Fabber McGee
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- Nov 7, 2013
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Last year, September of 13, I bought a retired Hostess delivery van on ebay for 4500 bucks. I picked it up outside St. Louis on the 3rd of January and headed south right away to get out from under the blizzard of the century that was headed that way. I drove non stop til I was way down in Arkansas. About 4 in the morning, I was out from under the clouds, so I crawled in back and went to sleep. When I woke up it was raining, but the snow was all north of me. I rambled around visiting friends and relations in Texas, Arizona, California and Washington for a couple months before I headed north to Alaska and home.
I finally got the Twinkie Hotel in my shop about a week ago to begin preparing it for another road trip to the smaller states. I had hoped to get it inside several weeks earlier, but spent more time getting the shop cleaned out and organized than I had planned. Seems that nothing ever goes as fast as I hope it will.
Last year on my way home as I was visiting friends and family I was able to do some basic maintenance on the running gear, plus add a partition 8 feet behind the engine, insulate, install a propane furnace and an auxiliary heater that uses hot coolant from the engine. That got me home quite comfortably in March. I spent one night in southern Yukon at about 10 below and had a nice warm 68 degrees inside while I slept.
For this year, most of my modifications will be mechanical. Partly because I’m short on time, but mostly because the machinery has priority over housing. First thing I did was jack it up to the ceiling and put it on stands. That’s not as high as it sounds, because the body is pretty tall, but I got an extra foot or so underneath and that’s enough to work comfortably. With the wheels off I started in building brackets for air bag suspension helpers. The body has so much overhang behind the rear wheels that having much weight at the rear really squishes the back down. Also, the front is sprung a bit stiff, so I will remove a couple leaves from the front springs and add bags there too. That way I can soften it up for rough pavement (Arkansas was terrible and Oklahoma wasn’t much better, the rumble strips are smoother than the road in some places) and stiffen it back up with air if I need to. Air bags will also let me do some leveling for overnight camping pleasure.
Since the airbags mount directly over the springs and outside of the frame I needed to build a cross member to keep the frame from twisting and fatiguing. The cross member is directly over the biggest part of the differential housing, so it has to tuck up between the ridges in the floor and above the frame to let the rear suspension have full travel. Also, I had to make one end removable to get it installed between the frame rails. I have some air fittings on order from an ebay vendor that won’t be here until Monday, so I can’t install the bags and brackets until then. Cameron at Alaska Rubber loaned me a couple fittings to try, but they’re not the optimum choice, so I moved on to the differential.
When I was in a friend's yard in Arizona doing mechanical inspections last February, I discovered a lot of slack in the differential spider gears. They didn’t look too badly worn and they weren’t loose on the shaft, so I decided to wait until I got home to worry about what was not right in there. I opened up the rear axle and dropped the differential out so I could figure out the problem. Nothing was worn excessively, but there was about 3/16” of extra space between the side gears and the case.... WTF? Finally, I washed up all the parts and headed for our local gear store. Luckily I got the old hand in the parts room and he started hunting for parts to fit. I have huge axles, the biggest that will fit through the spindles of a 70 series rear end, 37 splines. Trouble is none of his books showed axles for a 70 that were bigger than 34 splines. Dealing with an old pro makes all the difference, he remembered that some of the bigger 80 series axles use 37 splines, so he got out a differential gear kit for an 80 and the spiders and side gears fit. Whoopee!! Apparently someone had put standard 70 series spiders in with the larger 80 series side gears and they left a lot of slack. Turns out that I have an extra heavy duty 70 series rear axle. It has ring and pinion gears for a 70, but differential gears from an 80. I now have 400 bucks invested in gears (and new bearings as long as I was in there), but it should not need anything else in the rear end for the life of the truck.
I’ve been wanting a differential case spreader to make setting up the bearing preload easier for many years, so I decided to build one now and I’m sure glad I did. I had the ring gear carrier out a half dozen times changing shims to get the back lash and preload set where I wanted them.
Twinkie Hotel 15 002
Most of the material for the spreader was originally weights from an old exercise machine I carried home from the dumpsters. 1” thick, 3” wide and 13 3/4 “ long. Another zero cash outlay tool for the shop.
Coming home in March last year I wished a few times that I had stopped at the top of some of those Canadian 10% grades and put on my tire chains. I didn’t have any problems, but I sure was puckered up more than once. I decided that if I had a set of automatic tire chains that I could operate from the comfort of my drivers seat I’d be much more likely to be using them when I was in need. I found some on ebay at a price I liked (new price is around to 2 grand) and bought them. The only way the outfit would ship was by UPS and that was too much money for me. I had them shipped to my helpful and handy nephew Davey in California to be taken apart and shipped to me in USPS flat rate boxes. They have a few wear issues, but nothing that can’t be remedied at a pretty reasonable cost by an old grey bearded homesteader.
