My first carrier: some assembly required

[super dave]

I made it out of some 1 1/4" strapping material I had.

[super dave]

Well its been a long time since I have updated this thread as Life took a detour on working on the carrier this last few years but not forgotten. I only managed to work on it briefly last year but I am back on track and have found the time to go full steam ahead on it .


So I guess where I left off I had done a lot of fab and painting of the parts of a good portion of the carrier and last year I worked on the exhaust system. I went with a Walker muffler 17864 from NAPA as it was the best I could find that was close to the original one and had a length of 17" in the body. I made the system I believe like the original setup.

[super dave]

Now to play the mad minute in catching up on what I have been accomplishing the last few months


Now that the exhaust system is done and in I can install the differential YAY.

[super dave]

Now the diff was in I went through the brake system and cleaned an lubed the actuators, The brake shoes had a lot of life left in them so just a cleaning and painting was required

Cleaned, Repacked the wheel bearings and installed new seals and on went the brake drums. Moving forwards.

I had been looking for a while for the dust seal the went on the brake actuator rod and found that a dodge master cylinder boot from the M37/WC worked great.

[super dave]

Now that was done onto the suspension, Wah Hoo. First was to install the cross shaft, brackets and rollers. As a side note since I had not stripped the carrier down I installed the shaft first and then went to install the rollers to find out I had to pull the shaft out to get the rollers into place as they would not slip in with the flat part of shaft in place . After that was done was to install the bellows dust seals, Lucky I had them from the guy I had purchased the carrier from and a previous thread on how they were installed.

[super dave]

Now that was accomplished it was time to get on the assembly of the suspension. I opted to bolt the main parts on and then install the springs after as it would be to heavy to install a complete component. I stripped the system a few years ago with a home built spring compressor at the time but really did not like it and considered making one from the Australian designed one but I made up one using a M113 track jack and it has worked flawless

[super dave]

Now that that has been done it was time to install all of the road wheels. As in one of the past posts I went for the larger wheel bearings and had spacers and sleeves made to install them into the wheels and the measurements that I got were spot on and the wheels slid into place perfectly


I will leave for a brief while and go work on it and will post some more info tonight.

[kevin powles]

Hi, Nice Progress, well done.

[super dave]

Thanks, Its been a long road and looking forward to the end result

[super dave]

After I got the suspension on and all buttoned up, I was just looking at the road wheels from front to back from the rear and noticed that the front adjuster wheels looked toed out after looking at it closer and taking a strait edge to it from the hull to the outer edge of the wheel i discovered that the front axles were bent . I had a couple of extras that came with the carrier and I dug them up and swapped them out with the ones I had on. The right side replacement was perfect but the left side was the same as the one I had on it. As the left side was not as bad as the right I just went ahead and made a small shim at the rear bottom of the adjustment and it came out pretty good


The next part I started to work on was the conduit as I thought I would get that out of my way. As the conduit that came with the carrier was very rusty (like through) I was lucky to do a trade with Dave in Saskatchewan with a lot better stuff. The removal of the older smaller wire was pretty easy, but the starter cable that went to the starter was rusted/stuck to the inside of the conduit . I first tried to remove the cable buy clamping the conduit in the vice a hooking a come along to the cable and pulling it out with a lot of effort which it did come but it left all of the rubber shielding still attached to the conduit, Long story short I had to cut the conduit in half so I could access it to remove the shielding. Now that was done it just needed a clean up YAY. I was missing all of the rear conduit from the transmission back so luckily a friend of Doug's has a MK1 and had that piece of conduit that we could borrow to make one for ourselves. I was lucky I had a friend with a Hausfeld tubing bender that made quick work of that and just have to thread the ends. Had to make up a few of the sleeves to join the conduit as well as the jam nuts.

[super dave]

After that came Fabrication, fabrication and more fabrication of brackets and all of the fasteners to put this thing together. When I purchased this project I did not get the lid to this giant puzzle that states ( Fabrication a Welding skills are a must when assembling). I am over 743 bolts I had to get together so far of various lengths as well as the different head styles as to get it back to look as original as possible as most of the bolts I had were in very poor to non existent from the years it was under the ground. I used a lot of the stove bolts as they are similar to the dome head bolts of the carrier but when it came to the counter sunk screws ARRR. as the BSF style is about half the head diameter and depth I had to machine all of the down to size and re cut the slot in them which took a lot of time. Also I machined all of the markings on the ends of the bolts so they looked more like the bolts of the time

[super dave]

A few more parts.



Well that's enough for tonight and tomorrow off to the Calgary gun show where I can look at a lot of cool stuff and see what Rob Love has been up to

[Marc van Aalderen]

Hi Dave,

It looks beautiful already and it is not even finished. Hope we can see the completed project in the near future. Keep up the good work and the photos coming!

