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

On Trog, the windsheild washer jets were plugged with paint from the last paint job.   A needle poked in the jets helped, but still the washer fluid barely reached the window.   Turns out there’s a flow restrictor after the fluid reservioir.   It was probably put in there when the washer motor was new and had lots of mojo.    30 yrs later, it needs all the feed liquid it can get.

The flow restrictor is the blue plastic thing.

To continue the theme of shiny things, I thought I’d replace the mudflaps. Then I shopped for the things. $100 to $200+! For friggin mud flaps? No way. Instead, I decided to renovate the old ones. I added some stainless weights/extenders to the bottom.

Between the bumper and the main box, the old design used another piece of rubber. It was flawed in that it allowed mud to collect in the crack above the rubber, causing the bumper to rot out. I’m going to replace the rubber with some rigid pieces of rolled stainless, fastened/welded appropriately. Rust isn’t really an issue anymore since I replaced those sections with stainless. Still, it’ll be one less place to clean out after going off road.

I’m resisting the urge to add the classic mud flap girl:

Or, with the little one now in the house:

Thanks to Chris Marshall of SimpleMachine for rendering this version.   My lovely wife had CaféPress print a coffee  mug with this as a Father’s day present.

I cut out a few rusty sections of the floor a few months back.    Yesterday, I finally started replacing them.   Here’s a shot with the 1″ square tube floor “joists” welded in place.

Luckily an L shaped piece of 14 ga steel fell into place, after a careful rotation.

I’m hoping a rectangular piece is next.

Overhead welding sucks, so I’m going to drill holes in the sheet metal and weld to the joists from the top, rather than from below.

Here’s a blurry pic of the new panel with holes drilled and weld-thru cold galvanizing primer.   The primer has zinc in it, to minimize corrosion in the space between the panel and the support pieces.

I also removed the cowling covering the rear portion of the engine and transmission and cleaned all the rust off of it.

Shot of the engine and transmission:

In the catagory of unnecessary data I don’t need, I performed tests  of the outputs of the old cheezbrgr lights compared with the new LED lights.    I placed a piece of white Sintrel 1 meter away from the lights.   There was some ambient light in the shop due to the skylights.    All pictures were taken with a Canon 30D 1/45sec F 1.8 with a 35mm lens.

In each picture pair, the top one is old incandescent and the bottom is LED.   Pictures were taken off axis by about 1 meter and from about 2 meters away.   (I had a prime, non-zoom lens on the camera and had to step back to capture the illuminated patch.)

Tail light:   The only test where the results were pretty close, though the LED seems to be hotter in the center.

Brake:  Here the LED light is radically brighter.   This is the case that matters most, I think.

Turn Flasher.   Again LED better — I could barely see the incandescent flasher on the Sintrel..

And finally, a comparison of the incandescent tail and brake light vs LED brake light (night braking)

I didn’t test the reverse lights.

Update on the cheezbrgr lights.   I had some flaky behaviour with the right turn signal not flashing when the running lights were on.  It flashes fine when they are off, and the left turn signal works fine.    The old Bosch mechanical flasher expects a certain current to flash.   Apparently, it’s right on the edge of oscillating, and (guessing) the internal switchmode power supply of the new cheezbrgers draws less flash current when the running lights are on.     The fix for this was relatively simple.   I added a 16 ohm 10 watt resistor from the flasher terminal to ground on the back of the cheezbrgr light.   I added a resistor to the left signal as well, even though it isn’t needed right now.

These 10 ohm resistors from Radio Shack will also work

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062291

For 24V systems, you want to use a 50 ohm resistor

http://www.radioshack.com/product/index.jsp?productId=2062292

The next problem was the interior dashboard indicator lamps failed to flash, even though the external lamps were fine.    This must be some sort of “dead bulb” detector in the Bosch flasher, for which the LEDs, even with the resistors, didn’t draw enough current.    It could be an inrush current thing.   Incandescnt bubls have a very low resistance when first turned on.  As the filament heats the resistance increases.

The fix was relatively easy.    I put each indicator lamp in the same circuit as the external flashers.    There are three three-way connectors behind the dash which distribute the flasher circuit.   They are the only three way connectors behind the dash.     On Trög one feeds two green wires, another feeds two red wires and a third feeds two yellow wires.    The yellow wires are the input to the flasher circuit (it unions the flasher and the hazard lights).   The other two, red and green ones are the ones you want to hijack.   For each of the red and green, I removed the female spade terminal from the feed wire to the three-way connector and crimped on a new connector to the old wire, along with a new wire.   That new wire was then fed to the indicator lamp.    On the electrical diagram I have, I connected the two three way connectors below Item 49 to Items 36 and 38 (red, green lines), and disconnected the original feed wires to 36 and 38 (orange slash).

