This evening Quentin informed me there was a huge fire that needed to be put out.    Quentin and I boarded Trog and set off to the rescue.

Unfortunately we got hung up in the frog pond

Really hung up!   The frogs weren’t amused.

After trying unsuccessfully to extricate ourselves we called in backups

Tractor to the rescue!

Out came Trog.   Dirty as ever.

First, we purchased a property on nearby Vashon Island.    It’s 30 acres and features mixed pasture and forested lands.    We are planting an apple orchard and starting a hard cider business.    Dragon’s Head Cider is the name.   Not much has happened to Trog in the meantime, he has sat sadly neglected in my old shop.

I finally am moving out of the old shop and one of the last things to go was Trog.   He likes it over here.   So does my son!

I’m hoping to carve out a bit of time to get the interior gutters installed so Trog is rainproof.   Right now I have to park him in the shop here.    He takes up too much room.

(I can’t remember Trogblog tone here.   Have I been referring to Trog as him or it?)

So I replaced them with gas shocks.   two 30 lb gas shocks.

I was able to reuse the bottom spar mount, but had to weld on a new mount on the window frame for the upper end of the shock.

The standoffs with wing mounting flanges didn’t match the existing bolt holes that the old handles used.

So I had to cut off one side and weld it to the other side.    I made a jig out of a piece of scrap aluminum to get the spacing right:

Then welded and polished and assembled:

and installed

When the roof is lowered, the bed will be flat, unfolded and reside on the bed rails.    After raising the roof, it will be folded and pushed forward out of the way.    Then when we want to use the bed, it’ll ufold to lay flat

If none of the above makes a bit of sense, maybe these pics will.    This is prototyped using 3/4″ plywood which is heavy and flexes too much.    The real bed deck will be some composite material.  Perhaps Nida-Core, aluminum honeycomb or Coosa marine board.

Folded up:

Folded flat and pushed back to the rear.    I’m not sure whether I’ll use the bed forward or to the back.  Forward allows one of us to get down in the morning and make coffee on the stove.    Towards the back feels a bit more natural and creates a 2nd sleeping area below, between the cabinets.

On a whim, I bought some dark red vinyl at the fabric store.   With it, I made a headliner and covered the old passway pads.    I was a bit worried that Laura wouldn’t like the color, so I took the opportunity to compliment her on some boots that are a similar color.     I think it worked because she gave the thumbs up when visiting today.

I also had to spend some time doing preliminary wiring and mounting of the siren and dome light.   Volvos, being essentially single layer boxes have very few easy paths for wire runs.   I spent a lot of time fishing wires, drilling holes, pushing in grommets and cursing to do this wiring.

The headliner is a piece of SurePly with some thin headliner foam sprayglued down.    It is followed by the vinyl stapled.

I also fabricated a bunch of bamboo panels to cover the flat surfaces.   Here it is a cove piece with strengthening battens glued transverse to the grain.    The silver stuff is more Damplifier constrained layer dampening material.   Without it the panels would be pretty boomy/rattly.

I think it turned out pretty good.

And the passenger door

A piece of scrap Sunbrella duct taped to the bolt-tape that slides into the tracks.   The actual tent will likely be light grey or tan.

and collapsed.   It’s a little awkward at the corners because there isn’t much room behind the lift pole.

I may go for a design where the corners have to be zipped up, in which case the sides would lay much nicer:

or rolled up:

The new windows went in without any difficulty.    The new paint is slightly brighter and more “lipstick red” even though it is the same paint code as the old paint.    A few years of sun fading on the old paint must have made the difference.   I’ve found with a mild abrasive rubbing compound I can quickly fade the new paint to match fairly well.   I’ve done this on the door jambs, but not on large areas like the doors.   I’ll try a “cleaning” wax first since the rubbing compound forever kills the gloss.

The floor and subfloor are floating — that is they aren’t directly fastened to the metal floor.   Instead the various cabinets and seats clamp the floor down.   The exception is the cowling that covers the transmission tunnel.   In this case the floor is glued to that piece.   I’ll set some countersinks into the bamboo so it can be bolted down.

I’m prettty happy with how it turned out, however if I were to do it again I would choose a blonde bamboo as it doesn’t show scratches as much.

I’ll cover it with some hardboard or plastic to keep it from getting dinged up.

