XM1027 - CUCV Crew Cab Build

I realized this morning that during my spending spree, I ordered four Grote White/Blue LED dome lights (new) which have yet to arrive. I almost have the Cummins far enough apart to send off for machining. If the weather holds out (it really feels like fall this morning), I'm going to start work on the suspension and boxing and stiffening the frame.

I hope everything is to your liking on parts. I am following this thread b/c I will be doing some of the same things come spring. I just got a 1990 6bt on trade so a repower is in the works.

Yes they are, I have a few pictures from the in-laws, but I'm going to wait until I receive them here locally to post. They were just what I was looking for

I'll be buying the parts from lavarok tomorrow, that should complete all of the CUCV related parts needs for this truck.

I was watching a video on a page talking about the JLTV project, when I noticed that Oshkosh is using the same or similar model Donaldson PowerCore PSD air cleaner/filter housing.

In this video (between 2:26 and 2:54):
[video]http://www.military.com/video/combat-vehicles/armored-vehicles/oshkosh-defense-latv-joint-light-tactical-vehicle-demo/1799616176001/[/video]

The box with the array of circular holes at the point where the top of the driver's side hood meets the A-pillar is the filter housing. Okay I'm geeking-out about air filters, but it did put a grin on my face when I saw the same filter I had chosen for my CUCV build was being used for a current development program. This build was always about creating something I thought the military should've had...

Stuff from lavarok is on its way (Thanks!). That concludes the CUCV parts search - now I just need those darn antennas...

The company that was occupying our time has returned home, so I'll be picking this back up. It's nice to see another member making an effort to the end of cramming a 6BT into a CUCV, take a peak at muddobber40's thread: voilà

He's a bit ahead of me with respect to getting the engine and transmission in, but it appears he has full time access to heavy machinery (and he doesn't need to do the 4WD swap too).

Next on my list is getting the 2WD front suspension out, and boxing the frame around the engine compartment so I can get the 4WD suspension in there. I'm also starting to kick myself now for not getting the Dana 80 axle - I can get a 3.54:1 ring set for cheaper than the Dana 70 set and there is a Detroit TruTrac available for the same. I have found a guy parting out an '05 F350 with a Dana 80 dually rear (and disc brakes!), I'm asking how much he wants for it...

[Dome Light Update:] Vendor got in touch with me finally (trying for a week to get them) - White/Blue(NVIS) dome light was back-ordered from Grote, but shipped today. I also notice yesterday that Grainger is marking all of the military light stuff as "clearance" - might suggest I was right about Grote getting out of the military light market [/DLU]

I received my shipment from lavarok today (Thanks!!) I should have enough parts to make it look like a CUCV now. I will be mixing and matching some pieces to get a full set from what I have ordered from you guys. The spare hitch will end up in a 2-1/2" receiver adapter.

Here's what I got from lavarok:

HI I was thinking about this too I have an 84 4 door 6.2 (out of M997) th 400 trany it is a p/u now not f/b too.

I think it would be awesome if we had a large number of this type of truck. It would make for an impressive convoy

Glad to see the Forum is back up!!! Thanks admins!!!

A few minor updates:

• Being sick sucks - this is the second time in three weeks (after a flu shot, so that was worth it...), and both times are just in time for a weekend...
• Ordered steel Wednesday for boxing in the frame, which should arrive in the beginning of next week. Steel is 1/4" bar stock, from my measure on the frame it's 3/8". This will stiffen it quite a bit.
• Grote dome lights came (Yay!!), these have both blue and white LEDs inside, I will wire this up to the blackout light switch so that any time the stop-lights, park, or service-drive circuits are on it will light white. Any time the blackout-marker or blackout-drive circuits are on it will light blue. They will not function when all lights are set to off. Of course the door(s) will have to be open to turn on at all normally, but I will put in a three position switch that allows me to turn them on manually, force them off, or use the door circuits to control them.
• Took a closer look at my selection for back-up light, and found it was marked "PC2" rather than the expected "R" - so they are only good as an auxiliary light (crap!!). I ordered and received a Maxxima-LED strip backup light which I will wedge in between the 2-1/2" receiver and the bottom edge of the bumper (semi-hidden). It's a pretty big light which isn't what I wanted, but hopefully it will not be so obvious when off and it is marked as "R" (not "R2" so I only need one, and thus I'm covered on the backup light issue).
• Ordered and received replacement Clear LED cab lights to replace the crumbling incandescent yellow ones that came in the truck - I am going to keep the style of cab lights, which is actually the 1990+ cab light style.
• In discussions with fuel cell vendor, I'm exploring my options with custom fuel cells (crash resistant, fire resistant, puncture resistant, self-sealing, foam filled). Having 100+ gallons sloshing around a turn could make evasive cornering, well... "interesting". Having a 100+ gallon diesel fuel spill sounds "expensive" on many levels.