It all works great now!

Another fix would be to source a modern electronic flasher which is pin-compatible with the old Bosch flasher.   I couldn’t find one in my searches and the surgery above wasn’t difficult at all.

Trög has really nice Pinttsch Bamag rotolights on the top.    These lights feature 3 aspheric glass lenses which rotate around the central light.     This yeilds a nice flash pattern, better than the rotating reflector design of most other lights.

The left light rotates fine, but was failing to shine.   What I thought was going to be a simple change of bulb ended up being a several hour repair.   It turns out the ground connection at the bottom was a pieces of galvanized steel crimped against a galvanized nut.   Over time, the crimp loosened and corrosion degraded this connection.    The “fix” was to weld the crimp to the nut.   Easier than disassembling further and cleaning everything up, especially since it’d soon corrode again.

Oh, and another Tollarp rant.   What goofball thought it a good idea to make the ground wire red and the power wire black???!??!?

Today I installed the “Cheeseburger” style LED tail and backup lights.

Rather than pay outlandish prices and shipping for them via a British vendor, my friend Colby imported a bunch from China.   He’s selling them here.   They are quite nicely made and seem to be robust with quality gasketing and weep holes.  They are exact fits into the existing mount and grommet holes.   Mounting hardware is stainless steel.  My only complaint was 2 of them did not include mounting hardware (2 4mm nuts and some washers, as well as the screws that hold the lens on).   I could have very well lost them when transporting the lights to the shop.  Update:  Colby found the screw packets on his workbench.    They must have fallen out while we were bench testing the lights.

Here’s a shot comparing the old and new.    I have the brake pedal pressed.

It’s a little hard to objectively compare brightness with a photo, but this shot pretty much captures the difference in brightness.    The old one was a dim glow while the new LED light was almost too bright to look at.   I took these pictures off the centerline, behind the LED light, so it may be an slightly unfair comparison.   In person, the new LED lights are noticeably brighter.

It’s a bit less about half as bright when just the running lights are on.

The turn signals also work, with the existing stock blinker module.

Update:   Oddly, the right turn turn signal doesn’t flash when the running lights are on.   The current draw of the cheeseburgers must be right on the edge of what will work with the stock mechanical blinker module.    A 10W ballast resistor of 10 ohms connected from the flasher terminal to ground should fix this.   For 24V systems you’d want to use a ~40 ohm resistor.   I need to verify the appropriate resistor values  next time I go to the shop.

I didn’t get a photo of the backup light, but it is pretty good.   The old light was a reflector light (like a headlight), so it was fairly bright.

Getting everything to blink correctly was a challenge.   Trög is a mess of crappy wiring done by the Tollarp folks who did the fire truck conversion.  Crap such as lots of unsoldered/uncrimped connections barely held together with electrical tape or wires run willy nilly with extra lengths of wire woven thru the existing Volvo wiring.     Add various modifications and equipment removals over the day and it’s really hairy.   I spent a fair bit of time tracking down a completely incorrectly wired front indicator light which caused the right brake light to blink when the left turn signal was on!

Rear bumper installed, with flip-down step flipped down

I rigged up a paint booth in the shop, using a pop-up shade structure I got at Costco as the frame. This frame makes a nice, easy to set up and take down booth.

Unfortunately, the shop is pretty dirty and is actively being used by a few people right now, including some woodwork, so it still wasn’t enough to keep all the nits out of paint. This meant I had to do quite a few paint/sand cycles to get an acceptable finish. It’s definitely not “show quality”, but it’s also better than “military quality”. It ended up a bit more glossy than I would have preferred. Here’s some parts waiting to dry hanging from an A-frame I made.

I used automotive 2 part catalyzed polyurethane paint. Polyurethane paints are significantly more durable than single part enamels or lacquers. The catalyst is pretty nasty stuff, so I dressed up in a bunny suit and used a respirator. I also invested in a good quality SATA HVLP gun, which was much nicer to work with than the suction fed gun I used on the wheels.

This takes care of nearly all of the exterior black parts, so the next task is to bolt everything back on. Then I get to tackle the interior rust and actually begin the systems installation.