The 1600 windows are available with mitred corners, but I think they look a little funny.  So I elected to get the radiused corners.    That means I need to fill the existing rectangular window cutouts with corner pieces.   I also needed to block the edges a bit using some old oak flooring to allow for the window flange.

Blurry pic as I was driving, but it’s reading > 6K at 90 km/h.   When I install the 123 Ignition the tach should read correctly…

Quentin’s first driving lesson.

On Sat night I took Trog thru a gully and got hung up.   Trog was spanning the gully with the front and rear bumpers supporting it.   Only a little bit of the front wheels bit into the hillside, the rear wheels were fully off the ground.    A helpful Mog pulled me out.

And the damage — the rear bumper tweaked a bit.

A little “cold forging” of the cockpit area with a hammer gave me another 2″ of legroom. 

It turns out with the seats in a fixed location Trog is still comfortable for normal height people to drive.

They barely fit in there.

I like how Trog looks swayback in this photo:

yuk.

I have been wanting to make the same mod to Trog, but have had trouble finding a suitable air filter box.   I finally found one off a mid 90s Jeep Wrangler with a 6 cylinder engine, same as Trog, so it should be sized appropriately.    Plus, this means that air filters are easy to come by.   Most auto parts stores don’t stock the correct filter for the old filterbox.

The air path goes thru the new filter box behind the passenger and up thru a stainless tube to an intake box.   A vent plate finishes the outside.   I believe the vents will alllow enough air in (their combined area is almost the same as the diameter of the intake hose).    If not, I will replace the vent plate with something with larger orifices.

The old route was thru a bit of flexible tubing with an intake just in front of the radiator.   This took up some room in the engine tunnel and I found it somewhat untidy looking, as well as possibly prone to water intake.

The front wheel drive actuator is controlled by a 12v solenoid.

FWD is engaged when any of the following are true:

• FWD switch enabled in the main cabin
• Gearbox put in low
• Hard braking (there is a pressure sensor on the brake line)

Most of the old hoses.    They were replaced by Gates fuel line.   The fuel line is rated for vacuum service and won’t degrade quickly with oils or gasoline vapors that will creep into the vacuum system.   The vacuum system is “powered” by a port on the intake manifold of the engine.    After then engine is turned off, residual fuel in the carburators evaporates and makes it’s way into the vacuum system (not much, but over time, enough).     That gas can also degrade the membranes of the vacuum actuators (and brake servos), so I intend to put a charcoal filter  inline with the intake manifold hose.

It took almost 25′ of 3/8″ Gates 27004 hose and 25′ of 1/4″ Gates 27002 hose to do the system.

I still need to redo the hosing for the vents on the various gearboxes.    To prevent stuff from getting into the gearbox vents, Volvo has run a network of 1/8″ish hose connecting them.   The output uncermoniously dumps into an interior panel stiffener box tube.

In the future, I want to replace most of this tangle of hoses, at least the ones that lead to the manual switches in the main cabin, with  solenoid activated valves

I believe Skinner 3000 series valves should work, specifically 3133BJA7LNC4 RR T1J1 C1  12 VDC

.

The common manifold eliminates a lot of redundant hose.   It is a little unclear whether the valve seating on this are appropriate for vacuum on the common side.   Also, I’m not sure if the Cv of the valves are sufficient to move enough air to engage the actuators in a short enough amount of time.

and an interior shot, taken later with the wire routing. interior insulation and speaker crossover visible.    I also wired up a red LED light which will illuminate when the door is opened.

The seals around the windows are kinda shot.    I have been ignoring the windows the whole project and now it is time to address them.

When open, they will allow a lot of cross-flow breeze.    I am debating whether or not to put an interior window of some sort on the forward flaps.     The drivers side rear flap opens to gain access to a storage area.    The passenger side rear flap will expose the exterior shower control and showerhead.

I think I will also repaint the flaps a different color.  I am considering a metallic silver — something that will look like bare aluminum or stainless.

The flaps will be supported by gas springs — they just arrived in the mail today so I’ll put them on soon.    I also need to figure out how they lock from the outside.

I considered mounting them like this:

which would have allowed room for a roof rack, but I decided on the end-to-end format because I would still have the ability to use the pole-chocks for long poles for desert or other camping structures.    It’ll also prevent me from adding a roof rack and loading the roof up with further weight.    It’s already much heavier than I’d like it to be.

