M211 crew cab crusade

Got a little more time in on it today, more painting completed.

Looks like a different truck now.

Sure does.

Thumper and crew did a right spiffy job on getting the old Army Iron looking sweet.

Made a a stencil of the decepticon logo. All loaded up for the holiday light parade tomorrow night, gonna get wet hanging lights on it tomorrow, but it will be fun.

We will be there to cheer you folks on as you cruise through the parade.

Good bet it will be the only 60 year old Army Iron there.
A real "Blast-outta-da-past" If ya get it up to 88 MPH will it take ya back to 1954 ??

Your truck is looking awesome!

Some pictures from tonight parade.

That's great; almost better than Mardi Gras!

And your camo paint is terrific; reminds me of the dazzle schemes of the various navies, but I can't remember if that was WWI or WWII (or maybe even both).

So since the parade is over, things have calmed down and back to working on the house finishing up projects to get it up for sale. For Christmas thought some one was getting me a hand gun, but turned out to be a new used intake and exhaust manifolds for "Onslaught" so hopefully this will take care of the exhaust leaks. Need to get a new valve cover gasket as well to seal up a pretty decent oil leak. Also have some paint touch up to do as the tape used to hold the Christmas lights in place pulled some of it off. Lots of things to keep busy with, but you guys know this already.

Seems that finding manifolds for these is like finding "Chicken teeth"
Been looking since early fall and did find a new old stock intake, but exhausts just don't seem to show up.

Finally, after much snooping online and poking around I got hold of a fella in Oklahoma that thought he had a good set.

"Fingers crossed"

A few days pass and a couple pix show up on my phone "YESSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS"

Sent the guy a check and in about a week it shows up.
Box is destroyed and the manifold is half hanging out the side, but it's not hurt.

Dirty is the key word here.
Looks to have been in a pond somewhere as it was filled with dried mud.

With Christmas coming fast I wanted it ready to go, or at least looking good.

With the amount of dirt on this beast it was going to need to be split in half (intake and exh parted)

Some generous soaking of the bolts and nuts that hold the pair together yielded some success, as the nuts came off the two studs that hold the intake and exhaust together.

The two outer 3/8" bolts however were a different story and the heads snapped off.

I got the exhaust across town to our fav auto machine shop and let him blast the beast in his bead blaster.

The thing looks great.

Soooo, to get things ready for Christmas I stuffed the new intake together with the refurbed exh to get it ready.

Sadly the intake is new and uncut, and the flanges are not the same height.

We will clean the original intake and get the broken bolts out along with a trip to the bead blaster.

An interesting point.
The heat riser plate loosened right up and even the little lock bolt on the adjustment arm came out with minimal grief.

Getting the two broken bolts out will take some tedious fooling to drill out the old ones and then re-tap the holes.

Getting the thing on the mill table and going after the old bolts with an end mill is likely going to be the easy fix.

Once the bolts are removed to tape drill size (5/16") the rest is an easy few minutes with a 3/8-16 tap to remove the old thread portion of the bolt that will remain in the holes.

As Thumper said, this should do wonders for fixing the exhaust leaks.

The one worry left is that the rig had been run so long with blown gaskets that the head is eroded around the ports some.

WE may have to sand blast the edges of ther ports and build them up with a ceramic material.

(Sort of like JB weld and hardens. GOOD FOR 2100 degrees F )

I had not thought about building up the area around the exhaust port with a ceramic material.

How much does it shrink when it cures? I was thinking maybe it could be used around all the ports to help seal the gasket. Thoughts?

SturmTyger380 said:

I had not thought about building up the area around the exhaust port with a ceramic material.

How much does it shrink when it cures? I was thinking maybe it could be used around all the ports to help seal the gasket. Thoughts?

Click to expand...

Ceramic is going to be mighty brittle, and just wondering if vibration won't break it all up no matter where you put it.

Just found a link to a YouTube video from the holiday light parade. 24 minutes long, but the rig is towards the front of the parade right after the fire engines at the 3:30 mark.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hnpvpXPIn6U

What a great Christmas story for the G749 to be painted, decorated and paraded all in a short period of time. The whole video is worth watching but seeing that decorated 211 full of smiling troops is over the top.

