Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

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pairospam
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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#541 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-04-14 20:42:31

Hi again:

So, the cover closed perfectly as previously tested and then I forgot about the winch untill the time came to install the bumper, which would have to be cut to allow the control box and the gear level to go trough. But that would come later.

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Next on the list was to prepare, paint and install the spring packs and to clean and free the area under the truck from big pieces and parts. I payed a lot of attention when moving the heavy packs and also when manipulating the power grinder during the tedious and noisy job of cleaning not to harm my back. The spring pack of the copilot side was clean of oil so it didn’t cost too much, just the usual patience.

When the steel shone I left the leaves on the bench and wrapped them with paper to avoid them collect dust and to work less when the time to paint them arrived.

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The pack of the pilot’s side was imbebbed in oil and dirty hydraulic fluid so I had to disassemble it and wash the leaves with gasoline right there on the floor before I could use the tools to clean them off from the rust.

Indifferent to my efforts and imprecations, Spark took a lazy sunbath and from time to time gave me a pretty distant glance. I thought I heard him whisper: you are really nuts, Pairoa!- but I am not pretty sure.

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Waiting for the spring leaves to dry up I took the new ones built to hold the shock absorbers and prepared them to remove the paint, with which they were kindly delivered, and fixed a little the pretty rough finition of the bent extremes. Yes… I know… but I can do nothing about it.

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During the long Easter weekend I checked the Africa Twin for good and found some damages produced, probably, during the last long trip to the south. A couple of holding points of the chassis were broken so I had to re-weld the nuts with a little reinforcement to hold appropriately the top case baseplate. Honda made them not very tough... on purpose, I assume.

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#542 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-04-14 20:50:17

After fixing this and that, a test ride, of course. I invited Carmen and we spent the whole Friday riding the dirty roads of the mountains and the interior valleys going north from San Felipe, and ended the journey at dinner near the sea. It was a very pleasant trip, and the Africa Twin performed brilliantly, as always.

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Unfortunately the next day, after the usual morning run, I leaned to grab the dog’s dish and I felt the nasty pain again in my back. It really hurt. Maybe my brother-in-law is right after all and 14 kilometers is too much for this poor and tortured body. Anyway…

As I could not work with heavy loads I decided to stay at home, behave and take my pills. But, as I was able to move slowly and be seated, I profited to finish the repairing of the left plastic air deflector of the cabin, neglected for so long. I initially wanted to use a flange and rivets but I dropped it waiting for a better method to proceed.

I asked Eduardo’s help and with the big soldering iron he pushed in the thickness of the deflector a few little pieces of a speaker metallic grille, with no visible trace from the outer side. A very clever way to solve the problem.

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The following day my backache was not too bad but it still hurt. I went on with the finition of the deflector, this time with plaster. I had never worked seriously with plaster and so this would be a little but useful training to experiment the pros and cons. And so I played the plasterer on the dining room table.

You need some practice to get the right amount of hardener to put on the plaster for it to harden when you need it, not before, not later. After a couple of tests I went for the deflector and applied the plaster, sanded with four different types of sand paper, refilled some defects and sanded again until I was happy enough with the result. I really enjoyed working with the plaster and the idea of doing myself the plaster work for the repair of the cabin started to turn again in my head. Another specialty to practice for widening the alternative curriculum.

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Monday after Easter. Moderate backache, still unable to work with heavy loads. Hmm…

The only item left unsolved for the assembling of the front suspension was the fabrication of the supples to fill the space left by the removed spring leaves. I was about to go out to buy another piece of steel but walking around the truck I found discarded spring leaves everywhere, thus a lot of steel to use. I surely was never going to sell or use them elsewhere so it was okay to pick some, very carefully, the less curved ones, mark and cut them to the proper dimensions. The 70/18 arc weldings would be more than good enough to hold the properly prepared pieces together.

The leaves from the rear spring packs were almost one inch thick, perfect for the task. Paying attention not to stress too much my spine I cut the leaves very slowly and carefully. The big pieces showed some curving but it was negligeable from the aesthetic point of view and irrelevant from the structural one.

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Naturally, the hand held cut produced more than slightly irregular edges so I had to work hard to fix them and correctly align all the pieces together.

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#543 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-04-24 4:09:58

Calbuco vulcano erupted yesterday in the south.

Oh, dear God... you must be really kidding!

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bandulu
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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#544 Beitrag von bandulu » 2015-04-24 23:54:02

:eek: oh my god......it looks amazing and scary together.......i hope you'll not have any bigger problems with that....
best regards....

christoph
the only good system is a soundsystem
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makabrios
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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#545 Beitrag von makabrios » 2015-04-25 10:55:23

Yo creo que el problema es mayor :dry: :

http://www.wetter.de/cms/calbuco-ausbru ... 87281.html



Soeben erhielt ich einen Anruf, dass in Kathmandu ein schweres Erdbeben stattgefunden hat.

http://www.tagesschau.de/ausland/erdbeb ... l-101.html


Meine Ärztin ist gerade im Rahmen eines Interplast- Einsatzes vor Ort, glücklicherweise unverletzt, und verarztet rund um die Uhr.

den von mir immer wieder aufrüttelnd gemeinten Wunsch eines schönen Tages ( :) ) lasse ich gerade mal bleiben - ist in so einem Umfeld selbst Makabrios zu makaber :angel:

MAK
Einen Raum als Beziehung zu verstehen ist wie Chili essen. Durch Chili wird die innere Form des Mundes spürbar. (Ernesto Neto)

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#546 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-04-30 3:35:12

Hello again:

Nature strikes whenever and wherever at her own wills. As I said, we always go in the news because of that, and MAK is right, it can always be worse.