Cheers,

[super dave]

Originally Posted by Marc van Aalderen

Hi Dave,

It looks beautiful already and it is not even finished. Hope we can see the completed project in the near future. Keep up the good work and the photos coming!

Cheers,

Thanks, I hope it will be done soon myself as it has been a long haul but see light at the end of the tunnel

[super dave]

Well the Calgary gun show was great and had a lot of goodies, Purchased a few items and even filled robs pockets with a little cash and had a great chat as well as with his side kick Derk.

After the fabrication of those bits I spent some time to straitening out the drivers and gunners bins as they were slightly pretzel shaped from being in the ground, Overall I was very happy with the end result

[super dave]

Now that was done I got all of the vision slot shutters and hardware ready as I had some repo and original pieces that I am using for my carrier. One of the items I cam up with is the specialty screw heads that go through both of the plates and the glass frames. A while back I was at a friends where he was restoring a M3 scout car and it used a lot of countersunk slight dome head bolts and when I looked at them they looked like the ones used on the carrier as I had a couple original ones for comparison. As I was using the specialty nuts on the back side that were of the BSF thread and the scout car bolts were too short anyhow I just cut them down and got some BSF bolts and welded them onto the ends and did a slight bit of back cut on the counter sunk side and presto it worked great and you cant tell the difference.

[super dave]

Now that was done in was time to get ready for another painting session so I decorated the tree once more. There were a lot of little bits and pieces to hang

[super dave]

Once hung a I prepped a bunch of the bins and brackets as well for a full session of painting I had to do some minor repairs to some of them like replacing the small ball studs that the straps attach to as well as some replacement steel as some of the pieces were rusted out. I found that Holly has these ball studs that are used with there carburetors.

[Ben]

Decorating the tree in preparations for paint....... The story of a carrier restoration, it brings back memories of mine.

Fantastic looking job, it'll look great once you're done. It has all the nice little trinkets.

[eddy8men]

excellent work and you make it sound so easy

[Peter Duggan]

Dave,

Great to see you back working on your carrier. The workmanship is extraordinary. Looking forward to the day you fire her up.

Peter

[Jason Graveline]

Dave,

Great meeting you today and thanks again for those parts. Just a tremendous restoration job; this thread is an excellent log of your work and I'm glad I had the chance to see it with my own eyes. I'm very much in awe of your talents!

Following this with much interest!

Jason

[super dave]

Thanks for the comments everyone it has been a lot of work but I can see light at the end of the tunnel now


For the next paint session it was a great day and +15 so I started early thinking I had plenty of time but wrong, It was about 8:30 that night when I got finished but had great results

[super dave]

The next day I assembled the seat hardware together as well as the rear antenna mount so its ready to install when that time comes. The rear mount is a thing of beauty and I just polished up the brass and cleared it for the moment as I know it was painted but i like the looks for now.

[super dave]

So the next step I took was to install the vision shutters so I laid all of the hardware out and got it ready to install.

As I first tested it with the original spacers between the shutters I could barely move them up and down as it was very tight and would scratch that nice paint . So I made new spacers about .015 thicker and this gave them more clearance for better movement. I also installed some decal material a on the back side of each shutter so it would slide better and not do too much damage to the paint and its worked great so far

[super dave]

Now that was done I finished up the drivers/Gunners compartments by bolting that last few shields and the seat frames so that means the front is essentially done.

All I have left is the need for a tool box on the Gunners floor as I picked up one a few years back not realizing that the MK1 and MK2 are different Anyone have a really good MK1 tool Box that they would trade strait across for a MK2 in perfect shape ???? If I don't find one I will modify this one to fit.


Also one a note does anyone have the measurements/Drawings for the fire extinguisher mounting brackets that go behind the driver and the gunners compartment as I have to make a couple for mine ?????

[colin jones]

You've got some serious work happening there Dave. It looks like you have most if not all parts to complete your carrier. Have you got the complete drive train, There are so many similarities to the Aust ones in fact I would almost say that some parts are interchangeable. At your rate it should be quite a fast restoration. Excellent work.
Colin.

[super dave]

Yes I have the whole drive train and I am getting it ready for a test stand I made up as I want to run up the engine a while before installing it into the carrier. As for a fast restoration I have been off and on it for a few years now but as of late I have been cracking the whip and trying to get it done asap.

[super dave]

Well not a lot to report as I am just about caught up again until I get the engine running but I managed to get the battery box mounted on the back as well as some of the pieces above the diff and the convoy reflector plate.

[super dave]

I also got most of the conduit and related pieces ready to install and once most of it is in I can then Finnish making the rear pieces that go to the rear light.