to the brake side of the cables.

[44boggers]

I was able to knock a few more things off the list. I rebuilt my steering column and repainted it, got my Borgeson ujoint steering shaft cut to length, powder coated and installed. Man having my own sandblasting cabinet and powder coating gun saves me a lot of time and hassle.

I ran into one weird problem. After I installed my steering column my shifter linkage to my 700 r4 was about 1" short. Its weird because it is the original, trans is original and so is the steering column. So how could it no longer have enough length??

So I took the rod out and I noticed the bottom side of the rod where it connects to the trans side was ground down. When I had my frame powder coated a few years back i brought the powder coater some smaller parts to also be done, this rod was one of them. But the bottom side of the rod does not have powder coat on it and you can see the blue hot marks from a grinder. Unless I blacked out one day in the garage and ground it myself, i have no recollection of grinding the bottom, and why would I? And I have no idea why the powder coating place would have ground that themselves, unless they completely messed something up and grinding 1" off was better than telling me something happened. WHo knows.

So I guess what I will do now is by some similar rod and weld on about 1" to the bottom and repowder coat it myself.

So that will be next on the list and then the steering system will be finished.
After that is done, I will dive more into the interior wiring until the weather gets better over here and then start working on the bed floor.

Paul

[44boggers]

I got the shifter rod sorted out. For whatever reason it was shortened about 1.5". I welded on some additional rod, powder coated it and now everything is how it should be.

[44boggers]

The last few weeks I started to tackle the wiring in the truck. I have about 90 percent of my painless harness wired as well as my dakota digital dash. I think I am putting the cart before the horse here a bit, but I havent had the time to work on the body , so I figured i would get a head start on the wiring. Anyway that is sorting itself out alright.

Moving to the rear of the truck, I took the axle back out of the truck and stripped off the shock mounts, spring perches and brake line holders, so I could get ready to sort out my pinion angle and weld on new spring perches instead of using a flip kit. I got my pinion right around 1* negative (i first got the pinion and trans/motor parallel to each other, but opposite degrees) and then pushed the pinion down around 1* to compensate for the axle rotating under acceleration. After the pinion was set I tacked in the perches.

Next thing is to move onto the shock mounts. This is where I am a little unsure of how I should mount them. I thought I read somewhere factory shocks were mounted around 30* to help with axle wrap. Then I read people use the shock extenders to create a better shock angle. So what degree of shock angle should i shoot for.

My shocks fully extended have around 8 1/4" of shaft showing. I was thinking of having them at right height with around 3" of shaft showing. With this amount of shaft showing and the shock around 30* it looks like I would have need to make my shock mounts around 3.5" longer than stock.
Is that close to what the shock extenders are?

Now one more thing to discuss which is a big concern of mine. I was measure the wheel base when I noticed the driver side is around 3/4" to 1" shorter the pass side. This was a bit of a surprise to me because when i drove the truck prior to taking it apart it drove straight and there were no issues. BUT the frame was cracked at the steering box and there were a **** load of shims on the driverside A arm. I dont ever remember the driver side wheel looking like it was not centered in the wheelwell.

I am not really sure how to proceed from here, but I am going to worry about it when its time to. Cause right now the truck is so far along and everything from the A arm back is straight, I am going to continue working on the rear end and and begin the body work on the bed. I mean the PO was able to make it drive perfect under its current circumstances. Maybe I can find a frame repair shop somewhere in austria or germany who can do some corrections without beating the crap out of my powder coating.

Thanks for any input.

Paul

[44boggers]

Got a few more things knocked off the list today. I got my parking brake cable assembly all put together. I used the lokar/wilwood cable for the rear cables and then mated it to a 84-87 front cable. My exhaust was in the way to use the '83 dual cable style, plus this is much cleaner and easier.
I needed to sort out a way to attach the front cable to the wilwood equalizer, so what i did was use a stainless steel 3mm wire rope eye lit. I need to drill out the eyelet a bit to fit the pin through, but other than that it was an easy clean install. I used some wire shrink wrap to secure the ends of the cut wire, as you will see in the pics. Only thing i need to finish is to buy some more stainless steel button head bolts to secure the cables to the frame.

I started making the rear shock mounts, I decided to mount the shock so its at a 30* angle (which is what I believe stick was). Unfortunately my shocks are too long to mount them at a more vertical angle, but this isnt a race truck so I will just really on factory engineering. I will pretty much split the shock in half regarding travel, about 4" of shaft showing. Once I have the shock mounts tacked in, I am going to pull the axle again and put in the new gears and locker and get it painted for the final time.

I did notice my driver side leaf springs sit about 1/2" lower than the pass side. I will figure out a way to re-arch which ever springs are sagging so ride height is equalized.

Paul

[44boggers]

Now one more thing to discuss which is a big concern of mine. I was measure the wheel base when I noticed the driver side is around 3/4" to 1" shorter the pass side. This was a bit of a surprise to me because when i drove the truck prior to taking it apart it drove straight and there were no issues. BUT the frame was cracked at the steering box and there were a **** load of shims on the driverside A arm. I dont ever remember the driver side wheel looking like it was not centered in the wheelwell.


For anyone actually reading this thread (maybe im just writing thoughts down at this point but either way). It just occurred to me that maybe, just maybe the reason why my wheel base is off side to side is because I had the entire front crossmember out of the frame when i powder coated. When I bolted everything back together I never thought to check if the engine crossmember was bolted up square. If it was not bolted up square then I think that could throw my wheelbase squareness out of whack because my A arms are bolted to the engine crossmember. So if i bolted it just a bit out of square that could be enough to through the wheel base measurments off. I am not sure how much adjustment there actually is but I think I remember there being enough to fudge the numbers.