This is a picture of my father shot yesterday, when working to build an alternative draining system to prevent new floods in the northern territories. Hope it works. Look the size of the tube compared with the tiny helicopter. Ah! And I just heard in the news that the Russian spaceship with the degrading orbit may fall precisely on us. Just the cherry of the cake.

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Anyway, that Friday morning, a few weeks ago, I went out early from work and got all the stuff necessary for the first annual meeting of my schoolmates. The Africa Twin was already tuned up. This time we gathered at the house at the lake of one of them, 400 km south from San Felipe, and we had very nice weekend with a lot of fun, chatting, dancing, laughing and drinking. Oh yes… a lot of it all. The hang over was brutal for many of us but I got the worst part because I got flu. Maybe too much wine, maybe the hot tub was indeed too hot and the night too cold at three in the morning. Hmm…

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On Monday there was a lot of work to deal with but nothing really interesting as I spent the whole afternoon grinding the welded supple block and cutting and bevelling the pieces for the other one. Lots of sparks that even burned the welding jacket out. Noisy and boring, but my back stood.

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A couple of days later three packages arrived from Santiago and were ready for me to open them up when I came to the shop. One of them was from the Mercedes dealer and contained the retainers of the front brake cams, a couple of o’rings for the brake shoes and both brake chambers replacements. It was impossible in the end to find the right spare for the rubber bellows and so I decided to buy the whole thing.

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I bet the quality was by far not the same but I just hoped that the new brakes would do the job better than the older ones. They did nothing at all, indeed.

The other two boxes were a gift I gave the Africa Twin, the Yamaha and the Montero: brand new high quality tools to work with on them at home and, of course, they would be the tools on board when travelling. The Würth guy make me a big discount, fortunately. They looked and felt pretty good!

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Welding the pieces of the other supple block together was all I could do that afternoon, but I felt not pretty good because of the damage done to my beloved cells by the filthy viruses of the flu, so I took one picture when heating up the steel for welding and then I just welded and welded and finally went home.

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The flu finally won and threw me down to bed three days, the whole weekend. I had to get up and work Saturday morning because unfortunately there was nobody to replace me; that made the illness worse and last a little longer, I guess.

Monday morning I was back on my feet and went to work feeling almost good. In the afternoon I still felt a little weak but grabbed the powerginder and grinded and then polished the new block supples. I used the new pedestal drill to perforate the superior plate of the supples meant for the center bolt. It would have been faster with the regular drill, but my hands, my forearms, my shoulder and my back were pretty happy and gratefull to the new tool.

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Once the block supples were finished… yes… it was time to go home. Christ! So slow! So many days to fabricate these two pieces only.

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#547 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-04-30 3:50:07

Two days later I went to Verardo’s shop to ask for his help to solve another problem. I had the proper drill bit but not the right drill to use it. The front mounting support for the spring pack of the left side had to be rectified because the holes were too tight for the special bolts that fixed it to the frame. Remember that this was the front mounting support of Spare because Merkabah’s original support was badly worn out and the bolts were slightly smaller.

One of Verardo’s workers did the job in less than ten minutes. I profited to ask him to fabricate the two center bolts for the spring packs and after a brief chat I went back to the workshop and spent the rest of the afternoon at putting the support in place. I had to finish the job manually with the lime and some sand paper work but finally the bolts went in smoothly and the support, with its four bolts this time, was ready.

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A couple of days later, Friday again I think, I continued with the cleaning of the leaf springs of the right spring pack that I washed off from oil and hydraulic fluid some days before. I had to make a pause to let the powergrinder rest a little and cold down. The center bolts were already turned and I went to pick them profiting of the pause. They looked great and they were made of some special alloy Verardo told me would resist any strike. I hoped so.

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I went on with the cleaning of the leaves until they all shone with metallic glitter. Before leaving I grabbed some other pieces and applied the abrasive disk, just for the fun of it, enjoying the easiness with which the old paint and the superficial rust was removed.

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This project has been plenty of special and emotional moments since the beginning, and Sunday afternoon was one of them. The old and faithfull pair of shoes that accompanied me for the last year had forcefully to go to rest. They gave and gave their best, but it was now time to retire. With aching heart I put them in the trash can and turned my back on them saying goodbye forever. It hurt.

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I devoted that day to work on the spring packs and get them ready for painting. First of all I grinded a groove on the inferior border of the supple blocks and modeled a prong from welding into a groove carved on the base plate. I did not want the supple block to slip from its base and the head of the center bolt would not be there to prevent it. I thought that this trick and the tremendous torque that must be applied to the U brackets would be enough to keep the mind’s peace. Many others that had put block lifts haven’t even used any means to prevent them from slipping and have had no problems… to my knowledge.

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I assembled the left side springpack to test the length of the center bolt and it was okay, though a little cutting would be useful for the U bracket support to be put on top of it.

Seeing the pack already assembled an idea started to grow on my mind: why not assembling both spring packs and paint them like that? Was it worth to prime each leaf individually and then assemble the pack, as I had done with the rear spring packs? Hmm… tempting. There were other considerations also, as the need for help to put the pretty heavy assemblies back on the frame instead of the easiness of doing it leaf by leaf, for example.

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I gave the idea a few second thoughts and finally decided that it was better not to spend time and efforts and to paint the assembled packs, so I got both spring packs ready and the center bolt torqued. When the moment came I would ask for help, if needed, as always.

When I unwrapped the leaves of the right side spring pack, though, they seemed to be less clean than the newly polished and assembled ones, so I had to give them a second hand of abrasive disk and metallic mesh before assembling. Yes, yes… I said I know.

The assembly itself was not as easy as it sounds either, of course, and I had to use the lime to adjust the holes drilled on the supple blocks and on the smaller leaves because the center bolt did not fit in, and the steel with which the spring leaves are made is a very damn hard one.