The solar charge controllers is a Blue Sky 2512ix maximum power point tracking (MPPT) controller.     MPPT controllers are more efficient because they operate the solar panel at the voltage where it produces the most overall power.   Conventional chargers operate at battery charge voltage (typically 13-14V), while the MPPT controller has a DC to DC converter to convert the MPPT voltage to charge voltage.

The Kyoceras produce maxiumum power at 17.7V.   More info on MPPT controllers are available in this PDF.

Hopefully the bamboo won’t split lengthwise.   I put some Damplifier butyl rubber sound dampening material on the back, mostly to dampen rattles, but it also increases the strength a bit.

This is pretty much the last thing to be done to the roof in it’s turtled state.    As soon as I can get enough peeps in the shop to help flip the roof I can commence with mounting the solar panels.

I have decided to put bamboo panels in the doors as well.    Here’s a sample panel I temporarily set into the panel guides on one of the doors.

The silver colored aluminum extrusion is the awning rail that holds the fabric for the tent.   Awning rail is also rivetted to the roof.    Awning rail insert is sewn to the canvas and then it is reeved into the rails.

I also replaced the existing hatch for the machine-gunner with a Lewmar Ocean 60 low profile hatch.    This required fabbing an aluminum frame and spacer since the new hatch is a a few inches narrower than the old hatch.

The wall panels are 5mm underlayment plywood called SuperPly.   SuperPly is nice stuff — it has a hardwood smooth face and is made with exterior grade glues.

Here’s the American Autowire HiWay 22 panel.   It is installed behind the drivers seat, in the rear cabin.

I elected to run separate grounds, using American Autowire’s vehicle ground kit.   The black box below the fuse block is a terminal for grounds to be attached.   It has always bothered me that vehicles use the chassis/body metal as the ground return.   Firstly, steel isn’t that great of a conductor (though there is a large cross-sectional area), and secondly corrosion can degrade connections to the steel body.    This seems a better, more reliable way.   It also will help eliminate possible ground loops.    There’s a ground terminal block at the rear, this one near the fuse block, behind the guage panel and near the old fuse panel in front of the passenger seat.    6 gauge wire connects the 4 nodes.

The new dash rear.

I ended up using the old harness for the somewhat complicated windshield wiper logic which uses 4 relays and quite a few connections to the switches.

At the top is a tachometer I added.    It’s a VDO 6K tach that mostly matches the existing VDO instruments.

The new glove compartment area:

vs the old:

Overall, I liked the American Autowire Hiway harness kit.    Each wire is run individually, which adds a lot of flexibility, but greatly adds to the time required to wire.   I really should have preplanned where each wire went and made my own bundles to route as a group.    The long wires included in the kit meant that I only had to splice some of the wires which ran to the rear taillights.

Some things I didn’t like about the harness kit included the lack of a reverse light circuit(!), it assumed the stop/run lights are run with a single wire,  and it assumed a GM column for turn/brake/hazard logic.    I had to emulate the GM logic, mapping it to the Volvos system and placement of switches.

This tool pulls the wheel without damaging the plastic.    Not having that tool, I tried making my own.    As you can imagine from the bodgy welds, this version took many iterations, all failing, from bending the clamp to cracked welds.

Ok, something simpler.

I made up an aluminum ring with a conical interior profile to match the steel turn signal cancel ring.

Using that and a gear puller and it came off, still with a fair amount of effort.

I’m thinking of installing the wheel in the foreground as the new wheel:

It’s 20″ in diam, vs 17″ for the stock wheel.   So I’ll have to make it mount a little higher for leg clearance.

I’d love to tilt the steering column forward a little bit as well, but doing so would require fabbing a new bracket down near the steering box.

Looking aft:

and from the rear:

On the right is the kitchen, at 35″ from the floor.   The kitchen has a refrigerator aft, and a stove/sink above.    The 9″x10″x65″ area between the cabinet front and the right wheel well will be a 27 gallon freshwater tank made of 316 stainless.    On the left, the cabinets are 43″ high.   They feature a  hanging closet and an exterior accessible storage area via the old roll-top doors which I will convert into flip-out hatches.

The cabinets will be “skinned” by some 1/4″ to 3/8″ bamboo plywood inset a bit from the frame.    The ply is fastened to the frames by button head screws so any panel can be removed for access to wiring or plumbing behind.    The cabinets themselves are also bolted to the floor/sides so they could potentially be removed and modified  for reconfiguration.

