M37 "Brutus"

[John Mc]

I've not been keeping this up to date - not that I've been doing much until recently.

Here's a picture from back on December 1, 2021, when I rolled the tarp back off of Brutus and removed the damaged parts. Tim Holloway had an old radiator with a few leaks, but we figured it would hold coolant long enough to drive back home and put him in the basement shop. Here is a shot of that:

Temp Radiator 1 sm.jpeg (146.32 KiB) Viewed 2089 times

I drove it home that same day. The drive was a little more eventful than I had envisioned. I failed to realize that even if the leak was slow enough to allow us to make it home on one fill of coolant, which none of the sheet metal around the engine, the radiator fan blew all of the leaking coolant back on to the windshield. My windshield seals are just about non-existent, so some of it ended up inside the cab. In addition, about half way home, the driver's windshield wiper stopped working. Here's a shot of Brutus sitting in my driveway. The wetness you see on the windshield is not melted snow, it coolant.

Back home 1 sm.jpeg (110.69 KiB) Viewed 2089 times

[John Mc]

Once I drove Brutus into my shop, I pulled the radiator and brought it to a radiator shop about 10 miles from me. He re-cored it and fixed everything up nicely. I picked that pack up on Dec 17 and stashed it in a corner of my shop. I thought I had a picture of that, but can't find it. If I dig it up, I'll edit this post to add a photo.

It sat with not much progress until a few days ago, when I decided to pull the water pump. Prior to the accident, I had occasionally seen the engine temp shoot up rapidly, almost as if the thermostat were stuck closed. It would happen within a mile or two of driving when I first started the engine. The temperature would drop quickly as soon as I pulled the control to turn on the cab heat (a MUTT heater mounted under the passenger side dash, with a cable control to open and close the valve to allow hot coolant to circulate). I was stymied by the fact that turning on cab heat would drop the temperature exactly back to normal so quickly. I knew putting an "extra radiator" into the circuit might help, but this response was way out of proportion to what I expected. Even stranger, if I closed off the radiator valve, the coolant temp would stay normal even for extended driving 30 minutes to an hour. I could not figure out how opening the heater valve could "fix" a stuck thermostat.

I wondered if some of the stop leak I put in to deal with a pinhole in the original radiator might have gummed things up in the water distribution tube. Since I figured I'd never get as easy a chance to get to that as I had now, I pulled the water pump and pulled the distribution tube. (It came out easily, since the engine had been rebuilt less than a year earlier.)

I found a chunk of something odd in the most rearward slot of the tube. Tim & I think it's a piece of bakelite or something similar. What you see here is about 1/3 of the piece. It had a slight dish shape to it. I have no idea what it could be from. This spot would be close to where the temperature sensor and heater hose connect (on the rear of the engine). I'm hoping that tales care of the mystery heat issue. (If it does, that would tell me that this piece was in there from before the accident.)

Water dist tube.jpg (141.55 KiB) Viewed 2089 times

[John Mc]

Yesterday I picked up the good parts I had removed from the front end, along with the used replacement parts Tim Holloway had. This morning, I dropped them off at a local auto/equipment repair shop for shot blasting. I picked them up this afternoon and brought them back to Tim's shop.

Still a bit of the old red primer on the hood, since we had asked the shotblaster to go easy on the hood:

Hood shotblasted.jpeg (168.88 KiB) Viewed 2089 times

Pile of parts, shotblasted

Parts shotblasted.jpeg (225.74 KiB) Viewed 2089 times

Looking forward to getting to the point where we can put these parts back on the truck!

[W3SLAV]

Nice!

[Argie1978]

Nice diary you're keeping. I think you got VERY lucky in the crash. I cannot imagine rolling over with the truck having absolutely no protection. It creeps me out just from imagining.
And how on earth that piece of "something" got into the water tube? I mean, what's is its origin? Could be part of some tool used to push the tube inside the block?

Sebastian

[NAM VET]

the water tube "thing" sure is interesting. I have no idea what it could be. Maybe long ago someone accidentally dropped it into the radiator. It took me nearly a year, and more since, near full time to "restore" my own truck which was in extremely good condition when I got it. Never a broken fastener in taking it apart, other than the engine, the drivetrain was and is fine. Virtually no rust. And it still took me many hundreds of hours. And my truck still needs frequent love and attention. Some major parts were "farmed out" to others for rebuild .

I have a lot of hand tools but can't weld. But had no need for that skill. But of all the "tools" I wished and still wish I had was a good sand or soda blasting system. I just don't have the garage space for a big enough air compressor. I did take some smaller parts to a local sandblast company, not cheap. A wire brush on a grinder or drill just can never do what a sand/soda system can do. I did take some of my smaller parts to the Auto Craft Shop at Ft Jackson, about an hour away and use their big glass blasting cabinet. I did buy an engine stand and a hoist, and a Fuji HVLP painting system. I have a grinding/polishing system.

For me, if I had the shop space, I would have greatly loved to have had a pro-grade blaster, a blasting cabinet, and a solvent cleaning tank. But I don't have space, and am never going to do this extensive work on any vehicle again.

So good luck with your own repair, and hope to see more pictures as you fix it. Hal

[John Mc]

Our planned replacement fender had some damage that was more trouble than it was worth to repair. Tim ended up combining pieces from two fenders that were damaged in different areas to make one good one. He patched in the headlight mount area and the rear section from one fender into the body of another.

