M2A1 Front End and Engine Rebuild

[Smadge]

Great video Steve.  Your project is fantastic!!

[Robert Cassin]

Great video. I actually went and ordered Matt's Headlamp!

[steve1973]

Great video. I actually went and ordered Matt's Headlamp!

When I first saw it I thought it was something that Doc Brown had from Back to the Future. 

[steve1973]

Hope everyone had a great Thanksgiving.

This is a little off topic but thought I would share it anyway. I just returned from Hawaii with my Dad. I was able to visit the USS Arizona memorial, USS Missouri, air museum on Ford Island and touring the USS Bowfin WWII submarine. The highlight of my trip was staying overnight on the USS Missouri in an actual bunk, it was a little on the tight side. Also, my Dad had arrange for us through public affairs at the sub base on Pearl Harbor for a grand tour of Pearl Harbor and Ford Island. On the tour we saw the old hospital that was shot up, the location where the USS Nevada beached herself trying not to block the harbor, USS Oklahoma Memorial, USS Utah Memorial and the WWII submarine memorial on the sub base. Other highlights included the sub barracks where my Dad stayed, Beeman's Liberty Center and the dive tower where they practice surfacing from the deep. Last but not least we spent 3 hours on board the USS Olympia SSN 717, Los Angeles class fast attack nuclear submarine. How can you top that! Due to time and lots of traffic I was not able to visit any of the Army museums. I guess that is for next time.

OK, back to my halftrack project. I spent the day taking apart the passenger side half of the front axle for cleaning and inspection. I got most of it apart today. tomorrow I will be cleaning and hopefully reassembling it then moving onto the Driver's side. Here are some photos.









In a prior posting some years ago I had already did the front breaks, bearings and drums so it all came apart nicely. I do need to put new wheel cylinders in again as the ones I rebuilt leaked. Thanks to Kevin Lockwood I have all new wheel cylinders to install.

Steve A.

[steve1973]

Here is the link to the previous work on the front axle and brakes.

http://g503.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=24&t=212293

The driver's side was much worse as there was quite a bit of rust and debris on the axle and in the axle tube. I had to come up with a way to scrape out the inside of the axle tube.





I went to the local hardware store and got a 1/2" X 3' threaded rod with a 2" fender washer at the end.





With the axle tube scrapped out I used my small shopvac to vaccum out all the loose debris. I then cleaned the Driver's side axle shaft of old grease and rust then prepared both axles to re insert back in the axle housing. I installed two new wheel cylinders the proceeded to put the axle back together drums and all.



Now that the axle was done I moved onto installing the floor supports. With that it was time to wire in my master cut off switches for the ignition and radio.







Steve A.

[yd328]

I like the disconnect. Where did you get the box?


Gary

[steve1973]

I had the box custom made. I bought a reproduction vertical support to mount the box to.

[67tank]

Nice work Steve

[Johnnyeager]

Fantastic work! Love that Disconnect!

[Monkeypirate]

That's a very nice, clean install. Like the access cover.

[steve1973]

The next project I worked on was to fix the fuel valve to the gas tanks. Earlier on in this rebuild I added an original fuel filter to the frame. Doing this I had to make a new flex fuel line from the gas tank fuel valve to the fuel filter. To change out this line I removed the lines to the tanks. Well, when I went to reinstall the tank lines I got the driver's side one in at an angle and damaged some threads. Luckily with the help of my line guy, Eric, using a 1/2"-20 bottoming tap he was able to fix the threads.



One thing I have to mention is that the jerry can holders come in very handy as tool tray. Plus you have one on each side.



Steve A.

[steve1973]

First, I want to tank everyone for your kind comments.

At this point I decided to fix my leaking steering box. I rebuilt this a while back but didn't seal the cover very well and it has been leaking gear oil ever since. Here is a link to the steering box rebuild http://halftrackinfo.com/index.php?topic=941.0. Since my halftrack is an M2 variant it uses a Ross "T" steering box which is also shared with the M3A1 Scoutcar. I sent off the cover to my gasket maker and they made a template for their file and sent me back 10 gaskets. I'm keeping 2 and the rest are for sale, $15 each and $7 for shipping if interested.







PM me if you are interested in these gaskets.

Steve A.

[steve1973]

Back to the front axle. It's dust boot time! When Don and I did Zelda's boots I can recall some not so fun times. Due to the age of the NOS boots they have shrunken in size. They were a bear to put on and after many attempts and several days later we got them on. Well, I'm going to try newer made M35 boots and wire bands. This is my project for the week. Fun times ahead.



Steve A.

[steve1973]

Hello everyone. It's a new year and time to get things rolling again. I left off working on getting those boots installed. Well, I fought for a day trying to get one on myself and ended up only getting the inner ring mounted on one side. I needed an extra set of hands. I had a co-worker that was nice enough to come help me for the day. The passenger side went on fast. It was done within an hour. I did find out that the outer clamping ring is a bit brittle as it broke when locking the two nuts together. Good thing I have spares! The Driver's side inner was a chore. We were having trouble getting the two ends close enough to put the screw and nut on. My co-worker, Ryan, had the bright idea of looping a piece of wire around the ends and then twist to draw the ends closer. this worked great and got the screw and nut on then cutting the wire loose. Boots done!!





The M35 boots were much easier than the original NOS ones Don and I put on Zelda. I would recommend loosening the bottom plate of the steering knuckle when doing this.

Steve A.

[steve1973]

Since I had some extra help we moved on to putting the two toe boards in. This is another two person job. Once those were in we installed the draft seals for the clutch and brake pedals. The draft seal kit can be purchased from Kevin Lockwood.







I was going to install the steering column but needed to clean up the draft seal clamp for the column shaft first. I was also going to install the dimmer (tilt) switch but didn't have any number 12 screws. That will be the next project.

Steve A.