* You Can’t Handle the Truth

A note from Willem about the black/white sectors on the rims

The black/white pattern of the rims is not just to spot a moving vehicle, at
night and/or in smoke/fog/water-spray; the story I was told when I purchased
mine, from a fire-chief annex castle-owner annex military naval officer annex
car-museum owner (his entire (semi-royal) family owned 200 oldtimers total!),
and confirmed by the intermediator, is that many decades ago, someone in Sweden
studied the safety regulations for dangerous devices & substances a bit too
anally, and concluded that *if* any high-pressure device must be marked with a
black/white cross label, than surely tires too, especially high-pressure truck
tires….so with that regulation in hand, he started ordering that all rims be
painted black/white….:))
The regulation might have never be intended that way, nor even be valid today,
but the paint culture was never changed afterwards….:))

Sounds a bit apocryphal to me, fire chiefs having lots of time in the station to spin yarns, but it’s a good story.

Check out the rear pimp wheel. Colby came down to the shop the other day to fabricate 4 low-rider wheels for his Volvo out of the lil’ donut spare tires from modern cars. His garage has a low ceiling/entrance, so he has to put these baby wheels on to roll it out of his garage!

Willem, a Volvo firefighter owner from the Netherlands, sent me the following as a warning against the stainless grab bars:

To:               LandCruisers@tlca.org
Date sent:        Mon, 02 Jun 1997 08:06:37 -0500
From:             "Andrew H. Litkowiak"
Subject:          Re: hood kits, a teaching tale about chrome

Brian Skalla wrote:
>
> Help!
>         I cannot find any kind of chrome hood kits for my 75 FJ40.  If anyone
> knows a company that sells them please e-mail me and tell me who.
>
>                                                                 bskall@webzone.net

Brother Brian,

Poor, misguided Brother Brian. Listen, as the story of chrome is related.

Once upon a time, in a city not too far from you, a young man named Burford bought a Toyota Land Cruiser FJ40, the roughest, toughest, most rompin, stompin 4×4 available in the known world. Burford was very happy with his Cruiser, but, being from the city, he felt that something was missing. Something cool, something to help him pick up chicks.

He gazed at his Cruiser, glorious with its hard lines and earth tones. “Ahhh” he said, “if only it were a little brighter, flashier. Then I could get all the babes I want.” Burford pondered and puzzled and thought until smoke curled from his ears. But nothing came to him.

Suddenly, there in the grocery store parking lot, he saw a low rider. It had high gloss paint, a very noisy stereo, chrome trim everywhere and beautiful bikini clad bimbos laying all over the car (turns out it was a photo layout for Low Rider Magazine, but of course, blinded by the high gloss chrome and bimbos, Burford failed to see the cameras).

“That’s it” he shouted, “Chrome!”

Burford hurried home and pulled out all his Cruiser related catalogs. He pored over them, but could find no Chrome accessories. “How odd” he thought. “Well, no matter. I’ll just send some stuff out to the local plating shop.”

Burford took the parts to the nearest plating shop. When the owner saw that they were Land Cruiser parts, he refused to chrome them. “Look son. I’ll powder coat them, I’ll black anodize them, but I won’t chrome those parts. It’s a sin, plain and simple”.

Burford went to many plating shops, but the result was the same. Metal platers everywhere refused to deal with him, the more superstitious even warding him off with hex signs and prayers. Finally, in a run down, scary part of town, he saw a sign for plating services on a dilapidated old garage. The owner was a gnarled little man, with a rheumy eye and a hunch back. “So, ya wants chrome, does ya? I’ll do it, but it will cost big.” All Burford could think of were the bikini clad bimbos. He ignored all the warnings and rumors and handed over his money to the odd little man.

While the parts were out being chromed, Burford buffed out his Cruiser until it shone like the sun itself. He also installed a wicked 250 amp 27 channel ear busting stereo system.

Well, the big day arrived. The parts were done! Burford hurried to the plating shop and collected his parts. And what parts they were. Bumpers and rims and hood hardware and tool box and bezel and tow hooks and Warn hubs and lug nuts and roll bar and wiper arms, all in glorious, gleaming chrome. He rushed home and began working on re-installing all his wonderful chrome parts.

The work was all done and nothing was left but to go for a ride. Burford climbed into his gleaming, chrome covered cruiser and headed for the mall. “This is it” he thought, “babe city, here I come.”

