M109A3 2.5-Ton 6x6 Shop Van: Project Status

8/27/1999	Inspection day in Yermo. Truck cranks but does not start.
9/9/1999	Bid opening.
9/27/1999	Bid award.
9/28/1999	Towed truck home.
9/29/1999	Engine starts! Just needed fuel added, and air purged from fuel system. One flat tire, and no pressure in the spare. Oil pressure gauge not working yet. Air seems to work.
10/2/1999	Oil pressure gauge semi-fixed; still needs a proper mounting bracket, but at least I know the engine is getting oil pressure. Engine runs great. Haven't driven it yet; need to fix one or more tires first (I found a tire repair shop which claims to service military split ring rims, and will make a house call for a $60 charge). The flat tire is the only thing keeping me from trying to drive it, though I really ought to inspect and adjust the brakes, change the oil in the engine and all gearboxes, and lube the chassis before I do anything with it. There are plenty of little things wrong with it, but most of them are non-critical. Some meathead removed the speedometer cable right-angle adapter at the transfer case, so the odometer may be wrong, but I think the engine truly has been run for only 1.1 hours since its last rebuild. Removed duct tape goo from everything forward of the van body; much more goo remains on van body!
10/16/1999	Got AC wiring and lighting in van body working by splicing a temporary power cord into the fuse box. I have had no luck finding the proper cord or connector to plug into the curbside AC power plug, but my temporary hack lets me have lighting in the van body until I find one. Circuit breakers didn't work at first; their connections to the power bus needed to be cleaned, and they needed to have some dust blown out of them. The AC blackout interlock switch is dead, so I just get the blue light in blackout mode. Replaced missing speedometer right-angle adapter. Both windshield wiper arms are dead, in different ways. I think the oil pressure sender needs to be replaced after all; I'll do that when I do an oil change (after I buy some spare filters). Still waiting for my big jack stands to arrive, so I haven't worked on fixing the flat tire yet. The other tires don't seem to be leaking.
10/23/1999	Replaced oil pressure sender, patched up some of the hacked wiring, and lubed the chassis. Well, most of it... my grease gun couldn't reach some fittings, and a few places wouldn't take grease. This truck has a LOT of grease fittings! I just need to fix a flat and inspect the brakes before I try taking it for a spin.
10/30/1999	Jacked the truck up onto six 6-ton jack stands, and started pulling off wheels in order to inspect the brakes, rotate the tires and fix the flat. The flat tire picked up a drywall screw. Hopefully, I can just have the tire shop patch the tube. The spare looks like it has too much dryrot to be usable; I should probably replace it, too. One inner lug nut just refused to budge. It took about an hour of wiggling the tire, drenching it with Liquid Wrench, and hammering away with the impact wrench to get it off. Some of the lug nuts are in bad shape, and will need to be replaced. I built a forklift-like wheel dolly to help me handle those BIG, HEAVY wheels. It's pretty flimsy, so I won't bother posting detailed plans. Look at the pictures to see how to not build one!
10/31/1999	Rotated the tires. That was a big chore! The center hub on the left side has right-handed studs instead of the correct left-handed studs. That annoys me. Well, one of them is stripped or cross-threaded, so I guess I might as well replace all of the studs with left-handed ones if I need to pull the hub off anyway. My wheel dolly is falling apart, but it still made dismounting and remounting the wheels a lot easier. With my weak back, I couldn't have done it otherwise. When I built it, I thought that the cheapest commercial hydraulic wheel lift/dolly would cost at least $800, but since then I've found that Harbor Freight carries a couple different ones, for $200 and $300 respectively. I may try ordering one of those sometime. They're catalog-only items, weighing 150-200 pounds, so I bet shipment won't be cheap. To see them, go to their web page and do a search on "wheel dolly". If you get one, please let me know how well it works (or doesn't). You can download the manuals from their web page to learn more about them.
11/6/1999	IT ROLLS! I took my first drive in it tonight, after a very long day of working on it. I brought the flat tire and spare into a tire shop; they patched the flat while I waited, and will order a replacement tire for the spare. After I got back, I mounted the patched wheel, pulled off the two left middle wheels, pulled the left middle axle and hub, disassembled the hub, replaced the wheel studs, cleaned everything, reassembled the hub, packed the wheel bearings, installed the hub, adjusted the bearings, mounted the two tires again, jacked the truck back off the six jack stands, properly torqued all 60 lug nuts by hand, replaced the fuel purge valve that I broke a few weeks ago, put away my tools, changed clothes, and took the truck for a spin around the airport grounds. Whew!
12/4/1999	This weekend, I decided to check (and if necessary, replace) the fuel filters (it has three in series). I discovered that my primary fuel filter was misassembled, thus allowing unfiltered fuel to proceed to the secondary filter. I also found that the filter kits I ordered from Memphis Equipment Co. were not the correct kits for my truck! They were close, and would have fit in the filter housings, but due to differences in their construction I do not believe that they would have filtered properly. See my M44-Series Parts Cross-Reference page for more details. I also drained the fuel tank and fixed the seeping fuel drain plug. There's not much more to be done to my truck, other than some wiring repairs in the van body, replacing the heater control cable, and lots of cosmetic work which I plan to put off for a couple years or so. Now I just need to practice driving it so I can get my class-B commercial driver's licence (which is required in CA, but not in most other states... grrrr), and finish getting it registered.