I still haven’t figured out what the cabinet top material will be.    I’d love to get my hands on a granite on honeycomb composite, but I’ve only found them available in the theoretical from China (There’s many many hits to the search “granite laminate honeycomb”, but all of them are from Chinese firms.   I suspect that none of these firms actually make the product but will if there is a customer).

Working in the shop with Miguel has been fun.   He taught me a bunch of metal working many years ago.    With his help, we’ve been able to make the frames square to 1/32″ of an inch — something that isn’t too easy with stainless which loves to heat-warp.

Next up is the seats forward of the cabinets.

The old wiring mess.    Most of the ugliness is due to Tollarp, the company who half-hazardly installed the firetruck system wiring.   Lots of thirty year old electrical tape at every junction.

The bounty.

Nice clean dash.   The remaining wires are from the new electic fan and headlight circuits.

I should have done this earlier.    Now I have great access to hoses and other mechanical parts such as the brakes, clutch, heater and stearing.

However….this pic shows where the mystery fluid went.

That’s the upper brake servo.    Upon opening it 1 liter of brake fluid came gushing out!    Ooops.

Alternating brake fluid colors between blue and yellow lets you know when you have completely bled the system when replacing all the brake fluid.

I suspect moisture in the brake fluid caused the slave cylinder walls to corrode, allowing brake fluid to sneak past the cup seal and into the vacuum chamber on the right.   Fluid could have also slipped by the reaction piston as well.  Surprisingly the rubber bellows and seals seemed to be in great condition.

Here’s a pic of a more modern slave and reaction piston.

Slave piston on top, reaction on bottom.    The reaction piston in Trog only had 1 O ring seal – a failure point addressed with the double seal in later revisiion….so that could be the culprit.   (Pic stolen from the website linked below)

Here’s a page on a rebuild of the servos

I could have possibly had the cylinder sleaved with chromed inserts, but given that the whole unit is 30 years old and it is an essential safety feature, I think replacement is prudent.

The new replacements from SNG Barrat USA have a higher boost ratio as well at 4.25:1 vs 3:1 of the old servos (I’m not 100% sure the old ones are 3:1).  This means the braking power will be increased.

Will the brake saga end here?    There is a 30 year old master cylinder that I haven’t dug into yet….

UPDATE (3/11/2010):   The old boost ratio is “approx 4x” according to the service manual. A reader pointed out that the vacuum shell, slave and reaction cylinder diameters are the same on the LR18230 as on the stock servo (8″, 5/8″ and 3/8″ respectively).   So it makes sense the boost ratio would be the same.

The just painted doors had to be ground down so the pods could be welded in place.    Note the sound dampening Damplifier and Spectrum Sludge in the cavity.   This helps dampen any resonance and or rattles of the metal door.

There are a couple “ports” in the door — hopefully they won’t create weird sound artifacts. Trog is so loud that I’m not really shooting for audiophile sound anyway.

Finished and painted with the (plastic…) grills set in place.

Look for a post sometime soon where I break the plastic grills and have to fab up something out of stainless steel.

Thern makes winches that are good for lifting that have a brake to prevent run-away drops.    The 4622-PB winch:

This is a smaller winch and the winch drum is a too small for the ropes to fit in one wrap.     So I disassembled it and extended the drum with some pipe turned on the lathe and welded in a new section to the frame.

I could have removed the brake and mounted that on the old winch, but it was secured to the input shaft with a set-pin that I could not for the life of me punch out.    Also there are a few clearance issues with the lift poles that I would have had to figure out as well.

Once the roof is raised, I will have some Kwik-Lok pins which will pin thru holes in the lift poles and guide tubes to secure the roof and prevent it from falling in the unlikely event of a rope or pulley breaking.

Good place to get info, and to buy some of these harnesses
http://stores.ez2wire.com/StoreFront.bok

They have a pretty comprehensive FAQ about wiring harnesses.

Most all feature wire that is unique in color for every circuit, and labeled every few inches. That alone is worth getting the kits vs doing it myself with just a few colors of wire that I would purchase.

Most manufacturers make harnesses with 15 or 22 circuits. Though the 15 would be enough for Trog I wanted the extra expandability, say if I add power door locks.

KwikWire KW22
Good quality, made in USA, back of panel is soldered, not crimped. Not a lot of extras, decent price.

Engine ignition disconnect switch at panel (for theft security)

No online manual available.