I swept the whole place to remove the dust, all the gritt and dog hair that covered the floor, preparing it for painting. It took me quiet a bit to do so and then I powerblew everything at sight. Then I swept the floor again and ventilated the entire shop with wide open gates for a while.

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After many hours of work the pieces were washprimed and I could finally go home, tired but happy. We had a very nice and delicious dinner out.

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#548 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-04-30 5:00:21

Monday afternoon. I went directly to the box where the painting gear was stored and prepared the primer. Two and a half hands, according to the instructions. What the hell means two and a half hands?

This time the primer itself gave me no trouble but I had some problems manipulating the containers and the paint gun and I spilled out some of the primer on the bench. It was a mess.

Finally, at least three hands of primer were applied to the spring packs. Good. I cleaned the paint gun and the containers and put them back in their box. I then looked for the shackles to continue with the assembling of the suspension and… guess what? They were not primed! I just put them in a box after cleaning them and did not finish to prepare them for assembly. I did not remember that.

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It was late, well… not very late but I had no will to make again all the tricks with the primers and the paint gun, not at that point. I was really done with the painting. I hate to clean the paint gun!

But I went on, though, and got the bushings and the new turned pins that were hidden in some dark spot of the shop. The bushings were the ones I could get and they were 12 mm longer than needed for this type of leaf spring. I cut them carefully and then put them on the springs with a little aid of the rubber hammer. They fitted perfectly and looked great, comparing with the ones that came out when disassembling.

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The day was coming to an end but Carmen still had things to do at her office so I grabbed the antifreezing container that was lying on the floor in a corner and started to clean it up from dust and what it seemed to be one kilo of many hands of black paint of many different kinds. It contained also many little pieces of precipitated rust formed in the cooling circuit after many centuries. I wanted to get it clean and installed to make the engine run once again before it suffered from the steadiness.

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The thread is up to date now. Any comments are welcome.

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Worktom2011
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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#549 Beitrag von Worktom2011 » 2015-05-11 8:54:22

Fantastic work Pairoa! :unwuerdig:
Seems that you are having such a loving wife to take all the time to do that preceise work of rebuilding the truck. I can't wait seeing it running the first time.
My truck is still in the holding, everything done so far with the cabin, painted and ready for equipping the interior, just waiting for the carpenter to beginn with the detail planing of the interior.
Seems as if you have to wait for me one more year to visit you. But maybe you'll be ready until then and we can make a trip together.
Until then, all the best with your work (and health :rock: )
Tom
CU Tom

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#550 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-05-11 14:53:04

Hi Thomas!

I just wrote back to our friends Peter&Margo asking them to salute you as I got no answer from you by mail and whatsapp. Coincidences do not exist!

Good news about your truck. I am sure that sooner or later you will be knocking at my door, not sure if I will be ready to ride with you at that time with the Merkabah, though.

Anyway, happy to hear that you are going ahead with your project... and yes, Carmen is fantastic.

Please, say hello and hug your nice daughter for us.

Cheers.


Pairoa

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#551 Beitrag von a90 » 2015-05-11 20:03:29

Very nice to see al that progress Pairoa.

All that hard work makes me think, I have the opportunity to buy an semi- ancient Mercedes (1970) for restauration and although I cannot do it by myself, you inspire me to do so.

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#552 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-05-12 3:41:39

a90: my pleasure! Follow the inspiration, no matter where does it come from.

Cheers.


Pairoa

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#553 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-05-17 5:00:44

When I put my hands on the truck’s pieces again, which seemed to be more and more difficult each time, I prepared the scenario for painting. Sweeping, blowing, sweeping again, put some masking paper, etc. As I was not keen on priming only the two schackles remaining I prepared also a few more pieces and then I sprayed them all with washprimer. That took me the whole afternoon.

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Back at the shop the next working day the idea was to prime everything at hand so I took also the front axle and swept again all around. It was a great pleasure to apply the primer to the big piece of steel that stood still, hiding behind the workbench for so many months. Alejandro helped me to move the pieces as required, and my back stood pretty well. I primed untill there was no primer to paint with. Good. Everything was ready to begin the assembling of the suspension… or so I thought.

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But I was wrong. I had forgotten that there were only four suspension bellows, four for the bogie and one spare, so I ordered other two for the front. They arrived the next day by bus. They were more than 50% more expensive than the ones I had bought before, and that hurt… a little.

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Next, I found out that I had not enough washers, the ones that go between the leaves and the shackles, and they had kind of a rubber grease retainer around. The lasts I had got before, fortunately.

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Zuletzt geändert von pairospam am 2015-05-17 22:07:46, insgesamt 1-mal geändert.

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#554 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-05-17 5:11:43

I took a couple of the original washers and made a try to put on one of the shackles. The manoeveur was not pretty difficult but was neither easy; I wanted to avoid using any kind of lubricant to help the assembling for it would ruin the definitive painting of the frame.

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Went to Verardo’s machineshop and asked him to turn the washers as I had many times looked for them in the past with no success. The villains that serviced the Merkabah replaced the original washers with some local ones with different sizes and properties, as usual.

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To make time, back at the shop, I went on with the cleaning of the antifreezing container. It looked gorgeous… like some polished piece of machinery of an ancient old locomotive in a museum. I had the hint on leaving it like that, but obviously it went not good with Merkabah’s colours so black or grey would be the options.

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I went to pick the washers late in the evening, and Verardo recommended to treat them before putting them on, as even if they were turned in Adamantium or something as hard as it, they were not as hard as the original ones. It was too late for experimenting so I got the two old Mercedes washers remaining and went on with the plan. Alejandro helped me again with the heavy spring packs and we both put them in the right position under the frame.

No matter if I put all my strength and patience at work, I could not put the washers nor the pins, so I left it all as it was and went to work to bring bread to my table, like every Friday noon.