Watch for more exciting installments of Twinkie Hotel Improvements, ha,ha.
I finally got the Twinkie Hotel in my shop about a week ago to begin preparing it for another road trip to the smaller states. I had hoped to get it inside several weeks earlier, but spent more time getting the shop cleaned out and organized than I had planned. Seems that nothing ever goes as fast as I hope it will.
Last year on my way home as I was visiting friends and family I was able to do some basic maintenance on the running gear, plus add a partition 8 feet behind the engine, insulate, install a propane furnace and an auxiliary heater that uses hot coolant from the engine. That got me home quite comfortably in March. I spent one night in southern Yukon at about 10 below and had a nice warm 68 degrees inside while I slept.
For this year, most of my modifications will be mechanical. Partly because I’m short on time, but mostly because the machinery has priority over housing. First thing I did was jack it up to the ceiling and put it on stands. That’s not as high as it sounds, because the body is pretty tall, but I got an extra foot or so underneath and that’s enough to work comfortably. With the wheels off I started in building brackets for air bag suspension helpers. The body has so much overhang behind the rear wheels that having much weight at the rear really squishes the back down. Also, the front is sprung a bit stiff, so I will remove a couple leaves from the front springs and add bags there too. That way I can soften it up for rough pavement (Arkansas was terrible and Oklahoma wasn’t much better, the rumble strips are smoother than the road in some places) and stiffen it back up with air if I need to. Air bags will also let me do some leveling for overnight camping pleasure.
Since the airbags mount directly over the springs and outside of the frame I needed to build a cross member to keep the frame from twisting and fatiguing. The cross member is directly over the biggest part of the differential housing, so it has to tuck up between the ridges in the floor and above the frame to let the rear suspension have full travel. Also, I had to make one end removable to get it installed between the frame rails. I have some air fittings on order from an ebay vendor that won’t be here until Monday, so I can’t install the bags and brackets until then. Cameron at Alaska Rubber loaned me a couple fittings to try, but they’re not the optimum choice, so I moved on to the differential.
When I was in a friend's yard in Arizona doing mechanical inspections last February, I discovered a lot of slack in the differential spider gears. They didn’t look too badly worn and they weren’t loose on the shaft, so I decided to wait until I got home to worry about what was not right in there. I opened up the rear axle and dropped the differential out so I could figure out the problem. Nothing was worn excessively, but there was about 3/16” of extra space between the side gears and the case.... WTF? Finally, I washed up all the parts and headed for our local gear store. Luckily I got the old hand in the parts room and he started hunting for parts to fit. I have huge axles, the biggest that will fit through the spindles of a 70 series rear end, 37 splines. Trouble is none of his books showed axles for a 70 that were bigger than 34 splines. Dealing with an old pro makes all the difference, he remembered that some of the bigger 80 series axles use 37 splines, so he got out a differential gear kit for an 80 and the spiders and side gears fit. Whoopee!! Apparently someone had put standard 70 series spiders in with the larger 80 series side gears and they left a lot of slack. Turns out that I have an extra heavy duty 70 series rear axle. It has ring and pinion gears for a 70, but differential gears from an 80. I now have 400 bucks invested in gears (and new bearings as long as I was in there), but it should not need anything else in the rear end for the life of the truck.
I’ve been wanting a differential case spreader to make setting up the bearing preload easier for many years, so I decided to build one now and I’m sure glad I did. I had the ring gear carrier out a half dozen times changing shims to get the back lash and preload set where I wanted them.
Twinkie Hotel 15 002
Most of the material for the spreader was originally weights from an old exercise machine I carried home from the dumpsters. 1” thick, 3” wide and 13 3/4 “ long. Another zero cash outlay tool for the shop.
Coming home in March last year I wished a few times that I had stopped at the top of some of those Canadian 10% grades and put on my tire chains. I didn’t have any problems, but I sure was puckered up more than once. I decided that if I had a set of automatic tire chains that I could operate from the comfort of my drivers seat I’d be much more likely to be using them when I was in need. I found some on ebay at a price I liked (new price is around to 2 grand) and bought them. The only way the outfit would ship was by UPS and that was too much money for me. I had them shipped to my helpful and handy nephew Davey in California to be taken apart and shipped to me in USPS flat rate boxes. They have a few wear issues, but nothing that can’t be remedied at a pretty reasonable cost by an old grey bearded homesteader.
Watch for more exciting installments of Twinkie Hotel Improvements, ha,ha.
