1954 M37 rebuild thread

[T. Highway]

Nice progress, looking forward to seeing how it fits in the engine bay and trans tunnel with the cab on.

Bert

[06boblee]

Now to work on the cab. The cab is in good shape -except for rust under the hood hinge area. previous fixing left a lot to be desired. I will cut this out and weld in a patch. The brace under the cowl is rusted away- need to figure a fix, is there a replacement part? Is it spot welded around the hinge bolt holes?

[Cal_Gary]

Yow, that looks like a bit of work to repair. No replacement braces are available to my knowledge-would take some work to fab one up.
Gary

[06boblee]

It's weird, the rest of the cab is in pretty good shape. The other hinge area is rusty too-- but not near as bad as the drivers side. the fresh air cowl is in good shape. It looks to me that the under cowl area got little to no paint when built.
I can repair it, and I will take pics along the way!

[rickf]

Looks almost like it was stored upside down and water was laying in those supports.

[06boblee]

New intermediate shaft! The blue end uses a larger 1350 spicer u joint.

[06boblee]

Fits!

[06boblee]

coming along.

[Elwood]

[06boblee]

story on the intermediate shaft work. I started to clean it up for paint when I noticed the u joint on the t case flange end was very tight, and I could feel a "catch" in it when I moved it back and forth- so back to the drive shaft shop. They tried to fix it, but eventually put in a new u joint and after waiting for an hour for that he brought it out and it felt fine. I said thanks and went home (50 mile) got to cleaning it up again and noticed that the cups were turning in the yoke-WTH. I took it apart and saw that the DS guy had filed out the cap holes on the flange, looked like crap- and don't know why it was done, but I was done with them! I had a spare flange so I put it back together. This shop has been around for decades and has a good reputation, but did a bad job for me.
morale of the story--- check everybody's work.
primed, ready for paint

[06boblee]

pics of the flange. I noticed that he also did some grinding on the inside face of the cup ear. the cups just fell out of these, when I moved the u joint the cups would rotate .

[Cal_Gary]

Wow what crappy work on your flanges! Hope you intend to get your money back at a minimum since they ruined your parts.
Gary

[Elwood]

Hopefully, the bill was paid by credit card. Since you're not likely to ever go back there for more work, contesting the charge is an option.

If nothing else, the owner of the shop should be made aware of the work that was done. If he thinks it was okay, then you know what sort of place you were dealing with.

[rickf]

It sounds like what you had was a bent joint housing, which usually only happens when a joint breaks at speed and the shaft is banging around and the u-joint cups fly out which leaves the housing vulnerable to be bent. The flange is not in a position to be flailing around in a broken u-joint scenario. Even so, If it were bent you would see the interference point when you press the cup back out and some judicious sanding with a sanding drum on a Dremel would take care of the problem without ruining the flange. Any driveline shop should know this and you should take that flange back and show it to the owner. If for no other reason then to prevent the moron that did it from using a grinder in someone elses parts!

[06boblee]

It sounds like what you had was a bent joint housing, which usually only happens when a joint breaks at speed and the shaft is banging around and the u-joint cups fly out which leaves the housing vulnerable to be bent. The flange is not in a position to be flailing around in a broken u-joint scenario. Even so, If it were bent you would see the interference point when you press the cup back out and some judicious sanding with a sanding drum on a Dremel would take care of the problem without ruining the flange. Any driveline shop should know this and you should take that flange back and show it to the owner. If for no other reason then to prevent the moron that did it from using a grinder in someone elses parts!

actually when I took the shaft in it was to get the female end to the spline replaced (for a bigger u joint). the original u joints were OK, had them replaced anyway.