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Saturday was a day full of social and family events. No time for the Merkabah. Sunday was Mother’s Day, but Eduardo and I managed to go out for a ride after celebrating them properly. Darkness caught us when we were back on the asphalt road so there were no really dangerous situations, just dust, rocks, sweat and fun. On the picture you can see my brotherinlaw helping to fight the dramatic dryness of the Putaendo valley.

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On Monday afternoon the first thing I did was to heat up the new washers, to almost 500°C as recommended, and submerged them in oil. This way they would become more hard but not too brittle. Hmm… we’ll see.

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With a little help of the jack, pian piano I reached to accommodate shackles, rings, washers and pins. Once I got the right moves it was easier to install it all and soon the spring pack of the right side was ready, back where it belonged. Every piece aligned perfectly with the other. It looked pretty good, as everything that becomes renewed.

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#555 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-05-18 5:20:55

But the real trouble started when I tried to replicate the manoever with the left spring. To start, the rear shackle had been struck and there was a little deformity that I had to correct with the lime. Then, the washers were 2 tenths of a millimeter wider than needed, so I had to rub them against sand paper for long, making my fingertips ache like hell, until they were fine. Following, I had to use the jack to move millimeter by millimeter back and forth the heavy piece because the rubber washers were pretty hard to accommodate on this side and I wanted not to damage them.

To take the following picture it was necessary to make many tries and a lot of time to get the spring that deep into the shackle without ruining the rubber seals, but it does not actually show it.

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The worst came at last, though, as always. The spring pack was a little twitched and even if I used the rope to help me align it with the front support, the borders of the curved extreme of the mother leaf were not parallel and thus there was no possibility to make the washers fit in. I had to use the powergrinder and grind straight the sides of the curved leaf, with a lot of patience and in a very uncomfortable position. It was really difficult and exhausting, but there was no other way as I wouldn’t take the spring out again for any reason.

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Finally, I made the washers fit and introduced the pin halfway and then it blocked. The twitching of the spring made it hit against the bushing. I gave up and left, heading home, with my body aching after all the physical effort. I guess that the torsional forces may have played a role in the making of the worn hole of the original spring support, but the truck had been badly overloaded so, who knows for sure.

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The next time, I took it with no hurry but with no pause. I got the spring support loose, pulled a little the support with the rope, counter-twitched the spring pack with a big lever and with my whole body weight (it just moved three millimeters, anyway) while Alejandro pushed the pin deep in the bushing with the rubber hammer, very nicely. I then bolted the support back on and torqued the bolts and finally put all the lockers for the pins in. Ah… good.

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To my eyes the “new” springpacks looked spectacular, especialy after all the trouble. A couple of pictures and then make order, sweep and clean it all up again for the next step: installation of the front axle.

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I thought about the best way to take the axle from the stands to under the frame and after half a cup of tea I concluded that I was going to use the old wheeled creepers. There still was a couple of them somewhere and when I found them I took the wheels from one and put them on the other to double its capacity to stand the weight of the axle. Put one creeper on top of the other and went to look for help for taking down the axle as I was in no way able to do it by myself, but everybody was busy.

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#556 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-05-18 5:31:10

Had to kill the time doing minor things waiting for someone to help me. I collected the rest of the parts of the suspension, from boxes or sparsed in the attic, and cut the extreme of the central bolts to avoid conflicts with the saddles for the U brackets.

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Later, when I was beginning to be really bored, Alejandro arrived and he gave me a hand to load the axle on the improvised and upgraded creeper, with no trouble. The axle quickly went in position and Eduardo helped me with the stands this time.

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It was already late and everyone passed in front of the truck waving goodbye while I was trying to put the U brackets and the modified inferior supports that included the brackets for the sway bar. I don’t know if anyone has ever noticed it before, but I made a mistake and welded the pieces in the wrong position, facing upwards instead of downwards. Big mistake, yes. I hoped it would not cause a major problem but the only way to be sure was to assemble and see the sway bar working.

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Well, a little more and a little less sweating, with the left side there was no problem and everything fitted perfectly. I was not sure about the right side because of the apparent deformity of the springleaves, but in the end it fitted also pretty well once the U brackets were tightened. The front axle was finally where it belonged and the suspension was ready for real testing.

But, the feared “but”, I had a doubt regarding the stability of the springpacks since I bolted the first U bracket: would it be stable enough like that? The center bolt, or at least its semi spherical head would not be there to prevent the basal leaf and the spacer block from being knocked off lateraly if the truck fell into a big hole or there was a big impact from one side. Damn! Seeing it made the feeling more uncomfortable. Eduardo returned briefly to pick some stuff and made a little comment precisely on the subject, just when I was thinking about it, and he left as if nothing has happened.

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I put all in order, cleaned the place and stood staring at the lonely skeleton of the old truck that refused fiercely to be reassembled without care and precision, no matter how long it may take. Okay, I would put the axle out again and figure out how to block efficiently the springpacks and stabilize the suspension in a safer way.

With these thoughts I left and went to bed. It was really late.

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#557 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-05-18 5:37:44

A whole day passed before I could reach the workshop again, and when I did I went straight to loosen the axle. I had not torqued the U brackets so it was not big deal, just a pain in the ass, especialy if trying not to damage the paint and not to stain the primer.

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I had already a plan to block the basal leaf to the axle and the lifting supple block to the former one. A couple of pieces of a cut and discarded spring leaf, one of the old center bolts and one of the old pins were the source for the material needed. I would weld the heads of the center bolts on the inferior faces and guide blocks for the supple on the top faces of the basal leaf springs.

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Sparks here and there and the odd smell and smoke of the burnt leather from the welding aprong filled the shop again. After carefully measuring and adjusting the pieces I prepared it all to make the basal leaf the key piece that would make it all stand, hopefully.