RF Fender 1 sm.jpeg (163.04 KiB) Viewed 1972 times

RF Fender 2 sm.jpeg (148.22 KiB) Viewed 1972 times

We're getting close to putting parts back on the truck!

[Cal_Gary]

You're making some good progress, John!
Gary

[John Mc]

Installed the rebuilt radiator earlier this week and filled it with coolant. I got a bit of a scare, since it appeared there was a slow leak where the water pump mounted to the engine. I thought I had messed something up when putting the water pump back together and mounting it to the engine. I decided to start it up anyway, since the engine had not been run in almost 4 months. The engine ran fine, and the leak increase from a rapid drip to a small constant stream. The upside is that it was leaking badly enough for me to spot the source: I had forgotten to tighten one of the hose clamps on that short length of hose that goes from the water pump to the top of the engine. I tightened that up and took it for a test drive.

Rebuilt radiator mounted sm.jpg (170.39 KiB) Viewed 1970 times

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A short (1 minute) video I put together of some photos of the accident, bits and pieces of the recovery process, and a video of the first run of the engine in almost 4 months:

Brutus Lives!

[John Mc]

Tim Holloway installing one of Charles Talbert's fender patch kits for the headlight area. This fender was not damaged in the accident, but decided to remove and sandblast it since the whole front end is getting repainted. The headlight area had some rust, so that was cut out and the patch kit installed.

LF Fender headlight mount patch 1 sm.JPG (147.78 KiB) Viewed 1969 times

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LF Fender headlight mount patch 2 sm.JPG (150.76 KiB) Viewed 1969 times

[Argie1978]

Outstanding, mate. Glad the job is giving results.

[John Mc]

Back a couple of weeks ago when I first fired Brutus back up and found the coolant leak (loose hose clamp), I decided to take him for a short run down our 1 mile dead end dirt road to pick up our mail at the end of the road. I had to leave a bit of choke in to get the engine to run smoothly (I'll have to check that later). The engine ran well, but when I got to the end of the road and was turning around to come back, I heard an electric zap, saw a wisp of smoke come out from behind the dash, and the truck died. It would turn over, but not restart. I got my wife and her friend to help me tow it home.

When troubleshooting, I could hear my electric fuel pump when the ignition switch was turned on, so I knew the switch was working. I measured 24+ volts at the distributor end of the wire from the ignition switch. I was dreading finding a bad coil or fried electronic ignition. However, I remembered that the sound and wisp of smoke was inside the cab, so I looked under the panel and behind the instrument cluster. I noticed a wire coming out of the connector from the ignition switch was bent sharply and appeared to have some insulation missing right were it exited the connector. I touched that wire, and it popped right out:

broken ignition wire 1.jpeg (75.81 KiB) Viewed 1932 times

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broken ignition wire 2.jpeg (65.82 KiB) Viewed 1932 times

Replaced the wire with one a bit longer, so I could reroute it without the sharp bend, and the truck fired up normally. Apparently, the loose wire was making just enough of a connection to show up on the voltmeter, but not enough to supply the amperage necessary to run the ignition system.

[John Mc]

Had Tim over to poke around at a mysterious cooling issue that had been cropping up since before the accident. We figured it would be much easier to deal with now, when everything is opened up. Occasionally, when first starting the engine up from cold, I'd let the truck idle a bit to get the oil flowing, then drive off. After a mile or two of driving, the needle would climb up well above the thermostat setting of 180˚F (220˚ or more, if I let it go without addressing it). Opening the valve to turn on the heater (a MUTT hot water unit mounted in the cab) would bring the temperature right down to 180 again. That was sounding like a thermostat that was stuck closed to me. I was a bit surprised that adding the relatively small radiator in the heater into the system would bring it down that quickly, but it did.

The odd thing was that if I shut off the heater valve again, the temperature would stay down at 180˚ for the rest of my drive (even for a 30-60 minute drive in hot weather). I was baffled by how temporarily opening the heater valve could permanently bring the temperature down. I did this repeatedly on almost every trip where I started from a relatively cold start and got the same results. The thermostat would seem to start operating normally. How does pulling hot water from the back of the engine affect the thermostat at the front of the engine?

We pulled the water distribution tube to make sure that there was not more debris in it - it was fine. We replaced the thermostat, since we had everything open anyway. The new thermostat seems to have solved the problem.I've made two 30+ minute runs (including some extended idling) and the temperature warms up to where it should be, and just stays glued right there.

My only theory at this point is that the thermostat was sticking a bit. When things heated up and I opened the heater valve, the return line from the heater dumps the overheated water back just about on top of the thermostat. That must have been enough to unstick the thermostat. Once unstuck, it continued to operate normally until the engine was shut off and cooled down again.

At any rate, I'm happy the issue has been solved... and even happier that is was something simple.

[John Mc]

I have an appointment on April 6 at a local auto repair shop to get the slight twist in the end of the right frame rail straightened out, and pull out a slight buckle where the hood hinge bolted on to the area just in front of the cab. Tim figures we could do it ourselves with a bit of grunting and cussing, but these guys have all the equipment to do that sort of thing.

In this picture, the straightedge is being held against the frame rail. It should be pointed straight up and down. Once that work is done, we should be ready to start putting the painted and shot-blasted pieces back on.

Twisted frame.jpg (161.32 KiB) Viewed 1927 times

[Cal_Gary]

Good grief John, somebody drop a house on that side? That fix should help with your bolt-hole alignment.
Gary