Getting the Old Box Truck Ready for the Trip - Part 2

randr10 (62)in #autorepair • 5 years ago (edited)

I had a few things to wrap up on the box truck before I move on to packing it to the brim with our things. First, I had to finish fixing the AC system for the cross country trip. I'll need it to deal with the extreme heat I'm likely to encounter in the desert southwest and deep southern states. In my previous post, I fixed the actual refrigeration system by soldering the connection on a sensor and recharging with refrigerant. When I took it for a test drive, however, it was still blowing hot air through the duct.

I needed to change out the heater hoses anyway, so while I was at it, I installed this manual valve. The valve in the cab for the heater failed, and it's an obsolete part, so it was a special order item and I wanted to have this truck buttoned up yesterday. I went to the hardware store and grabbed this ball valve normally used for PEX tubing to speed things up. It did the trick! When I shut it off and then kick on the AC it blows icy cold air into the cab. Only problem is that I have to get out of the truck, pop the hood, and manually turn the valve to make the system work. It's not the most convenient thing in the world, but at least it'll save me from dying of heat stroke on the trip.

Next up was to check the wheel bearings on the front axle. I know this is an often neglected maintenance item, so I at least wanted to check that the bearings were tight and that there was good looking grease in them. First I had to get the wheel lug nuts off and let me tell you, this was one hell of a herculean effort. Somebody must have taken a five foot breaker bar to them because a couple would not budge with the three foot cheater bar I cobbled together. On the two most stubborn ones, the breaker bar started to bend at its swivel and on the second one it split the socket.

Luckily Harbor Freight has an excellent return policy so they replaced the socket no questions asked. I hammered that gap back together on the breaker bar too, so it's still chooching. I decided not to tempt fate again and just got out the oxy-acetylene torch to heat that last lug nut up. It came right off with my half inch impact once I got some heat in it.

With the wheel off I was able to check over the brakes which look almost new other than the rust that's built up on everything from the truck sitting. The pads have about 5/8" of material so they're good. I greased up the sliders before reassembly. At first I was going to remove the whole hub and repack the wheel bearings, but I found that the grease inside them looked like new. I also didn't want to damage the inner wheel seals taking it off the spindle.

It's good that I did this though because on the passenger side some water got in to the very outside of the hub and some rust built up. I removed the outer bearing and found that the rust didn't make it internally to the bearing, so cleaned up the rust on the outside and repacked only that bearing with fresh grease. When I reassembled I cleaned off the old tattered fiber gasket and made my own with some RTV silicone to keep this from happening again.

Finally it was on to the last part of the drivetrain that I hadn't looked at, the u-joints and rear end. I noticed a while back that the differential pinion seal was leaking, so I took off the driveshaft at that point to check for any problems with the pinion bearings. Turns out the pinion nut just wasn't on very tight and it was wobbling around in there a bit. This is a common theme with this truck. Save for the lug nuts which were put on by force comparable to the Hand of God, almost everything on this truck that I've looked at had loose fasteners. Simply tightening it up with my impact took up all the play. I didn't change the seal because it's another special order item and the leak is very minor.