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Maybe it was a nonsense and a futile effort because, as said before, some guys just use the lifting blocks and forget, but these were pretty tall blocks and it is always better safe than sorry.

I used the welder and allowed the pieces to cool down a little before applying the primer directly, without washprimer. I was not on the mood this time and I had to go to work later, so… just primer.

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At the time that I had to go to work it was safe to manipulate the still warm pieces so I put again the axle back in place. Everything fitted perfectly, with a mimimum displacement allowed as originaly wanted. It would be harder now to knock the springpacks off the axle. I felt better, and tightened the U brackets pretty hard without torqueing them. I hoped not to have to disassemble the thing again, but you never know.

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The last thing I did before leaving to put bread in my table was to clean the paint gun, just in case I needed to retouch the Merkabah, as I did thoroughly while waiting for the primer to dry up.

It was a pretty heavy working afternoon but it paid off for sure, and I was late for work only a little. The Merkabah was entering the next phase: assembling of the power train… or something like this. Whatever…

Did I mention that some weeks ago there was an auction of the Army, and that among other stuff there was a couple of MAN Kats for bidding? Christ… I was so tempted! These creatures are so rare here, so rare that the guys hardly use them because they are afraid to break or ruin something and not be able to repair it. Fortunately the prices were higher than expected (fortunately for me), and they were pretty rusted, as suspected. Bad. But still….

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JRHeld
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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#558 Beitrag von JRHeld » 2015-05-18 11:09:16

Moin,
you are going to drive your Truck soon :D :D :D
Its becomes more and more exciting to follow here :D :spiel: :positiv:

As soon as you are finished with the Vehicle it self,
and start with the box,
achieving progress will be easyer (not dealing with forain designs (design mistakes), less heavy parts, etc..) and with this progress will be even faster :cool:

Regards
Jakob
Ich bin krank,
ich hab die Schrauberitis...

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#559 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-05-20 4:49:21

Nice words, thanks Jakob.

The road is still long, though, and I have yet to deal with my own mistakes and mishaps. But... life is hard... with a sweet taste in the end.

Greetings.


Pairoa

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JRHeld
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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#560 Beitrag von JRHeld » 2015-05-20 9:47:41

Moin ,
in the end you probably have to accept that you cant get erything perfect.
Otherwise you will never hit the road, and somebody else will have all the fun where you had the work...

hard words sorry...

But however,
you are doing an amazing job!
As you are no pro, It is quite normal that you dont get everything perfectly done to the last detail at the first attept.
You are having a learning curve.
On my own project, nearly everything I built is sufficient, but however a Prototype, and I know what I would change if I would design it the second time. I will probably never do it a second time...

Keep going!
Take care!

Jakob
Ich bin krank,
ich hab die Schrauberitis...

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#561 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-05-22 0:52:21

No hard words at all, Jakob... simply the truth... from some point of view.

I am the first to recognize I am not a pro, but as with everything I commit with, I put my heart and soul in it. It is the only way I know, and the best way to achieve at least a good result.

Anyway, it doesn't matter if I ever get the truck running out of the shop. This has been a very interesting and unique experience and I have learnt more about myself, the people I know, the bussiness world, anger and frustration management, frienship, love, life and faith, than I have learnt about mechanics. I have been at dinner with many charming members of this forum in their own houses, just for instance!

I have had all the fun already, and I am grateful for that.

Good thing is that it is still not over! But don't get me wrong, though, because I am the first in the row waiting for the Merkabah to make her first kilometers by herself.

Best regards and many thanks for writing.


Pairoa

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Iain_U1250
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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#562 Beitrag von Iain_U1250 » 2015-05-31 2:39:32

I am in constant awe about the how much work you accomplish every time I check your posts. The level of detail you have gone to is incredible. I was complaining the other day about the weight and torque requirements of some of the bolts on my Unimog being over 300Nm, with a few in the 450Nm range. Looking at how heavy your suspension components are puts my complaints to shame. I also find myself doing things two or three times even until I am happy with the result, so don't worry if you don't get it right the first time, just keep on trying until you get it right.

I think our trucks were similarly neglected in their past lives, being worked until they were almost dead, but yours is twice the size of mine, and the amount of effort you have gone to making everything as good as possible amazes me.

I am hoping to be on the road in mine in the next couple of months, and since we are planning to drive around the world in our tiny Unimog, maybe one day we see the finished product in person.
Iain

Brisbane, Australia
Unimog U1250
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCKPlQW ... KTQ/videos

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#563 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-06-01 5:34:12

Hello Iain:

Good to see you here and thanks for the encouragement.

I hope you are going to be able to start your trip soon and I am sure we will meet somewhere in the future, maybe right here, in San Felipe at the current pace of my project!

For those who are interested, Iain has a pretty nice and well documented thread on his amazingly well done and endlessly caressed Unimog at: http://www.expeditionportal.com/forum/t ... nstruction.

Today I made the engine run again, and it sounded like music in my ears...

Greetings to you and Trish.


Pairoa

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#564 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-06-29 18:51:51

Hello all:

It’s been a while, yes, but this thing never stops.

Before going on, let me introduce the new arrived, Chico Sergio or simply Chico, the last to enter Pairoa’s foster home for lonely but polite dogs. He came following the irresistible heat perfume of Deva and he stayed and stayed outside until the gates were open for him to enter. Not my idea, of course. And then they were five…

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I was happy with the recent progresses of the project and a friend sent me a Whatsapp when I was under the truck working on the axle. I even shot a selfie to show him where I was and how happy I was. Good.

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But… always the damn “but”, I picked the shafts from their lethargic and dusty dreams and got to prepare them for changing the cross joints and put them in place, finally. I washed them with solvents, again, and cleaned them off a lot of dirt that they still kept even after countless sessions of cleaning.