$90: extender kit to mount the harness behind the passenger seat.
$35: Instrument panel disconnect
$229: KW22 22 ckt harness
Total: $334

KeepItKlean EZ22
Cheapest, all crimped, made in China.   Publishes it’s install manual online.
$90: trunk kit (have to use Kwikwires, so wire colors and numbers won’t match…)
$35: instrument disconnect
$159: EZ22 22 ckt harness
Total: $284

American Autowire HiWay22
Highest quality. Lots of extra wire. Great instructions (I found some scans on the web), though they should publish their manual online.
Lots of extras, some that I don’t need, like a dimmer switch and headlight knob and ignition switch
Lots of useful extras, like grommets, alternator diode, big master maxi fuse,
Can run wire from center of their run, with connectors at the fuse box.   (using proprietary Hooke’s law technology.   Heh.   Hilarious.   — Hooke was a 17th century scientist who described the properties of springs.  It’s marketing-sprechen for it uses sprung metal to hold the wires in place.
All power wires are 12ga..
Wires are extra length so no need for trunk kit.
Instrument disconnect included.
$384 (ebay): HiWay22 harness
Total: $384

Ron Francis: Express

Looks like a good kit. I just refuse to buy anything that uses Hot-Dog font (Comic Sans Serif is another one that kills sales for me)

No specs on wire sizes (just proper size)

No online manual.

$429: XP-66
Total: $429

CentecWire: K20-B
Didn’t look too closely at this one. Their website doesn’t give much info.
$349: K20
Total $349+?

Painless: 10220 18 ckt trunk harness

Crap install manual, no circuit diagram, TXL wires, will need to buy grommets, has maxi fuse.  Overpriced, overhyped.

$88 : 30301 Instrument Panel disconnect
$444 (ebay): 10220 harness
Total $532

TXL vs GXL vs SXL vs SGX wiring

There are a few others as well, but I ruled them out for various reasons.

I ended up going with the American Autowire Hiway 22. It’s a bit more spendy, but in the end it’ll save me at least 2 trips to the store for grommets or whatnot. If I were to keep the right front dash compartment placement, I’d probably go with the Kwikwire kit — it is compact and looks well built.

Finally, a note to wiring manufacturers if they happen to stumble upon this blog.   Please please please publish more information about your harnesses!   Post your online manual.  Post the type, guages and lengths of each wire.   Post a wiring diagram.   All of these would have made evaluating their kits way easier.    I’m not sure why the manufacturers are so obtuse?   It’s not like a competitor will steal your info — they could buy a harness and clone it if they wanted to.   All harnesses are somewhat similiar, so a customer could use your clearer instructions when installing a competitors wire.    But does that really hurt you?   Because of your superior manual, that person will likely become a customer of yours when he rewires his next car.    Who knows, maybe I could have gotten over the Ron Francis Hot Dog font and bought yours, Mr Francis if you had provided more info.

Kudos to the EZ2Wire folks for publishing their install manual and ckt diagram and good info on various brands kits.

Feeds go to the heater, stove and a rear bumper mounted quick release fitting for an external BBQ that’ll mount on the rear bumper.   The tank is 10″ in diameter — it ends up reducing ground clearance a bit…not much more than the existing drivetrain.

The Precision Temp Junior heater installed.   I still have to plumb and hook up the electrical.

It sure would have been good to use that volume for a tank or something.

It’s the Motive Products Power Bleeder with 45mm threaded hydraulic fluid reservoir cap.

It’s basically a bug sprayer with a pressure gauge and adapters for the brake fluid reservoirs.
It’s the only brake bleeder I’ve used, so I can’t compare.

It seems to work fairly well, despite having annoyances.

I added a tee to the hose and installed a second cap so I can bleed both sides at the same time (the reality is i keep forgetting which reservoir corresponds to which wheel cylinder!).

Installing the caps on the reservoir is a pain  — you have to pre-twist the hoses just right.

I keep losing the gaskets in the caps, and have to remake them out of old innertubes.

I wish there was a pressure release valve — when you are done, losing the extra pressure before removing the reservoir caps is somewhat difficult.

Also, it leaves the reservoirs over-full — you have to drain the extra by inverting the Power Bleeder and cracking a bleed valve.    Some sort of suck-back or way of displacing the fluid with air would be cool.

