My BIG M925A2 Project Truck Is Home - Page 18 - Steel Soldiers::Military Vehicles Supersite

jfnemt1ff1 · 07-04-2009, 12:17

Looks like a little work, nice job so far. They are great looking trucks. I whis I lived near by it would be nice to work on it fits been a while since the goat was done, and I am still waiting to get the bat wing shop here from Michigan. I am looking at some 818 at gl close to me so I might just tow it back.
John

steelsoldiers · 07-04-2009, 14:43

I wish you were close by too! With your experience and work ethic, we could finish the whole truck in about a week!

steelsoldiers · 07-19-2009, 19:22

Yesterday was another 10 hour work day on the truck at John Winslow's. My main priority was to get the fuel system buttoned up and the air bled out. I was hoping to get it to run on diesel. Once I get it running, then I will be able to seal up the engine, mount the accessory drive, install the cooling system, etc...

First thing I tackled was getting the fuel line hooked up to the mechanical lift pump. Unfortunately, the fitting I purchased here at home was the wrong size. I spent the next hour wandering through the junk yard looking for the right one. I found hundreds of fittings, but nothing would work. Finally, I gave up and drove over to the Scotland Neck Napa to get the proper reducer. Once I got that threaded in I replaced the primary and secondary fuel filters and used the lift pump to get fresh fuel to the injection pump.

Once I had fuel to the IP, I needed to get all of the injector lines hooked back up. That was a challenge because they had all been knocked out of allignement when the military guys yanked the IP before the truck was scrapped. It was a real PITA to get them all started, but after about 30 minutes I had them all started loosely.

Last step before cranking it over was hooking up the return line. There is a rubber line with a banjo fitting that goes from the IP to a copper line that runs back to the tank. Some dimwit had snipped the copper line in two under the truck and stole the back half. The remains of the rubber line had a nice mud dobber nest in it. I took off the rubber remains and replaced it with a good line from the parts truck.

Time for some cranking. I borrowed a deuce from John and got out my slave cable. I used that to crank the truck over allowing the stop solenoid and starter to cool off at certain intervals. After quite a bit of cranking I had fuel seeping at 2 of the nuts. Hmmm.... Then, Casey, who was having John work on his truck yesterday, wandered by to see what was up. He manned the ether can and we cranked the engine and ran it for short bursts on ether. Finally we fuel at 4 nuts. Hmmmm.... why is it taking so long to get the air bled out. I loosened the inlet fitting at the pump to make sure we had good fuel pressure and a geyser of fuel covered me, the truck, and Casey. Wow, that's a lot of line pressure! Casey left and I fiddled around some more with the engine. Finally, I loosened the return line fitting and got a burst of air and fuel! I guess the mud dobbers nest bits had continued down into the copper line and plugged it! That would explain the air lock and lack of starting!

I ran out of time and packed up the tools. Hopefully I'll get back in a few weeks to finish the job. I also got the alternator mounted while I was there giving the starter a cool down. One less thing to worry about!!

Pics later. I only had my camera phone to get them.

cranetruck · 07-19-2009, 19:55

Hey Chris, your explanations are excellent, who needs pictures.

It must be a pain working away from home, especially when it comes to fittings, I must have 500 total in boxes and can usually find adapters, plugs, JIC types, compression types, nipples etc etc, needed for just about anything, but that would not be the case working in a field some place.
Thanks for keeping us up-to-date.

scooter01922 · 07-19-2009, 20:11

Keep up the good work, i feel your pain working on a truck far from home. The M35A1 has finally moved to the MV storage location 15 min from home as opposed to its previous resting place 2.5 hours away. Now if only the m108 wasn't 3+ hours north of here. Cheap trucks rock but the location often sucks.

Crash_AF · 07-20-2009, 15:21

Looking good... I hope my progress with my 936A2 goes as well once I can start working on it again.

Later,
Joe

steelsoldiers · 07-20-2009, 16:39

Bjorn, it is a pain to work so far from home. I could use your fitting supply for sure! John has a decent amount of fittings if there is an emergency or the hardware is closed.

Scott, I hope you can get the 108 relocated too. Those are cool trucks.

Joe, thanks. I hope you get to start on your project again soon.

