Steel Soldiers::Military Vehicles Supersite - View Single Post

steelsoldiers · 09-21-2009, 03:23

It's time for another M925A2 work-day recap! I went down to Winslow's on Saturday morning. I had the Excursion chock full of tools and parts for the day's work. I was planning on doing some wiring, air line, and body work.

The first thing I notice when I pulled up was signs of progress! Pete, John's son-in-law, has been working on the truck for me to help speed the project along a little. The best I can do is every other weekend and sometimes not even that often. So, Pete had removed the twisted front bumper, removed the damaged winch, bolted in the good winch, and installed the air intake stack with accessory lines. Good work, Pete!

The first project I tackled was hooking up the air lines to the fan clutch actuator. I had installed the actuator last time, but couldn't get the lines hooked to it because I didn't get the right fittings

After that, I soldered a few wires back together behind the cluster and repaired/replaced some air lines in the dash that went to the air pressure gauges and spring brake override switch. Then, I was able to reinstall the cluster with some shiny new screws.

Once that was done, I removed the soft top in preparation for swapping out the windshield frame. The old one was from a parts truck at John's and the soft top mounting rail looked like swiss cheese. I found a good, used frame at Clark Truck. They had cleaned it, chased the threads, and painted it for me already so it was ready to go in. I had to chisel off the old inner windshield screws because they were so badly rusted. Once the inner frames were free, I was able to install the outer frame and then bolt in the inner frames. Much better!

I was going to start on the headlight switch harness, but ran short on time. That will be priority one next time.

To finish the day, I installed a newly rebuilt protective control box from Bjorn, aka Cranetruck. It eliminated all of the circuit boards and other fragile stuff. It is now just 2 beefy relays and a zener diode. It works like a champ. Since the starter disable circuit was eliminated, I didn't have any of the starting problems like I had last time. The starter kept cranking until I let off of the switch. Good job, Bjorn.

I started the truck several times to check a few things. It revs up well with minimal smoke. It should clean up after it has been run a bit. From my 2007 auction photos, I can tell this truck has been sitting dead for more than a few years, so it's amazing it runs at all. It had 60 psi of oil pressure at cold start up.

Over the next couple of weeks, Pete is going to replace a few things on the power steering system for me and swap out the crushed oil pan for a good one off of a parts truck. It's almost ready for a test drive. If it just had some brakes!!

More reports later!