The catch bottle kit is useful too.    It helps prevent air being sucked in from the nipple if you lose pressure.    Unfortunately the hose that comes with it is just a tad too small for the nipples on the volvo bleed valves.    I have yet to fix this (I always remember to do this while cursing the brake fluid all over me, upside down under Trog.).     I’m going to add a high strength magnet to the catch bottle tether — finding a random protrusion/nut to hook them over is sometimes difficult.

I bet using a bleeder kit that uses vacuum to draw fluid from the bleeder valves  would be good in conjunction with the Motive — to get those bubbles you know are hiding out in the high points above and in the servos.

I also bleed from the top of the servos (just crack the 17 (or 18)mm nut at the top and bleed til bubbles go away.   It create a royal mess, dripping brake fluid over various stuff below.

Access to the bleed valves on the wheel cylinders is tough for some of them.    I’ve spent a fair amount of oxy-acetylene time bending a wrench contorted to reach.    What would be awesome would be a ratchet socket on a universal wobble joint, with an internal hose — not sure how that’d all work out though.

Unfortunately, 30 years of swedish flatulence has taken it’s toll on the foam as well as the rest of the seat.    Getting them re-upholstered is going to cost about $800 for the pair.    This set me on looking at various aftermarket seats.

A good seat for Trog must posess a a couple characteristics which greatly narrow down the choices.   A Trog seat must/should be:

• Low profile in the seat — I’m tall, so the ass-level can’t be any higher than the stock seats
• Low side bolsters — getting in and out of Trog is a sliding affair off the edge of a seat.   Bolsters would make ingress/egress even more difficult.

Corbeau makes a couple seats which could work.    First is the LG1

It is also available in all black.   Sitting in it was a dream — at least for my butt.    Unfortunately, the wings at the shoulder level pinched.

While trying out the LG1, I sat in a Recaro Expert M:

Amazing, but not $1000 each amazing.

Finally, I’ve settled on some Corbeau Moabs which are designed as direct replacement for Jeep seats:

Which is ok.    Build and fabrics aren’t quite as nice as the others, but it seems to be good enough, and at about $250 each they are about 1/2 what reupholstering the old ones would cost..

However, I think I really deserve this Recaro Magnifico:

Crafted from your choice of wood, leather and carbon fiber, this top of the line seat is exclusively designed for the larger framed individual in mind.

Definitely worth $7900 each, not to mention the burlwood accents will match the burlwood I’m putting in on the dash.

The doors got a coat of red on the interior edges.   The red is the same color as used on the Acura NSX, btw.   R77 paint code.   I used  single stage Omni MTX paint vs the 3 stage PPG paint that yields a deeper red with a lot more gloss.

The color isn’t an exact match with the existing red even though it is the same R77 code paint.   Red fades quite a bit in the sun.   Also the new paint has a higher gloss than the existing paint.   A quick wipe with a very fine scotch brite pad blends it quite well.

Masking the front cabin was incredibly tedious.    I could have done a better job b/c there was a fair amt of overspray I had to clean up.

Rear cabin got a coat, mostly on the floor (which will be covered up with flooring).

The new color, a yellowish white,  looks more white in person than it does in this pic.

Unfortunately, the guy at WesCo paints thought it wise to use a lot of flattening agent in the paint.    So much that the finish is like a chalkboard.   Flat paints are standard on say the underhood area because they cover up defects and require less care in painting.   Unfortunately,   every bit of dirt and oil that touches it will instantly bind and be virtually uncleanable.    So, back to Wesco to get a gloss version of the same paint.  I’ll mix in some of the flat to tone down the gloss.

And now magenta, the “fake” color:

Liz Elliott of Biotele.com:  “magenta ain’t a color.”

[W]hat does the brain do when our eyes detect wavelengths from both ends of the light spectrum at once (i.e. red and violet light)? Generally speaking, it has two options for interpreting the input data:

a) Sum the input responses to produce a colour halfway between red and violet in the spectrum (which would in this case produce green – not a very representative colour of a red and violet mix)

b) Invent a new colour halfway between red and violet

Magenta is the evidence that the brain takes option b – it has apparently constructed a colour to bridge the gap between red and violet, because such a colour does not exist in the light spectrum. Magenta has no wavelength attributed to it, unlike all the other spectrum colours.

A book on a similar topic:   “Blue and Yellow Don’t Make Green.“

Click on the images for a larger version.

This layout maximizes interior space usage, as well as allowing for a fair mount of storage space.