Here's a few pictures of the light fixtures that arrived:

Before anyone else says it about the fuel tanks etc...: Yes, this project is suffering from feature creep.

The frame steel came, but so has the cold, windy, wet weather...

This weekend was spent preparing for a move (upgrading our domicile size) and my own computer server maintenance, the next few weeks will be pretty useless here - I may get to poke at the project a bit here and there, but I may be shut down for the next month or so. I think I may have missed the window for good painting weather, so I may need to just cover and hunker down.

I'm also spending some of my off-work hours finishing a project for my parent's that I should have finished before the summer.

[Edit: more to say... the mind continues to grind away]

I have also been mulling my options for the rest of the exterior lighting. I had originally been thinking of making the entire lighting system for the truck (both inside/outside) completely LED. The two items that I was getting stuck on were the headlights and the fog/floods.

I was originally going to go with Trucklite LED headlights, but I got to see the beam pattern and it's pretty bad in my opinion - it's my experience that the DOT standard is terrible compared to the ECE pattern (the fore-ground fill is missing in the DOT pattern, requiring driving lights...). I could run ECE lights since they are available, but I want to keep everything absolutely legal in case it is ever scrutinized by a hostile L.E.O. (it happens, you never know when you get the guy who just walked in on his wife with his Sargent ).

For headlights I was originally thinking HID, but with the street legal criteria, that is out. So there are two options for 200mm/6054/5"x7"/6"x8", Trucklite and John W. Speaker. Of the two of these it's my conclusion that the J. W. Speaker headlights have a more even pattern, and a better color and brightness. The drawback is the cost - the J. W. Speaker solution is about 2x the cost of the Trucklite solution.

For fog/flood which I don't plan to use on-road - the power will be locked out based on the parking brake and transfer case (parking brake on OR transfer case in low-range = "available"), so the limitations are fewer. Originally here again I was thinking HID, but I want as many lumens out of these fixtures as I can manage so that I don't have to use too many and screw with the look of the truck too much. A 100Watt HID set will put out about 6,000lumens per fixture (your average 60Watt reading light bulb will give you about 900lumens) - a common Chinese 35Watt HID illegal headlight set from e-place will output about 1,300lumens. So I started looking at the off-the-shelf solutions for LED, and I was not pleased. In order to get anywhere near the 100Watt HID option's lumens, I'd be looking at a fixture at least the size of the headlight, and $1000+ per set. I'm thinking now about rolling my own - I picked up a few 100Watt LEDs, and just ordered a few 500Watt LEDs. The 100Watt LED will get me about 9,000lumens per LED, and it is roughly the size of two 9V batteries side-by-side. The 500Watt LED is a whopper - at full rating it will blast out 50,000lumens and still only slightly larger than the 100Watt version. Powering the 500Watt version is harder though, and doing the simple math of 2 X 500Watt = 1kW and 1000Watts / 28.8Volts = ~35Amps - that's a lot of current. The 500Watt LED will fit in one of those nice 4.5" PAR36 military Aux light housings, so it will still look good on the truck, but I may have to get creative when cooling the light. Still... we're talking about as much light as a decent Stadium Flood Light with both running at full tilt - much better than what's available commercially for flood lights, and I can dim down if it's too bright. [/Edit]

In keeping with the LED theme, I moved the instrument cluster gauges from incandescent bulbs to white LEDs. However, I also desired to have functional NVIS illumination for the dash, much like the blue LED dome lights provide (with the addition of an IR filter) - so that when I switch the Master Vehicle Light Switch to "Blackout", I will swap from white illumination to NVIS compliant lighting. Apparently finding an LED vendor that will sell a small batch of NVIS compliant LEDs is pretty tough - but I found one vendor (and they are awesome!), and I have a bag of samples on the way.

