Vladislav

Discovered new to me rust areas. There's a kind of a stake or a channel along the front of the door openings where you fit door hinges to. R-model cab has them welded of multiple stamped elements put one overlapping another. Rust grew up in between of some of them in the lower areas, as usual. After critycal observation we resolwed to drill off welds and remove at least outer sheets. Very difficult to drill because of bad access. In the end my guy removed a pair of pieces of steel which were a kind of a skirt. We cut new parts of the same shape, drilled holes to corellate the drillings where the weld spots were and arranged nuts welded at the holes on the new parts. So the door opening stakes were going to be reinforsed back again.

A bit more to post. Welded old holes in the LH cowl panel where some poor aftermarket AM/FM antenna was attached and drilled new holes for a stock antenna I purchased from Watts.

G'day Harry, I sure remember your detailed explanations on LS products and your impressions of the results achieved and kept the info on my mind for a while. But finally, or at least for this task I had to decline that option. Main reason is I have no possibility to import liquid stuff. Or better to say I can't order it shipped since avia suppliers don't bring liquids to here. Sure many local body repair material dealers import chemistry by trucks or sea conteiners but they work with big quantities. And nobody seemed here to deal with LS so far. I could also import liquid stuff in a car if travel from Europe but I didn't do much travels of that kind recently. Also it's important to be able to order additional amount of material you apply on a project in a case of such need. So that would be an additional trouble. Another reason I prefere to use materials I have practice and experience with. So for that cab I made a different choice. We used thick layer of liquid poliurethane sealer which was sprayed on the cowl and the floor on the both sides. Perfect for water access preventing and also very good for sound deadening. I have not much of idea on the temp protection properties but it's not really hot in Russia and I don't plan to drive the truck in a winter too.

If you find no use for the wheel I'm the 1st in the line to look what it is. Of engine components you could find use of many parts. Basically the most inline Mack diesel engines utilazed the same design so there are possibilities to swap cylinder heads, crank shafts, oil pumps, pans, flywheels, starters etc including a chance to put complete engine with some mods. Sure plenty of minor differences were made to parts during the years but handy to have a spare Mack engine of a close design anyway.

Put inserts and than new rockers back in place for the test fit. Drove all bolts and screws in the holes and used nuts where I had access to tight them up. Than took my breath away...

Ok, ordered the inserts laser cut and bent together with other fabricated parts. Bent the corners myself to the final fit (originally ordered them with 90 degree bend for simple draw). Put new rockers in place, attached with vise grips and drilled holes everywhere i needed them to. After that removed the inserts and welded 5/16 hex nut at every hole on the inner side.

Got to the rockers. After some tinkering and a few nights of figuring I resolved to cut off a section off the rear end of the new part and connect it with that section of the old one via steel insert. Draw a kind of a U-channel with another U cutout to correlate with a big hole the original part had. Actually that hole is hidden inside when everything is assembled together but I wanted to minimize differences in the original look or style of the parts. Also there's a smaller hole in the outer sector-shaped "cover" which had a plastic plug and used to spray wax inside. And when you spray you get deeper through that big hole so there was also a reason to keep it.

Got there, done that. With difference of my housings didn't have rust but really heavy and unreally black old jammed oil. Washed that stuff away with sufficient amount of gasoline but in a week or two after the housings were sandblasted and painted I found black flawn of the dirty stuff in the dish. Had to repeat on washing and found out there was still plenty of the restover. How good did you find the diff supporting bearings? I recently got myself to the second diff and put a new pair of with plenty of pride and enjoy

In fact those running boards aren't really simple of a shape. I'm also going to fabricate a new set or two but haven't started prepairing drawings yet. The pair in the pic is not off an L-model but off a NR. But seems they're almost similar to what a common L-model had.

Welcome to the forum! If you have any technical questions it's worth putting them into thematical forums or general discussion thread. Also plenty of reading is already posted there if you have time to look over. Vlad

Ok, saw it in the Trucks for sale.

Ohellll !!! Did I say I want it? I really need to find an excuse as soon as possible. Damn, damn, difficult to find excuses when you see such a nice truck! Is that tandem or single axle? Is the original motor still under the hood? What is the asking price? Vlad

Hippy, how many MB's did Overnight have in the fleet?

Congrats on the purchase

Looks clean. Was it sand or another medium?

It was discussed not long ago on here and was described as America on Wheels museum property. A new home?

One more element - welded togeter 3 new reinforcement parts of the floor. The big one is to support the airbags assembly will be attached with 8 5/16" bolts to the floor rear patch. Two longitutional members had holes at the front ends. I welded 4 bolts into the U-channel flange so after the channel is in place you put that 3 element assembly and attach it to the U-channel at the front by 4 nuts. The last pic is all the floor reinforcements in place and the removable part of the floor test fitted. A cherry on the top of the cake - all bolts, nuts and screws were SAE, bought in the States and delivered by post Ok, seems enough for today to post. I'm getting afraid the readers would get upset enjoying my English more than me when I jumped around the cab putting reinforcements to the floor.