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The races were heavily worn out but the repair kit included the four races so I would have not to concern about new oil leaks from the retainers, or so I hoped.

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After wrapping and protecting the spindles I cleaned it all again with solvent, and I was going to load the pieces on the car to take them to the press when I had a bad feeling. I went to the office and took one of the new joints. Remember that the joints were brand new, special, offset, very expensive ones, purposedly bought by a friend who knows his business, checked and re-checked by the EPC and picked up by hand directly in Stuttgart, where the original truck was born. I got them and stored them next to the other new parts and never had a doubt that they could possibly not be the right joints so I never checked them.

They were not the right joints. Just like that. They were bigger. Hmm…

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What really surprised me was my first reaction, like feeling and saying: Ops… another problem.

I checked and measured again it all. There was no way they could fit in. Made order and left after telling Carmen about the new issue while my mind was full of thoughts, looking for alternatives to overcome the impasse. Assembling the front axle was the core of the developing work-plan, and now it had come to a sudden stop until finding a solution that seemed neither easy nor cheap, and I was, of course, the only responsible.

I wrote to Germany for councelling and I was told that I had to wait a little until the first days of June, and it was then a couple of weeks for waiting, something I am not really good at.

Those were pretty hard days but the weather was still benign so I profited to do a lot of bicycling to clean my mind and release some tension. Also got the dirt bike and went out to jump some mountains but, judging for the gaze I still wore, it was not working very well.

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A couple of days later I decided to chase off the frustration and the bitter feeling and unwrapped and re-checked if all the other parts necessary for the assembling of the axle were the correct ones, and then put them all back in their box along with all the concerns. The Big Boss would tell.

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#565 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-06-29 18:58:50

I completed the deep cleaning of the shafts and wrapped them with plastic film, again, and put them back in a corner until the right solution came.

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As the engine had not been cranked for many months I focused all my attention in that matter. I wanted not the injectors or the diesel pump to get blocked so the task was to get the cooling circuit back to work. It would be very nice to hear the old V8 running again, I thought.

So I finished to clean the gorgeous bronze tank and sprayed it with high temperature paint. It came pretty good and simple to retouch if the need raised. The steel supports were a matter apart and they had to be submitted to the well known cleaning, priming and painting process.

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As I wanted not to paint only a couple of pieces (I hate to clean the paint gun! Did I say that before?) I took a few more parts for priming and painting in the same session. There never was lack of parts for painting, anyway.

That same day arrived from Germany the proforma invoice to begin with the construction of the sandwich panels for the Box of the Merkabah. A couple of emails back and forth and I went to the bank. After a little while the panels were paid and it was just a matter of waiting for the confirmation of the reception of the money the next week. Waiting and more waiting, Pairoa.

It was a momentary relief after many, many months of planning, designing, correcting and trying to avoid mistakes, misunderstandings and errors about measures, materials, etc. I said momentary because there still were more things and details to correct, but at least we were very close.

My father sent me a picture of his new heliport on the mountains in the north where he was working. Seems that we both share some kind of crush for the highness and the mountains, though I prefer to feel my feet (wheels) on the ground. He is the best helicopter pilot in the world, of course, and my personal hero.

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The days that followed were devoted, when possible, to make the engine run again. I had to make the coolant circuit to work and also to complete the hydraulic circuit from the engine pump to the steering pump.

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I cleaned the piping supports and primed them along with the inner covers of the brake drums that I accidentaly found under a thick layer of dust. They had been sand blasted and primed once in the past but they were a little rusted after some centuries of neglect. They required a new dedicated cleaning session and new washprimer and primer application.

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I was sanding hard when Jaime, the guy from the shop next door, arrived with the brake shoes with their new linings. I had made him take them to Santiago to do the job because I found no specialized brake shop in San Felipe that I could trust. The riveting job looked pretty well done and the quality of the linings was reknown so it was all okay, except for that they did not clean the shoes before changing the linings. Another future job for Pairoa.

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The brake shoes were put back in their boxes until figuring out how to solve the problem of the universal joints and resuming the front axle assembling.

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#566 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-06-29 19:09:29

After preparing the pieces the anticorrosion juices were applied. I really like the way they look when primed, especially when compared with those which had been primed long before, covered by the time and the dust.

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What needed to be painted in the definitive grey was painted and hung from some wire in the attic. But I still had some paint in the gun that, this time, I wanted not to throw away so I cleaned the front axle and the spring packs up and sprayed them as an experiment, just to see how difficult it would be to paint the frame with all the parts assembled.

Well, it was hard. Not a simple job to reach every aspect and every hidden corner of the truck. I played until the paint was over and then took some pictures as they show better than the naked eye the places where the paint was not enough. I would have to give at least two more hands to get the right finish, and to pay more attention to the details, but in general it was okay, and I liked more and more the color chosen for the frame.

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Then I thought of making some progress with the retainers and the bearings of the steering knuckles and of the axles and I cleaned them for good, but the day had become colder and colder as the time passed so I made some order and followed Eduardo’s advice of making that kind of job only wild mild temperature. There was no hurry, at last, so I wrapped the knuckles with plastic film and forgot about them for a while.

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The paint needed a couple of days to harden and the time passed slowly. The peaches were almost nude at this point of the autumn, and the rain still was elusive.

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As I really wanted to make the engine run, the first I did was to assemble the cooling circuit, put back the air filter element and the big bellow and then I realized that I needed to assemble the hydraulic steering circuit with all the piping close to the steering pump as well, to make it in just one time and not to work it twice.

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#567 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-06-29 19:17:37

Well… same as always…clean pipes and supports still covered with rust, paint, dirt and grease.

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One day, Saturday if remember well, I finally assembled it all and filled the reservoir with ATF, again, and it was all okay to crank the engine according to me. I faithfully chose two of the 105 Amp batteries that were lying aside for way too long to actually still be charged and made the necessary electric connections.