This won't be used on normal city/highway drives or at night (DOT regs, and various vehicle codes preclude that), but occasionally when a night drive is being done off-road under cloudy new moon conditions, it will be nice to don a pair of NVG and "take-er for a spin". This falls under the same category as the antennas - sure I don't "need" them, but it is the right look for the truck, and I want everything to be actually functional (nothing "deactivated", "prop", or faked).

[Edit: Additional notes for the day] I've picked up three sets of aux-headlights from eplace - two sets will be in the front (one set cut into the grille with flood lenses, one set at the front license-plate location between the grille guard bars with spot lenses), and one set in the back (below the rear bumper - about the same level as the hitch receiver bar also with flood lenses). No matter what light source I end up using, these were going to be the assemblies I wanted.



[/Edit]

500Watt LEDs came

Here's the 500Watt LED between a 100Watt LED and the 28V armor headlight (for scale):


Just eyeballing it, I think it should fit inside the case with some wiggle room


Doing the math, I'm going to have to water-cool this LED, so I'll have to figure out how to do that without making it look bad - there are two Packard bullet connectors on the back that I can remove and plumb out 1/2" hoses (just have to figure out how to get power in). Also it runs on 72Volts @6.95Amps, so I may get to build a boost power supply for this, but I'm going to try to find a cheap/expedient solution for this through normal channels.

Not much happening AT the truck, I'm mostly collecting parts that I need so that I can mock up everything (clutch pedal parts, fuel tanks, mufflers, etc...). I'm also still looking for a Dana 80 rear with a 4.10 and down case so that I can run a 3.54 ring/pinion set. Also looks like I may have to run the PTO generator off the transmission instead of the transfer case due to space restrictions - in other words, I don't want to fill up the bed with toys, I want the full 4x8 bed floor available.

I have some of the lock hardware as well - I'm designing around commercial locksets, and trying to keep everything enclosed. The locks in the two front doors are a weak-point, they are just too easy to overcome. After that, the windows are the weak point, and then the internal-to-the-door locking mechanism hardware. I'm going to cover the exterior lock access with a coded key lock-box, that should reduce tampering and things like super glue "denial of service" attacks. The internal door hardware will be completely enclosed so there is nothing for anyone to grab onto with a coat hanger or some similar "tool". The doors will be using bear-claw latches in the original location, and at the bottom edge of the door, and mini-bear-claw latches at the top of the door. With the hinges, that will make 6-points of connection with the frame/body. I have found 24Volt power door lock actuators, and 24Volt power window units, so the luxuries will be retained

NVIS Class A dash board looks like it will happen thanks to a great vendor going the extra mile to help out the little guy (me). The sample bag they sold me arrived:



My cell camera does pretty good justice considering that the room is well lit when this picture is taken (so the camera's gain was affected by the LED). The output angle will work well inside a mechanical instrument cluster or an engraved panel dashboard face (could even transilluminate some of the critical knobs). I'll be working up a PWM controller that drives each LED individually so that I can individually match them without being locked in to a physical layout, this will be done using several WS2803 multi-channel LED controllers. These chips have 18 separate channels of LED control (PWM + current-limiting/regulation), and can be easily daisy-chained for a whole dashboard of fun. Being able to tune each LED in 1/255th steps should make it look like it came from the factory like this. One 18-channel part will do 9 pairs of White+GreenA (or 9-gauges if I cut corners and put all of the LEDs in a gauge in series).

The fun will come with the carPuter - which has a white backlight typically, but I need to modify it to support White+GreenA, then I need to tell the computer's graphics card to stop tying to output color and do greyscale without getting the computer too involved.