Any thoughts? I wonder how easy it will be to actually move all that with the motor sitting in there. Its worth a try and really the only thing i can think of which could cause this, because there was not any damage at the A arms, only the crack at the steering box, but that shouldnt mess with the wheelbase since it is in front of the suspension.

We will see

[Big Moose]

Maybe you could measure from different reference points on the frame to the rear axle on each side to make sure that checks out

[44boggers]

Originally Posted by Big Moose

Maybe you could measure from different reference points on the frame to the rear axle on each side to make sure that checks out

Yes I will do that. I did measure from the same point on the axle to 3 different locations before the A arms (so closer to the axle) For example, the body mount bolt and some other points. All of those were roughly 1/16" to 1/8" off. It was until I measured to the lower ball joint grease fitting that i was around 3/4" off on the driver side

[44boggers]

Rear shock mounts are done. They are roughly 4 inches longer than stock and I layed the shocks out at roughly 29 degrees. I am not sure what stock is but i dont think they are more vertical than that.

Now I will pull the axle out, Fully weld the perches and shock mounts and then install the locker and new gears.

Paul

[44boggers]

Chopping away at it. All the brackets and leaf pads have been fully welded and I dont think the axle warped, so that is good!!! I was having major problems with my welder, i think my whip is going to ****, so i have new one on order.

I finished getting my new gears dialed in, going with a 3.73 gear set and an Eaton Tru trac locker.

My final set up with the gears was the back lash at .006 to .007/.008, mostly on the .007/8 side. Spec calls for .007 - .009. It is set up on the tight side of spec, but with the shim pack they provided i could not get it better. With a .002 shim difference it put me in the .010 - .011 backlash which is way to loose.

I got extremely lucky. I made set up bearings for the pinion, but the very first set of shims i put in seem to put me in a good place. At least I think it is. The pattern is right in the middle on both sides of the tooth and with the .007 backlash it seemed to yield the best pattern. Let me know if I am missing something with the pattern but to me I think its where it should be.

I used a new bearing and bored out the center to make the set up bearing and ordered up the exact same bearing i will press on , that way there is not, or should not be any variance with the bearing size.

Next thing in order is to strip it all down, clean it, paint it and do the final install.

[44boggers]

Well after talking to some members on the board it came to my attention i needed to make my gear pattern better. So after taking the gear in and out about 15 times. I ended up with a much better pattern and closer to where it should be.

I got it all back together and painted everything up. Ill post pics of that tomorrow.
On monday I am going to pick up my wheels and tires. I am pretty excited to finally see it sitting on some wheels.

[44boggers]

I got a big burst of motivation today after seeing my tires mounted up, axle back under the truck and the bed floor laid on the frame. I am very happy with how the tires and wheels look. I think I will need to run a wheel spacer front and rear to dial in the backspacing, but I think the rear is very close. While I was picking up the wheels and tires in Eastern Austria, I stopped by a trucking repair company, Schwarzmüller, and I was able to wait while they shortened my driveshaft about 1.5 inches.
The next thing I will start on is welding in the pop up fuel filler and then filling in the gaps between to make it all flow together smooth.
The wheels are:
Vossen VFS1- 20X10.5 - ET+10 (~5.5” backspacing) Satin Black
Vossen VFS1- 20X8.5 - ET+20 (~6” backspacing) Satin Black
The tires are:
Pirelli P Zero 255/40/20 and 315/35/20

I actually ordered their minimum ET for each wheel which was ET 5 and ET 15 but for what ever reason the ET 10 and ET20 showed up. Ive been waiting since november for the wheels so Im not sending them back. I mean we are only talking about 5mm. I will use wheel spacers anyway to get the BS right.

[44boggers]

The filler neck is not in the exact position and I still need to enlarge the hole to the filler neck sits completely flush to the bed floor.

I need to bring my real leaf springs to a shop a couple hours away, since one pack was sitting lower than they other I decided to take them apart. Well there was only 2 leaves in total that were the same height. So I am hoping they can heat them up and put them back to the same height.

[44boggers]

Its been a while since I posted, life has been busy, but I have been chopping away at it. I have 95 percent of my wiring all done. I am waiting on a dakota digital fan controller and then the interior wiring other than the stereo system is finished.
I did not have the original dash speaker corner brackets so I simply just made my own which cradle the 3" speaker, powder coated it and bolted it in the original location. It sits just below flush of the dash so there should not be any interference with the dash pad.
I received my radiator from Wizard Cooling in New York. I am very happy with how it came out, a nice shroud with dual Spal fans.
Brakes have been bled. I had to redo all of my flares on my brake lines. I have never had a fitting leak until I used this stainless steal brake line. Literally every fitting with a 45 degree leaked. The flares looked good to me (normal). I tried loosening and re-tightening but nothing would fix it. So I decided to convert everything to AN fittings, problem solved.
I had my bed floor and wheel wells sandblasted, which I then epoxied and sprayed bedliner top and bottom. I decided to go the bedliner route because I want to be able to through bags or whatever in the bed and not be afraid to scratch up the paint.
I am also happy with how the fuel filler came out. I think it looks clean and like it is supposed to be there.

I am gone for the next 5 weeks but when I get back I will finish the wiring and drop the radiator in and be able to drive it out of my garage for the first time in 4 or 5 year. Then its time to fit the door, fender and hood gaps and finish the body work. I think there is a light at the end of the tunnel. Oh yeah and the most import, get it TUV approved to drive in Austria.

[44boggers]

A few more pics of the bed, fuel filler connecting hose and tire clearance.