Here are the pics as promised. They're not bad for Blackberry pics. The first one shows the new lift pump, the solenoid bracket, the new solenoid, the IP, and the injector lines. The return line can be seen coming from the front of the pump. I am going to substitute a section of clear tubing in the meantime so I can check for air etc... I'll just run it into a fuel can until the hard line goes back on.

The second pic is the front of the engine. The shiny gear is for the injection pump. I also got the radiator support bracket mounted on the lower right engine mount. They share bolts with the engine mount so when it was robbed the engine dropped down a bit. I had to apply a bottle jack to the oil pan to get things lined up again. Once I can prove the engine is a runner, I will put the timing cover back on along with a new crank seal, crank balancer, and fan clutch.

The third pic shows the alternator in place. It also shows the badly mangled PS ram stone shield/tranny cooler bracket. I have a good used one to go in its place along with a good, used ram and some flex lines.

The last pic is a front view. It will look a lot better once the smashed bumper is gone, the new winch is mounted, and the hood goes back on. The hood will have to wait until the radiator goes back in. It will be a lot easier to maneuver the rad with the hood off.

That's all for now!!

steelsoldiers · 08-14-2009, 06:22

Well, I lucked out and had the day off yesterday, so I figured that was a sign I need to go to Winslow's and do some wrenching!

Even though it rained most of the morning, I had the most productive day I have ever had down there. Usually it is one fubar after another, but I was rolling yesterday.

Since I wanted to try and run the engine, I needed to make sure the tranny was freshened up with fluids and filters. I pulled the pan, found some nastiness in the bottom, swapped out the filter, put on a new pan gasket, swapped the pick-up tube o-ring, and torqued the pan back down. The biggest PITA was trying to get the dip stick tube nut to come loose! I had to break out the 24" pipe wrench to get it started!! I completed the tranny service with a fresh spin-on filter in the engine compartment, a new dip stick, and a case and a half of Dexron 3.

Next up was closing up the engine. I cleaned everything up in the timing gear case in prep for the gasket and cover. I lathered both sides with RTV sealant, put on the new gasket and torqued the cover into place. I had to use an alignment tool supplied with the new crank seal to align the cover. Once that was done, I was able to beat the new seal in place over the crank. That was probably the 2nd biggest hassle of the day since it wanted to wobble all over instead of going in straight!

After the cover was done I installed the harmonic balancer, the new fan clutch, the engine oil dip stick tube, and the dip stick. In order to get the fuel system right, I needed to figure out the problem with the return line. Turns out it wasn't downstream in the metal line. There was a mud dobber nest in the bano fitting that bolts to the injection pump! I hate those things!! It took a good bit of jabbing with an allen key and a zip-tie to get that crap out of the fitting. The return was flowing well after that. I ran it into my 5 gallon fuel can so I could keep track of the amount of fuel coming out.

With that done, I hooked up a slave cable to one of John's deuce's to do some cranking. I hoped to get all of the air out of the lines and get it running. After about 10 cranking sessions, I had fuel coming out of 5 of the 6 nuts at the pump and the engine would sputter a bit. I tightened all of the nuts down and cranked some more. It sputtered and sputtered and finally roared to life with a big cloud of smoke and some pissed-off bees!! I guess they had a home in the muffler!! LOL!!

I am psyched that it runs!! I wish you could here the engine in the video better! That dang deuce roaring in the background about drowns it out. There was a nice turbo whistle so I know that it is good. Yes!!!!

Next time, I will get the cooling system put back together so I can let the engine site there and idle for a while so I can dump the oil, swap out oil pans and put in new oil and a filter.

It's coming together y'all! I'll post the pics and video tonight! What a project! It sure feels good to make some real progress!

frodobaggins · 08-14-2009, 11:41

Can't wait to see it.

steelsoldiers · 08-14-2009, 19:01

As promised, here are some pics of yesterday's session and a video of the engine running. I forgot to mention that I also got a new fuel line installed for the fuel-burning heater and test-fired it yesterday too. The old one poured fuel all over the exhaust

The engine you hear running at the start of the video is the deuce next door. I had it idled up to supply more juice to the 925A2. You can't really hear the 8.3 purring, but you can see a nice smoke cloud drifting away. I think that's where the pissed off bees came from.