TrögBlog – Moved to http://trog.us !!!

Service and parts manuals arrived today. I used the personal bookprinter service lulu.com to print them up. Lulu is pretty cool — you upload a PDF and can get single quantity copies of hardbound books for $30 or less. Colby did the same thing, but his layout of the service manual layout was a little wonky. Not all chapters began on odd pages so sometimes 2 page layouts wouldn’t span facing pages. The C30x manuals also have some not-so-useful chapters, such as extensive unit conversions as well as a treatise on petroleum engineering. I moved those to the back of the book. I also changed the cover to include the pic from the original brochure for Trog. I ordered Colby’s parts manual as is because it isn’t referenced as often.

My service manual is here

Colby’s parts manual here

Neither Colby nor I make any money off the manuals.

I’m going to have the interior and bottom of the rear box sandblasted at Puget Sound Coatings sometime next week. Unfortunately, PSC recycles their sandblast media and the undercoating ruins the media. So, I gotta strip it. It’s some sort of goey-tar like substance. I tried a number of techniques to get rid of it:

• Strip with adhesive remover I bought from Home Depot. This worked pretty well, but unfortunately it worked really well on my skin. Any drippings burned like acid.
• Chisel bit in an air hammer. Too gooey for this to work
• Air needle scaler. Also too gooey, though it does work to get bits out of the corners
• Heat gun and a scraper. Worked pretty well. It gets really old working with hands above with sticky gooey stuff dripping on you.
• Paint thinner with a rag. This works ok to get the last bits the scraper doesn’t get

The process would go pretty quickly if the underside was a flat piece of sheet metal, but unfortunately the panels have channels pressed into it to give it strength. Most of the time is spent working the channels. I’m two days into the project and almost done.

Update:   A propane torch works a bit better than a heat gun (away from fuel lines, that is)

The cast brass engine hatch covers polish up quite well.

I’ll finish the hatch and bulkhead soon, but the easy flash of the brass was too hard to resist, especially after lots of messy stripping.

The Volvo C303 makes Jalopnik’s Ten Best Post-Apocalyptic Survival Vehicles

http://tinyurl.com/37thrk

Today Marshall and I removed the rest of the hydraulic bits, including the PTO shaft. All told, it was probably 150-200lbs of crap removed. I got woz’d by hydraulic fluid pretty bad.

Next up, is removal of the rear cabin box. It should come off easily — only a few wires enter it. It attaches to the frame with maybe 8 bolts and a few dozen smaller bolts to the forward cabin. Removed, I can get at top and bottom sides and seriously address the rust issues. I’m considering replacing the floor panels w/ stainless panels. I also plan on doing the camper conversion to the box removed from the frame. It’s easier to work on and doesn’t take up so much room in my shop.

After removing the water tank, next to go is the hydraulic water pump. I believe the pump is rated at 500L/min.

It was a messy job, with over 10 gallons of hydraulic fluid to drain.

I have no use for all this stuff. I believe Jim Molloy and/or Zach of NW Mogfest has a Unimog firetruck that he’s working on and could use the parts. (Zach: to take the pump, you have to take the 10 gallons of hydraulic fluid too!)

I’ll probably remove the PTO (power take off) equipment as well, unless I can think of a good use of PTO output. Perhaps a winch, but there’s plenty of decent 12V winches I could use.

Just won an ebay auction for a sweet Federal firetruck light/siren. The original siren was removed by the Swedes before export. AFAIK, this siren is from the 50s, so I’m mixing eras a bit, but I really like the design of it

It’s 24V and I have a civilian C306 which is 12V, so I’ll have to make a voltage doubler circuit. I’ll also have to add a secret enable switch for 2 reasons, one to prevent friends from running the siren and two, it’s illegal to have a siren/working red light on a non-emergency vehicle in WA state.

WA code:

RCW 46.37.190

Warning devices on vehicles – Other drivers yield and stop.

(1) Every authorized emergency vehicle shall, in addition to any other equipment and distinctive marking required by this chapter, be equipped with at least one lamp capable of displaying a red light visible from at least five hundred feet in normal sunlight and a siren capable of giving an audible signal.

…

(4) The lights described in this section shall not be mounted nor used on any vehicle other than a school bus, a private carrier bus, or an authorized emergency or law enforcement vehicle.

So as long as the light and siren is non-functioning, I should be fine. I think I’ll carry a copy of this section of the code in case of street hassle.

Trog came with a 1000L fiberglass tank. It, however, takes up a lot of usable area in the aft compartment. So first task is to remove the tank.

Interior anti-slosh baffle:

I found that an angle grinder with an abrasive wheel was much more effective than a sawz-all, or circular saw at cutting the fiberglass.

The wreckage:

Underneath the tank, much rust was lurking:

The harvest:

I have some patching to do:

I also spent some time renovating the driver seat, making it so it can move back an additional 4″, making Trog much easier to drive (I’m 6′5″).

Willem-Jan Markerink, on the Yahoo C303 group believes that Trög may be the first C306 built. The Swedish license plate is the same as the one on the original brochure from Volvo.

Lots of pictures of Trog on Flickr:

http://flickr.com/photos/92778554@N00/sets/72157603902642236/

A week+ ago, my friend Colby (www.prevolve.com) and I flew, one way, down to San Diego to check out a 1977 Volvo C306 6WD firetruck that came up for sale. With 35K km (21K miles) on the odo, It checked out mechanically fine, with just a few oil leaks. Then began the LONG drive home. The 6WD versions of the Volvo C3 series trucks are geared lower than the 4WD versions. This means that top speed is effectively 80km/h (50mph). And at that speed the interior noise is DEAFENING. 4 long days of driving later, we arrived in seatttle. One of the first tasks will be to address the noise issue.

On the way home, I consulted an online English-Swedish dictionary and tried out a few possible names for the truck. Some things i tried: Fire – eld or brand. Flame – flamma, and some others i forget. I kinda like Flamma, but it sounds a bit feminine. My wife Laura, waiting patiently for me to return home suggested “Trög”, Swedish for “slow” (also in the mental sense). Fullständig!