As Burford headed towards the mall, he came upon a small tree, just a sapling really, down, blocking the road. Cars ahead were detouring around it. He looked, and decided, “hey, it’s a Cruiser. I’ll just crawl right over.”

Burford pulled forward and touched the sapling with his tire. As we all know, when the front tire of any Cruiser touches dirt, sand, rock, grass, wood or any material other than asphalt or concrete, the Land Cruiser Gods look down upon the Cruiser, ready to admire their creation and watch with pride as it conquers the environment it was designed to conquer.

So the Land Cruiser Gods looked down on Berford’s Cruiser, and they were confused. “Where is our creation, and what is all that damned noise?” The Land Cruiser Gods looked closer and realized that it was indeed a Cruiser. They saw the well buffed paint and smiled, happy that Burford was caring for their creation. They listened to the offensive loud music and were a bit miffed, but, they let it pass, hey, who can judge taste in music, one man’s treasure is a Land Cruiser God’s trash, but, whatever.

The Land Cruiser Gods then saw past the blinding reflection of the sun and realized that the source was….chrome. “It looks like a low rider” said one God. “Look at all those greasy fingerprints” said another. “Look” said a third, “he’s even done the hood latches in…(sob)…chrome.”

So the Land Cruiser Gods conferred and debated and raged and wept, all the while trying to decide a proper punishment for Burford. At last, they found a suitable penance for the ultimate sin. They assembled in all their glory and power and carried out their decision.

As Burford’s front tire touched the sapling, he felt a shiver run through his body. His Cruiser suddenly felt….different. He stepped on the gas and……was stuck. Burford gassed it a bit more, and then a bit more, until it was floored, and the motor was screaming, but he moved not an inch. “How odd” Burford thought. He engaged the 4 wheel drive and tried again. Nothing. The engine screamed in agony, the clutch billowed noxious gasses, but the truck would not move.

Burford shut off the motor and climbed out to find out what tremendous obstacle was holding him in place. He looked around, but all looked normal. A tiny sapling lay in the road, but nothing more.

Burford bent down to look under the truck to see if he was missing something. As he gazed to the front, he noticed that his springs were….tiny. In fact, everything in the drive line was….small. Axles, pumpkins, transfer, suspension all looked as if they had shrunk. He pulled his head back and stood up.

Burford looked closely at his truck. It still gleamed and shined, but it was riding lower to the ground. He walked around it, examining. “The grill looks different” he thought. “And what are those stupid little flares doing on the front fenders?” The sheet metal looked thin and the doors were kind of odd.

As he rounded the back, a horrible thought occurred to him. Yes, the tire carrier was gone. Burford looked closer and then let out a shriek “oh, what have I done, what have I done?” he sobbed. There on the back were four terrible letters, burned into the flimsy sheet metal. J**P

And that, children, is how the Land Cruiser Gods created the J**P.

So you see, Brian. You really should consider just why you can’t find chrome parts. This story is one of the teaching parables used by the Curia. It’s origins are lost in antiquity, but Truth is a constant. I suggest you heed its message or you could face dire consequences.

Firefighters have a long history of shiny metal on their exterior, so I don’t think I’m offending any Volvo Gods.

I picked up some marine stainless fittings to add a grab bar above the rear door. This makes entry and exit much much easier. On first install, the back of the truck flexed more than I wanted when putting weight on the bar. With goopy 3M 4200 sealant getting on everything, I dissembled it all and added some steel backing plates to spread the load. I’m going to do the same thing on the 4 front doors. Just waiting for the fittings to arrive.

It turns out there’s a lot of space for batteries in Trog — the volume to easily place them, relatively mid-ships, below the bed, has approx 20″ of height available. That means I can use bigger, taller batteries. In past marine use, I’ve used the ubiquitous Trojan T105, which are the best deal Ahr wise, but since I have extra space, I can use taller batteries. I picked up “used” some Trojan L16G from Allied Battery today, for the great price of $100 each. They are “used”, but the sales guy assured me that they were returns from Genie where they dumped a pallet of them and returned all unused. I’m going to charge them and run them down at a 20hr rate to see what condition they are. At 370Ahr, that’s about 18 Amps. Luckily, the old heater element I removed from the back of Trög, at the bottom of the pic, is 0.55Ohms, or about 21 Amps at 12V so that’ll work nicely as a test load.