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The sparks came out from the terminal and the starter made the powerfull V8 tremble, but it did not run and only produced a few muffled coughs. That was not right. It should have started at once, even before touching the starter (well… not that much).

I was about to make a second try when I thought it twice and made a walk around the engine, and found the cause of the failed start: I forgot to take the cover off of the air filter intake. Ops.

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The engine cranked at the first attempt, of course, once it was able to breathe. It sounded great, even more after so many months of steadiness. The only problem was the amount of smoke the cold engine produced in that cold and windless day. I had to wide open the gates and all the dogs ran out and away from the shop and returned only after I shut the engine off. Cowards.

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I truly enjoyed the sound of the V8, and the smell of the smoke got caught in my overall and inside Carmen’s office for at least three days.

I let it run for twenty minutes before shutting it off, then I grabbed the sway bar, the next object to put into the project, and cleaned it superficially. Then I went home.

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Sunday morning was dirt bike time, so I took the WR 450F for a ride and found that the dryness was making the mountains to become very soft and fragile. I became trapped on a slope with no traction because the soil had become like flour and the rear wheel spinned endlessly making holes each time I wanted to go up. Yes, I could have pointed down and go home, but that was not the idea.

After a few minutes and a couple of liters of sweat two young riders helped me out and together we pushed the bike to solid ground near the crest of the hill where I could, after catching a little breath, continue with the sporty promenade. It was a very long and good ride.

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Back at the shop, I took a few pieces and put them where they belonged to free some place. That way the supports for the shock absorbers were placed on the springpacks but, unfortunately, the new bolts were too long to let the shocks fit so I would have to cut them a little somewhere in the future. Hmm…

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I spent some time cleaning the sway bar to the bone and decided that I would not replace the two big central bushings as they were not in too bad condition (also because they were fiercely stuck to the struts and I was not on the mood).

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Washprimer and primer for the sway bar and for other pieces as well to profit the priming session and minimize the times I would have to clean the paint gun. They looked pretty well after, as always.

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#568 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-06-29 19:28:48

The next day, I received a call from a member of the local 4x4 forum who thought that a friend from a friend may have the solution to the problem of the universal joints. He sent me then a picture that showed a shaft that clearly was not the right one for the Merkabah but he told me that this guy knew a lot about my truck and that he may have other pieces of interest, maybe the right joints.

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I loaded the shafts and the joints on the Montero and headed for Santiago right away. Maybe it was just a false clue, but I am convinced that things happen always for a good reason. The guy that called was a total unknown for me and he was offering his time and effort for free to help me, as many have done, so it was worth the trip just to thank him.

I missed the meeting point, of course, and after a while we finally gathered and went to an ancient neighborhood where the answer to my prayers was supposed to be. Outside the workshop a half cannibalized 406 Unimog showed its nudity to whoever had the guts to look. I felt a little sad but at least it was a good sign: we were close. I followed Sergio, the helping guy, and passed along a series of wrecked Unimogs and a couple of old L series that looked just a little better than the one on the street, and among them one that had been refurbished and was ready to delivery.

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There was a newer Unimog covered by dust, spares and neglect in the middle of the yard. It has been there for years - Sergio told me, surely driven by my open mouth staring at the noble and uncomprehensibly half killed truck. The engine looked complete and I was told too that the drivetrain had no fault. If it was not for the Merkabah I surely had made some attempt for its revival, no doubt about it. All I could do, though, was to secretly drop a couple of tears for the fate of the poor beast.

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Sorry, but I had to show it, Iain.

There were dozens of small and big parts sparse in a strangely organized chaos all around, among them many used and abused mechanic winches and transfer cases as I could identify. Sergio warned me to show no particular interest even if I was dying for having any piece that the owner of the shop might have but, to shorten the story, the man had neither spares nor solutions for me, but he had a business friend that might be of help. He called him and gave us his address, half city away.

Sergio leaded and I followed through the growing afternoon traffic of the big ugly city. The old guy owned a small but incredibly well supplied store of Mercedes truck spares a couple of blocks away from where I went to ask for the same joints one year before. With very polite manners and full of stories ready to go out from his mouth he told us that he formerly worked for the official dealer of Mercedes Benz and started his own business after twenty years of being an employee. He really knew about trucks and identified the Merkabah perfectly just by showing him the sample of the joint.

He made a few drawings, took some measures, kept the joint, told a hundred interesting stories about the virtues and flaws of the EPC and about everything and promised me that he would call me when his partner in Bremen or somewhere else answered him about the bloody joints. I thanked him and Sergio and returned to San Felipe just a few minutes before the traffic jammed at the rush hour.

The options were just a few: find and buy new universal joints; buy the whole shafts, both sides; turn the bearing caps to make them fit with the yokes; buy 38 mm normal cross joints and replace the 40 mm caps of the Mercedes offset joints by turning the races to make the caps fit and then cement or harden them. I did not like them, not one. Anyway, it was just a matter of waiting, and faith.

Well… it was necessary to go on so I grabbed the primed sway bar and its repair kit, bought a couple of years ago, and spent the whole afternoon at installing the bloody thing in. It looked easy but it was not. The bar was heavy and hard to handle and the struts blocked just when you needed them to move easily. Bad. To make it worse the superior bushings got stuck and the threads of the bolts worn out.

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Also, I did not understand how the pins and the inferior bushings were assembled as they looked, and actualy were, impossible to fit. Tito, one of the mechanics, gave me the practical answer, but I was so tired that I left it all for the next day.

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#569 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-06-29 19:37:50

After a refreshing but brief sleep and a good working morning I went to the shop and knocked the removable washers out and fitted the bushings in the supports. The spares of the washers did not fit in no matter how hard I tried, so I put the old ones back in place… after a good cleaning, of course. It seemed that there would be no trouble with the sway bar even if the supports were assembled upside down.