12/18/1999	I took my first drive on real roads today. Matt Tait (a MIL-VEH list member with a class A CDL) dropped by the hangar and supervised as I blocked traffic for few miles. It was a short trip, but a fun one. I think I might get the hang of driving this beast before long! I'm still pretty bad at stick-shift driving (I've only driven automatics until now), but I've gotten to the point where I can generally move the truck around without stalling it (well, except for when I forget to take off the parking brake... DOH!), and I finally have gotten to the point where I succeed in making more than half of the downshifts I attempt. My difficulty with the truck is about 75% due to the manual transmission, and only about 25% due to getting used to driving a large truck. When we got back, Matt noticed some water spray on the ground. It turns out that one of my coolant hoses sprung a pinhole leak. It shouldn't be too hard to fix. While I'm at it, I'll replace all of the coolant hoses except for the two very short ones which would require removing the manifold. I'll also do an oil change, since I'll need to remove the oil filters to get at one of the hoses. Hopefully those Wix replacement oil filters I got are better matches to my engine than the fuel filters were... Aside from the coolant leak, the truck seems to be running really well.
3/4/2000	I've ignored the deuce for a while because I've been distracted by my HMMWV. I would like to drive my van to the MRCG meeting in May, so I've started working on it again. Today, I adjusted the driver side door so it finally closes properly, and adjusted both of the side windows as well as I could. I "washed" it, too... actually, I parked it out in the rain for a half hour, and then drove it a few miles. I'm getting pretty comfortable with shifting, so I don't think it'll be long before I'm ready to get my class B CDL. I'd like to do the following things to it before the trip: Replace all of the AC wiring, install a marine-style power inlet plug in place of the original power inlet, replace the circuit breakers (with GFCI breakers if possible), etc. The AC wiring harness has some problems, I can't find the right plug for the existing power inlet, and I don't like it too much, anyway. I think I can do a much better job on the AC wiring. It might not be original, but I think these changes are necessary for safety. Replace the garfed up battery box latches. Fix or replace the wiper arms. The springs are too weak, so they don't press the blades against the window hard enough. Install a license plate bracket, with light. Well, I need plates, too, but I'm working on that... Fix or replace the heater blower motor. I suspect that the bearings are shot. Replace the heater control cable. I haven't found the right one yet, but I might be able to kludge a temporary replacement out of a choke cable or something, so I can have heat and a defroster for the trip to SLO. Build a boarding ladder. I haven't found the correct ladder yet, so I'll build a serviceable replacement to use in the mean time. Build a cable pass-through which I can temporarily mount in place of the communication door at the front of the van body. That way, I can pass power and/or antenna cables out of the van body without letting rain in. Build a flood light to mount on the outside of the van body. The body has several brackets for mounting spotlights. I haven't found the right spotlights yet, but I think I can easily build a flood light to hang on the outside, to light up the area outside the truck. That'll be nice for lighting up a picnic table at the campsite in SLO at night. Although I haven't decided how I'll permanently configure the van body yet, it ought to make a nice camper with little effort if I just throw a twin bed, a small fridge, a nightstand, and a small electric space heater in the back, and strap them all in place with some tiedowns and bungee cords while moving.
3/11/2000	Today, I finally took care of my truck's VIN inspection. The weight certificate is the only thing standing in the way of finishing my truck's registration. Matt Tait and I drove my truck about 30 miles round-trip to some truck scales, but didn't drive away with a proper certified weight ticket. It was this whole big fiasco, and I just don't want to get into it now.
3/18/2000	Today, I finally got the truck weighed so I can finish registration. Matt Tait came along for the ride, to teach me more about driving the beast and to make my license valid. I need to have somebody with a valid CDL in the truck with me for my class B CDL training permit to be valid, and Matt has a class A. I got the truck weighed in Tustin, just down the road from where I work. It was a round trip of about 70 miles, mostly on freeways and toll roads, including some long 6% grades. I could have gone to some scales about 15 miles away, but I thought the longer drive through the mountains would be good experience and a lot of fun. Matt had all sorts of good advice, and I think I'm getting the hang of driving my deuce. There were a couple minor snags: My parking brake seems to be dragging sometimes, and was acting a bit funny, and my transfer case blew some oil out the rear seal. It may be a plugged vent, or it may be a bad seal, but it wasn't leaking badly enough to abort the mission. My truck managed to hold about 35 MPH in fourth gear on the 6% uphill parts. The weight was 15,340, with no passengers and a full tank of fuel. While we were in Tustin, I decided to stop by work to rest for a bit before the trip back. Once of my friends from work was there, and served as an official witness that the truck is real. I'm happy with the way my truck is running. There have been a few problems since I finished my initial repairs, such as the problems I had today and the radiator hose I had a while back, but so far none of them have kept me from getting the truck home. These sorts of things are to be expected when shaking down a 28-year-old truck!
5/7/2000	I finally got my license plates! See the picture.
11/13/2004	I've sold this truck to a collector up in Washington. I hope that he enjoys it as much as I have!

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