Update — looks like the batteries are in pretty good condition. They bottomed out after ~16 hours. I’m not exactly sure how much current the heater element actually drew b/c it’s more than my meters can read. I need a shunt to measure the current.

Trog is loud! A lot of the noise is from the tires, engine, fan and transmission. All create a racket that at highway speeds will certainly cause hearing damage without hearing protection. I got some Damplifier, butyl rubber sound dampening material from Second Skin Audio that I’ll use to cover the inside of the body.

Damplifier is good stuff, all butyl rubber vs competitors dampeners made of asphalt that can delaminate and smell like hot tar on hot days. I’m also using Spectrum liquid sound dampening as an undercoating when I redo the back cabin.

Sidewalls and roof will get some sort of insulative sound dampening in addition to the Damplifier. I think the Second Skin product in this category is a little expensive for what you get, so I’m still looking for the right stuff.

Today I applied the Damplifier to the front cabin. Applying the stuff is pretty fun — you don’ thave to be that exact with the cuts and it smooshes down easily with a wooden roller. I applied double layeres of the stuff to the bigger panels which seemed to have more “boom” when thunked. It took about 50 sq ft to do the main cabin:

It’ll take another 160 sq ft or so for the rear cabin. Maybe more.

Finally back to work. Quentin gave me the day off from diaper changes so I got to work on Trög. The bottom pan of the back box is pretty rusted, especially under the (removed) tank and above the rear wheels. Here’s Trög with the worst parts cut out.

and the bits removed

There were quite a few old patches and holes cut in these panels.   The old patches weren’t done with the greatest of care, so they tended to be the rustiest areas.

brb — diaper change break (not my best work, I’ve been informed, by both Quentin and Laura. ).

The old panels had channels  pressed or bead rolled in for strength. I don’t have a bead roller so I’ll I’ll fab new panels out of 14 gauge steel with 1″x.065 square tube or 2″x1″x.065 rectangular tube reinforcements.

No posts recently, because I’ve been busy!   Laura, my wife gave birth to a beautiful healthy baby boy last Thursday.    I’ve been spending the days around the house helping out and occasionally purchasing Trög things from the internet.

Growing up with Trög, I like fact that he’ll find it perfectly normal for his family to own a red firetruck.

Bajeezus. Everywhere I look I find more and more rust. Here’s the back of the bumper where 3-4mm of steel has rusted through — this is where the mudflap attaches.

The mudflap design is somewhat flawed — the mudflap extends up as well as down from the attachment point. This creates a shelf for dirt and water to collect and promote rust.

I have metalworking and welding equipment, so repairs are possible, but they are time consuming, especially if you want to do it right so rust doesn’t reappear down the road.

Here’s the footwells where I removed the rusty areas and welded in stainless panels. Water collects in this area and festers rust. The stainless will prevent that in the future.

Before:

After:

Welding the stainless and chasing down all seams is a pretty time consuming task.

I don’t have to do the cleanest of jobs because all of this will be covered by sound dampening material. Here, I have it layed out but not glued down.

I’ll post about the sound dampening stuff soon.

For rusty areas where I’m not replacing the panels, Eastwood makes a really great rust converter product.    It converts red rust into a black iron oxide form.

This is then covered with Eastwood’s Rust Encapsulator which is similar to the popular POR15, but supposedly better.

If I were to do it again, I’d buy an aluminum-zinc military C304/6 and paint it red. That is if I could get a TGB13/20 with medium fast 7.05 axles like Trög has. All this time rectifying vehicular neglect could have been spent installing camper systems.

Marshall came down to the shop yesterday to help me bleed the brakes and put the wheels on. After sitting for about a month, Trog started right up. As we were backing out of the shop, we noticed some fluid leaking. At first i thought it was some brake fluid from a bleeder port i forgot to close up, but further investigation revealed it was gas. Eeeek! It turns out the previous mechanic who serviced the carburators hooked up new fuel lines, but he forgot to use hose clamps! Tsk tsk tsk. Scary. Do mechanics have liability insurance? Was it the same mechanic that creatively screwdrivered the thermostat? What other shortcuts will I find?

After bleeding the brakes 3-4x, they are still spongy. This is even with a powerbleeder. I think I’m going to take them to a brake shop to be bled properly.

Check out the old thermostat:

The mechanic who last worked on Trog’s cooling took a screwdriver and tweaked the thermostat valve permanently open. Probably too lazy to order a new part and figured this would fix the problem. Tsk tsk tsk.

This explains the << 90C coolant temps on the way home.