Found one more unpleasant point. There was a plank welded to the front edge of the floor opening. Actually to the lower edge of the firewall. When you put removable part of the floor it lays along that line so the plank was a reinforcement. The plank was spot welded at the factory and rust grew up in the gap. My helper drilled off one more nightmare of weld spots and removed the old part. The replacement was also fabricated together with other new parts. We put it onto the cab, attached with vise grips and drilled multiple holes both through the plank and the firewall. Than the most interesting nuance. I put 1/4" machine screws into the holes in the plank and welded over their heads at the outer side. Than my helper ground all that together with screw heads to make the surface smooth. That way you could put the plank in the place putting the studs (former screws) into the holes in the firewall and drive nuts onto them from the inside of the cab. No weld and the nuts will be covered with removable floor of the cab when all is assembled.

Next task was to redo the floor support channel we cut away due to rust between it and the floor. It was a simple U-channel with 4 holes which correlate with seat front mounting holes in the floor. Actually that channel supported seats and carried driver's weight so seemed as an importatn element. The part was fabricated with no troubles but I needed to organize its attachment. Again, no weld where you cannot blast and prime/paint it. I made different fitments at two ends. At the passenger side I welded a plate to the end of the channel and drilled two holes for 5/16" bolts. Than drilled two holes in the cab floor side plate (something like a inner side of RH rocker) and welded nuts at them. The cab was planned to be sandblasted again and with no rockers in place. So those nuts would be opened for sand and primer. At the driver side I could not attach the same way for some reason of final assembly I already forgot now. Appologizes. Made a bit different fitment welding a piece of U-channed to the LH rocker inner wall. You could put the reinforcement channel onto that small part. Drilled two holes where they were overlapping but didn't weld any nuts since possible to just put them there and tight with a wrench at any time.

Next step was working out a plate, actually a patch to cover the rear cross channel from below. I cut a rusty piece of the floor sheet from there so needed a replacement. Steel shop fabricated me a stepped plate because the floor also had step there. I cut its rear to form a curve following the cab rear wall shape since was originally lazy to figure the radious when draw the sketch. Than we had to drill an uncount amount of holes since the idea was to attach it to the floor and the channel flanges by small screws instead of weld. That way it could be possible to paint both the patch and the channel inside before the assembly and putting them together with screws and sealer to avoid steel and primer burn out at all. Getting further I say I liked the way and the result but the amount of labour involved was 3 or 4 times more than just to weld. There was also a reinforcement plate put below the rear channel to accomodate the cab support airbag assembly. By the factory design it was welded to the floor. But as long as I avoided welding I used bolts and nuts. Had to weld nuts to the opposit side of the floor patch since will not have access to them when the patch is in place. Sure welding the nuts is also welding but the patch was planned to be blasted and painted before putting in place. So that weld will not be a burned primer spot and no potential rotting is expected.

Further investigation lead me to one more unpleasant point. Rust sandwich was discowered in a spot weld seam where the firewall was mated to the right part of the cowl. You could not see much of it since the seam was covered with sealant and showed nothing of what you would be worry about. Blasting made 2 or 3 holes where metal was acually very thin and opened rust which took place between two sheets and already grew quite thick. We cut pieces off the both sheets making one opening longer than another. Welded 1st putch into the firewall and ground weld off on both surfaces. Than welded the second patch. I put it a way the long seam occured being not covered by any element from the inner side so we had access to grind it. Only two points of weld which were not possible to grind from the back appeared at the ends. For that reason I put those two patches not touching each other but having a gap of 2 mm between. All the seam will be covered by poliurethan sealer so no trouble with geometry and look. But the gap allowed to protect steel and weld with etch primer and further will be filled with sealer completely. The weld spots you can see on the final picture were actually not welds but local depressions I made hitting the patch with round drift. I made them on a bench, before welding the element in place. And that was done just for a look.

Part 2. After bringing the blasted cab shell into a warm shop I investigated some stress cracks which were not seem or notable when the cab was still in paint. Welded those cracks and also holes we created drilling some spot welds. Had to cut off a piece of floor around the area of the driver seat front mount and weld a patch. There was extensive corrosion and plenty of tiny holes showed up after blasting overthere.

Same thoughts but I'm more to a case of broken oil pump drive after cold start with by some reason tough oil.

I remember 3 or 4 years ago some vendor was offering an aftermarket replacement densor for nearly $350. A couple months back I made a try through the net to find that product but had no luck. So if any show up I would like to be informed. If no I'm afraid the one at Watts is the only avalible option at the moment. And from tracking their web-store during 10 years I expect they may run out of those at any time.

Drool, drool, drool!!