I also ordered the 24V power door locks, and I now have a lead on the 24V power window units. 24V wiper motor is in-hand as of today (yay), and a friend thinks he found me a clutch pedal assembly out of a similar year/model truck. I played around with a cardboard mockup and the HMMWV steering column, I need to read my ISO specs some more to make sure I'm doing the basic stuff right (i.e. where things are located). One more guy replied on Craig's List about a Dana 80 axle so I have to go visit him this weekend (might be a good week!).

tim292stro said:

Before anyone else says it about the fuel tanks etc...: Yes, this project is suffering from feature creep.

Click to expand...

I believe the best example of "feature creep" is the Harley Davidson "King Kong" which I believe is at the HD Museum.

Hopefully, mine isn't that ugly

Not hardly. At this very moment I'm contemplating leaving my wife for this yet-unfinished truck. Haha

BleedDemon said:

Not hardly. At this very moment I'm contemplating leaving my wife for this yet-unfinished truck. Haha

Click to expand...

Not sure how to reply to that without getting myself or you in trouble .


I fired up a few of my high powered LEDs this morning while my kid was busy eating oatmeal (only time I can squeeze in quick tasks at home if he's awake) - sorry, there won't be pcis yet, I had to hold the LED against the heatsink with one hand and turn the knobs on the bench supply with the other. In general - O... M... G...

I started with a 50Watt, dang that thing was bright - rating is 3.2Amps @ ~16VDC to output 2,000 lumens or a little more light than a normal 35Watt HID puts out (from a 3/8" x 5/8" square). I noticed that I cast a shadow against the 9-am morning sun-lit wall, and that was at 1Amp. By the time I turned it up to the rating of 3.2Amps, it was hard to even look in the direction of the bench - so I knew I was in for difficulty with the larger LEDs. The 100Watt LED was next - rating is 3.5Amps @ ~30VDC to output 9000 lumens. Let me just say that I believe the 9,000 lumen output number - by 10AM when I did this test, the LED made a noticeable and obvious impact on the light level in the room. Imagine a room with 10 x 60Watt incandescent bare light bulbs and you'll get the idea. I'm not sure how else to explain the light output without a picture. It's a stunning amount of light from a 1" square.

Since I couldn't take pictures while my hands were full, here's a video someone else shot of their 100Watt LED experience:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1jdpP46jx1Q

Edit, splitting due to 1-video/post limit...

The 500Watt LED stretched my ability to drive it with simple bench parts - its rating is 6.95Amps @ ~72VDC to output 55,000 lumens. I had to charge a few 56-Farad ultra capacitors I have from a paused car stereo project to run in parallel with the bench supply just to run the two boost supplies for any length of time (boost supplies step from 20-36Volts up to 60-80Volts, bench supply can only go up to 36VDC, and really only outputs 3Amps). I only had about 3 seconds of run-time with the capacitors I have (they need something charging them, so if nothing is available, it only lasts as long as they have enough energy). This experiment left and impression on me like I have rarely had in electronics. At the semiconductor company I work for as a day job (Nvidia), I was thoroughly impressed when they managed to get about 7.1 BILLION transistors into a silicon square of about 1" - large numbers from small things always make me smile.

55,000 lumens is a large number, and having it come from a square that's only 1-7/8" qualifies for impressing me. The one unfocussed 500Watt LED for three seconds while I was facing the other way (this is a 15'x12' room), was blinding. So how can I translate this into something that means something to you guys - here is a video from Youtube where the guy has 7 x 100Watt HID fixtures on his truck which produces about 82000 lumens (his number, not mine):


Another way of explaining this is if you are familiar with the Spectralab SX-16 "Nightsun" spot light found on many Sheriff helicopters, that unit's bulb produces 75,000 lumens when new. My plan if you recall is to use four total heads on the front of this truck, and two on the back - that's 220,000 lumens up front (half spot, half flood), and 110,000 lumens in the back. The closest thing I can find to 220,000 lumens is a 2500 Watt searchlight that's good for five miles

Even when I get this thing running in low range or "park", I have discovered the NEED to dim them during the day (especially the ones in spot focus!!). I will also have to use water cooling for the 500Watt LED, and for those who think that LEDs run cool, while that may be true on lower power devices - 500Watts is still 500Watts (1Watt = 3.41btu/hr, or 1700btu/hr each LED). I don't have to worry about ice build-up .