Things to note:   The rear roll ups will become rigid flip-out awnings, allowing for airflow to the kitchen starboard rear.   On the port side rear is a storage area that is accessible from the exterior of Trog.   I’ll put recovery gear, tools and other dirty stuff there.   Next to it is a hanging closet, and forward to that is a Vitrifrigo drawer style refrigerator.     Finally in front of that is the main rear passenger seat.    Additional passengers can sit facing rear across from that.      Access is from the rear door as well as the port side door.    The starboard rear door will be pinned shut, or possibly used as an access hatch for stuff stored under the settee.   House batteries are placed at the very rear of Trog.   Hopefully all that weight at the ends won’t impact ride (hobby horsing).   Trog is rated for 6 tons, and has pretty stiff springs in the back so I should be ok.      The bed hoists up to the ceiling when we are using the lounge/kitchen area.    It is lowered to rails at 4 ft high for sleeping.

The Sketchup file is here trog-front-living-room-no-top1.    Not all dimensions are completely accurate.   I’d say it’s approx +/- 1″, and up to +/- 2″.   Also the slope inward that occurs 1/2 way up the wall isn’t shown (it’s about 5″ narrower at the top vs bottom).

Trog is tall.   Getting in and out of it is quite the chore.   Recently I found a great telescoping stainless steel ladder at a consignment marine store, and as a diversion to working on the popup, I decided to spend some time on it.   All the hardware and mounting rails are stainless.    It glides on  UHMW plastic rails (the white stuff below the ladder).   It will tuck nicely under the passenger side rear door.

Extended, it extends about 10″ more than necessary.   The bottom rung will just rest on the ground, with it’s section partially extended.

Yes, that’s a bigfoot gas pedal on the TIG welder’s foot pedal.

I spent some fun lathe time making a spring loaded stainless latch (seen on the right here)

Here it is in place:

Depending on how slippery the polished rungs are, I may need to apply some sort of grip tape.

I don’t like the unsteadiness of blocks or other bodgy jack extensions so I welded up a stainless bottle jack extender that fits over the bottle jack piston.

The pin sticking out near the bottom is a stop that the top of the jack presses against.    I turned the inside of the pipe on the lathe to make it slip snugly over about 1″ of the top of the piston.    I probably should have captured more of the piston but 1″ should be ok.   Total height is approx 7″.

At the top is a plate with some 1/4″ stainless rod on the sides to cup the bottom of the spring pack on the front

and the pivot on the bogie axles on the back of Trog.

Of course I could have fabbed the extension out of mild steel in a bit less time, but I then would have to paint it and it still would eventually chip and rust.    Trog has given me a heatlhly dislike of rust…

The 2×4 cross braces are there because I don’t fully trust the lift mechanism to stay up.   I don’t have a way to keep it locked up yet and am just relying on the worm gear of the winch not liking to be driven from the load.

Begin a “post apocalyptic” vehicle, Trog fit right in.

We filled the back end in with temporary furniture, some gauzy netting and some color changing LED lights.

The guides are also stainless with UHMW bearing surfaces which were turned on the lathe.  

Here’s the forward passenger side guide with the sliding pole.

Routing the ropes was somewhat tricky, but in the end, I got a route that wasn’t too intrusive and involved a minimal number of pulleys.

The ropes are led to a Thern 472 winch.     This is a worm drive winch, which has the useful property of not being driven backwards by the output load.    Thus it acts as a sort of brake to prevent the roof from dropping.   It’s not robust enough to be the only means to lock the roof in the up position, but it does make raising and lowering a pleasant affair.   I’ll most likely use four pull toggle clamps to do that.

In this photo, the winch is clamped to a table in Trog for some prototyping.

I removed the existing input crank arm and hub and replaced it with a 3/4″ lug nut.   It’s the same size as the lug nuts on the wheels, so I can potentially use the same tool to raise/lower the roof and change the tires.

Boring out the lug nut to the 5/8″ diameter of the winch input shaft.

and mounted on the winch.   I’ll use a cordless drill to raise and lower the roof (if it can develop enough torque.   I calculated it to be ~20 in-lbs, which a drill should handle).   Otherwise, it’s 120 cranks to raise the roof!

The winch is mounted with the lug nut exiting on the side, at about waist level for easy cranking if necessary.

And here is the four corner poles raised.  I put about 100 lbs of weight, about 1/3 the roof weight, on the driver side poles — everything seemed ok.   Raising the roof was relatively easy.