The automatic makes it easy on the parade route and for the riders as long as everyone knows when it's going to shift. Really appreciate you digging up the video, very family friendly.

Wow!!!!
The M211 looks great!!!
Great to see the platoon riding in the back!!
That's a pretty impressive Light Parade!!

Thanks, I have some major rust repair to deal with on the windshield frame, but other than that it's pretty good.

ThumperTDC said:

Just found a link to a YouTube video from the holiday light parade. 24 minutes long, but the rig is towards the front of the parade right after the fire engines at the 3:30 mark.

Click to expand...

That light parade is such a terrific idea; great use of the community emergency equipment!

Any more progress or planning going on in regards to the ten stud hub adaptors, air brakes??
I am curious to know how this is going to proceed. Brake drum/ shoe adaptation with the s cam and pods?
I know there are ten bolt adaptors already out there made by some great guys, whom I mentioned to you earlier in your thread, but I am interested to know if the commercial ten bolt pattern is different than what is used on the 5 tons.
If indeed it is the same sized pattern it would open up many differing wheel combinations, many of which would be more appealing to those of us with out an abundance of MV parts and tires around us.
Any body know for sure if the military 10 bolt pattern is the same as commercial or not??

No progress on the other rig. The only real place to work on the rig is outside. The rains have set in so we will have to wait for nice weather to get back at it. When I was painting "Onslaught" I was able to do that in the hay barn where a few hours here and there wouldn't impact the boarders in the barn. I wish we had a shop where we could work on the rig when ever.

Im in the middle of getting my house ready to sell and hopefully will be having a new one built. I was wanting to find a couple of acres to where I could build a shop, but my wife who grew up in the country, isn't ready to move back just yet, so we found a lot here in town.............but it's gonna have a 3 car garage with one bay a double deep, so basically a 4 car garage. So when it comes to to the sheet metal fabrication I might be able to bring it down to my place to work on it.

I might as well add a few tid bits.

The battle to get "onslaught" ready for the parade in December was just that, A BATTLE.

The exhaust manifold was a train wreck and had been let go to the point that any real hope of salvage was just not there.

We did manage to get the pair (int/exh) re-machined to the point that the intake would seal good and the beast runs pretty good, but sadly the two center exh ports were so badly burned that they really needed another 1/16 or more cut off to clean up, and such still leaked badly.

Parade was a success though.

Now for the best part.

During the mid part of December after a buttload of phone calls and net surfing I finally scored a very nice manifold set.

They were dirty, but NO cracks and in really good shape.

Looks as though the engine they came off had been submerged in a river or ??? as they were full of dried mud.

The pair needed to be separated and LOVED a bunch.

I wanted this to be under the Christmas tree for Thumper and things just got too intense to get it all done.

Finally after several long work sessions the exhaust was off the intake and a trip to the bead blaster made it look almost new.

Even the heat riser loosened right up and it's little adjustment bolt unscrewed.

The intake to exhaust bolts that hold the pair together broke off (expected) but the long studs were still good.

Cutting the nuts off the studs and chasing the threads proved to be a good course of action.

Time ran out, so I bolted the good exhaust to a NOS intake and got it ready for Christmas.

Sadly the intake and exhaust flanges are a different height, and machining is not the choice here.

Will clean up the intake and coax the broken bolts out, then the pair will match and be sweet.

Likely the only solution on those bolts will be to set the manifold up in the mill and drill them out, then re-tap the threads.

Worse case scenario will be to install Helicoils in the holes.

Either way a good manifold set has been found for the project.


Looking forward to getting back after the air brake conversion on the "Crew cab project"

With Thumper getting ready to build a house, I'm looking at a re-roof on part of the ranch house come summer, so $$$$$ to spend on the toys will no doubt suffer some.

Well troops, hope Y'all had a great holiday season and you and yours are in good health.

Will be around from time to time, but until good weather it will be sketchy.

Snowy