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And the new weekend arrived. The wineyards, dressed in autumn colours, looked spectacular in the early morning sun. The big dogs accompanied me in the subzero bicycle trip, and there still was no rain for San Felipe. We were already in big trouble, as predicted.

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I had to work a lot the next week so the time for the Merkabah was pretty limited. Monday afternoon I just got to clean partially the upper end of the steering knuckle and gave a thought or two to the best way of removing the kingpin from it. It looked that it would be a pretty interesting fight, stuck as it seemed to be.

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The man from the little shop called as promised and told me that he had found the right cross joints and found out why the truck used that size of joints: it was originally destined to South Africa and thus used 38 mm caps joints. Why? Who knows. The price for the new, supposedly correct joints, was not too high, probably as costly as modifying the Mercedes joints already at hand. I wanted to discuss it with Eduardo so I asked a few days to answer.

Tuesday morning I took with me the shafts to work and struggled a little to remove the last two universal joints from the shaft and from the coupling yoke at Victor’s little workshop. It was hard but in the end the bastards got out. I insist that when you see it done in YouTube it looks very, very easy. But YouTube lies.

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I went to the shop the next afternoon and cleaned, for the tenth time, the shafts and the coupling yokes and applied some lime and a little sand paper to the foramina of the yokes. I then wrapped them all and left them aside. Eduardo was not pretty convinced about the offered joints, but we agreed that it was worth to try.

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That Wednesday I called the guy and ordered the cross joints. He replied with his calm old voice that he had ordered them already and that they were ready for delivery aside a pinion and a ring gear ordered by someone else. The freight cost would then be zero and he asked me nothing in advance. Sounded very good, too good to be true, and Eduardo did not buy it. As I am a little more naïve I preferred to be happy than suspicious. I would go to pick the joints the next week and depending on if they actualy were the right spares I would pay him or not.

I was convinced that there was a good chance of resuming the assembling of the front axles so I went for the old seal rings and the bearings that were still in place in the axle. It was not easy to figure out how to remove them because there was no ad hoc extractor in the shop. I used a combination of tools and finally knocked off cleanly the needle bearing and both inner and outer seal rings at once on the right side of the axle. Good. When it came the turn of the left side it was a disaster and I ended up destroying them all and the race of the retainer remained stuck in its place. I noted that there was light coming from the other end of the axle. Right, it was just a hollow piece of steel, so I looked around and found a long steel tube which I cleaned and then went through the axle with. Eduardo hammered gently the other side while I directed the strikes against the edge of the race and at the tenth bump the last part of the bearing was knocked off the axle with an ouch!

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A little cleaning and the axle was ready to host new pieces. But it was already late so I left, leaving the pleasure of putting the new spares for the next week.

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Re: Mercedes 2626 AK 6x6

#570 Beitrag von pairospam » 2015-06-29 19:48:18

That weekend I decided not to step into the workshop and invited Carmen to lunch out by the coast, in our favourite restaurant in Viña del Mar. It was really great to forget about the project and about work for a couple of days, but when I was going to refuel we found the only and famous blue swiss Bucher Duro right at the gas station. Seems that these trucks really wait for me at the turn of the corner. The travellers were inside the truck but this time I was not on the mood and I wanted not to disturb them so I took a lot of very discreet pictures and we left, wishing them long and safe journeys.

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Monday, time to proceed. The spares were there for months, waiting for this moment. As I had not the precise drift 387 589 02 15 00, according to the assembling manual, I got a couple of socket wrenches, the old ring seals and Scotch tape and made up my own drifts. Well, they worked great, and very carefully the shining new bearings and the seal rings were put on both steering knuckles first. I wrapped the heavy pieces and put them back in their boxes because my wishes have always proved to be wrong and I had a hint that something was not going to work this time, again.

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I inspected the axle very carefully again and found that the inner left race was a little damaged, not by me, by the previous owners who did not take very much care when replacing the seal rings. I used a little lime and fine sanding and I considered it was enough. But everything happens for a reason, and when I was ready to install the new bearing I had a huntch and put my finger in the hole to explore. A little metallic piece was almost at reach, out of sight. Grabbed the magnet and took out one needle from the destroyed bearing that I was not missing at all. Maybe it would have never done any harm, but the Big Boss warned me of its presence so it was potentially disastrous.

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Once I was sure that there were no more pieces inside the axle I drove the new bearings and the seal rings in. It was far more difficult than with the knuckles because of the uncomfortable positions and I ended up pretty late, alone for a change, but it was worth it.

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Tuesday was a very hard day and had a very busy night. Wednesday I tried to get out early from work but it was impossible, as always happen when you need to. Got on the Africa Twin and flew to Santiago to get the famous offset joints before the rush hour. When I reached the little store the seller showed me the stuff, and they were not precisely the most delicate pieces of engineering I had ever saw. I hesitated but eventually I picked the joints for Eduardo to take a look. One hour later, he inspected the joints and made some moves and sentenced that they were just plain crap, and that I had rushed and made a huge mistake again. Well, he was right.

The rest of the day and week was a truly shity one, with tons of hard work and just a few hours of sleep. I was really exhausted and frustrated but Eduardo convinced me to take it all easy. He really is a great guy and he accompanied me Saturday morning to bring the joints back to the old guy. My brother-in-law explained him very calmly why they were unusable and the seller could not argue with him. So, he excused himself and gave me the money back, a check actually. This, believe me, is a very hard task to accomplish in this business. We asked him to locate the actual good ones and call us. Maybe he would do it, maybe not, but more than risking not to get my money back I was truly disappointed because I could not assemble the axle, and thus the issue of the joints was not solved at all. On our way back we got caught in the traffic and missed lunch time.

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