steelsoldiers

Holy cow, what a day! It's good to be home. My brother and I met at John's at a 8am. We immediately located the 925 parts donor and soaked it with Kroil to get things loosened up for later. While it was soaking, we looked over the 925A2 to make a plan of attack.

The first order of business was a liberal application of Kroil to all rusty engine fasteners. After that,, we threaded in the harmonic dampener bolts to give us something to bar against. Using a large pry bar, I was able to turn the engine back and forth about 3*. Hmm, what could be the hold up? Ah, the air compressor has been sitting without the unloader assembly on the top for quite some time. I bet the piston is rusted solid.

Chad gathered his tools and set off across the yard while I began removing the power-steering pump. The bottom nut wasn't too bad to get off. The top one was only accessible by removing the reservoir. Once that was off, I began removing the air compressor. The bottom nut was in a terrible spot. It only allowed for small wrench rotation before removing the wrench and starting again. Once that was finally off, I removed the oil line, the air intake line, the coolant lines and the high pressure lines. Then, the top nut was removed. With everything removed, the compressor still wouldn't budge. Turns out it was rusted solid and the gear wouldn't un-mesh from the cam gear. A little whacking, oil, cussing, and finally it cam free.

With the compressor removed, the engine would now bar over pretty easily. Satisfied with that knowledge, I went to see how Chad was doing with the parts truck. The parts truck had been swamped during a hurricane by the Dare County Sheriff's Office. That meant that everything was rusted nicely. Luckily, Chad brought his air compressor and impact tools. We tackled the windshield hinges first. Then, we snapped off the mirror bolts and removed them. Last thing before lunch, we removed the passenger seat.

After lunch, I went to work on installing the starter while Chad went back to parts pulling. Chad removed the complete instrument cluster from the donor truck along with the warning light center, switches, etc... I wrestled the starter into position, bolted it up, and them called for help.

We used a combination of a slave cable, a slave receptacle, and jumper cables to provide power to the starter. We wanted to wire the receptacle directly to the starter lugs, but the terminals were too small and I didn't have a drill so we improvised. Chad clicked the remote starter switch and.... nothing. WTF?! Turns out the ground lug on the starter was loose internally. I fiddled with it a bit and it started working. We got the engine to crank over quite a few times. We didn't have enough juice going to the starter to really get it cranking though. There was some smoke coming out of the exhaust so there is compression. After we cranked it a few time, Chad gave it a huff of starting fluid and it roared to life with a cloud of smoke out of the exhaust pipe!! Woohoo!!

So, it looks like the truck is going to live after all. Now I need to score the rest of the critical engine parts from Halftrack, like the injection pump and a dent-free oil pan. I am going back down on the Sunday after Turkey Day to work some more. Hopefully I'll get the engine running on diesel that time.

In the meantime, it's back to parts hunting! Pics and some video tomorrow after I get a chance to upload them at work.

Thanks for the parts Jason and John. Thanks for all of the wrench-turning Chad!!

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Chris Stansbury, founder of Chris' CUCV Homepage in 1998 and Steel Soldiers in 1999.

1985 AMG M998 HMMWV w/ Cummins 6BT

Father, lead me, 'cause I can't do this alone.