I’ve been stressing about this mechanism for quite a while.   It’s good to demonstrate that it should work well.    Now I need to get a few friends in the shop to help lift the roof back on.

Here’s the spreadsheet I used to calc the loads on the winch.

A while back, I purchased a Precision Temp TwinTemp Jr propane hydronic water heater.   This unit will provide  both hot water for showers as well as heat via a heat exchanger.     It’s a bit big for Trog (it really is designed for the RV market), so I had to get creative in mounting it.

I fabricated this box to into the hole on the right side of Trog.   It will descent about 7″ below the floor, to the same level as the bottom of the frame members.

Note the red primered steel that makes up the “step up” to the rear area.   This, is a heavy  4″x2″x1/4″ gauge U channel piece, which I believe is unique to the firefighters.   The water tank must have added quite a bit of load.     Colby’s Volvo just has some sheet metal here.   There’s some empty space there which makes a useful conduit for water, propane hose and electrical runs.    I left the space uncovered on the right and left edges.

A settee will go above the heater.    This means the right front door will no longer be an entrance to Trog.   Instead, I’m going to use it as a hatch for storage below the settee.

I’m gluing the panel to the foam to isolate it from the metal of the roof to minimize thermal conduction.   If I didn’t do this, water vapor from cooking and our breath would condense on the cold aluminum and drip.

Here’s another shot of the roof, with Colby’s TGB11 in the foreground.   He’s subletting space in the shop for a bit to work on his popup roof.

This works pretty well, and has the advantage of being relatively stable laterally because the low end is only raised a bit and the canvas acts as a shear preventer.

However, the angled top limits usable interior floorspace.   So, to do a full popup, I need 3 (or maybe 4) scissor lifts.   Using 1″ sailboat T track and track slides, I can create a simple scissor lift.   It’s made out of 6061 aluminum so it’s relatively light.  Here’s the prototype collapsed.

and extended

It’s quite smooth and is also fairly stable to torsional forces.    Side to side, not so much, so that’s why I need a 3rd scissor on the end (and possibly on both ends).   I will most likely add gas springs to make lifting easier.  Maybe even some compressed air driven gas pistions (as I’ll have onboard compressed air).

Now I have to figure out the mounting of this, as well as the placement of the canvas to keep everything flashed properly so it’s weathertight both when deployed and when driving down the highway.

I’m concerned about the extra drag that the high cap will introduce.   Trog is already underpowered, with the B30A engine only producing 125HP or so.   So, I did some modeling of the drag calculations.

Google spreadsheet here.

I had to make a number of assumptions, some of which I think are a bit suspicious.   However, I believe the general shape of the curves are accurate.    See the spreadsheet for values and some notes on uncertainties.

Speed vs HP

I added 500lbs to the high-cap version to account for the new walls and windows.    At 60mph, the practical top speed of Trog due to engine RPMs, there’s an additional 16HP required to push that cap thru the air.   When laden with an upper limit of 1500 other camper conversion junk, it’s pushing 100HP.   I’m not comfortable running Trog that hard.

On a 6pct grade, Trog already bogged pretty severely, with top speed being around 30mph.   With the extra weight it’s much worse.   Since speed is reduced, the extra windage caused by the cap doesn’t matter as much.

I encourage readers to check my spreadsheet and look for anything that seems out of whack or missing.   (the 30% mechanical losses seem way high to me).

So, it’s back to popup designs.

Removing the top was surprisingly easy.   30 minutes to remove about 30 bolts and 12 screws.   The mastic seals parted with a deadlift.     The top is made of aluminum so it’s quite light; two people can easily lift it.

I’m thinking of permanently raising the roof 3 feet, to give me standing room inside.   It also makes interior layout much easier.   Here’s what it’d look like.

I think it looks pretty good, keeping the boxy military lines of the original vehicle.   The new walls would be framed in aluminum, possibly with Alucobond composite panels.   Alucobond panels are 0.020 aluminum skinned foam.   It’s a bit lighter than the 0.100 or so solid aluminum skin I would use.   Windows are Motion Windows 1600 series.

Click here a locally produced video about HazardFactory, a local arts collective of which I’m a member.  It includes a few shots of Trog and the shop I share with Rusty.

Another HazardFactory video (skip to 12:30).

Last year I won Ms. Congeniality for this entry

-Wes

Blogging from afar, 5000 miles into a Western US road trip, with a head full of Trog.

Colby.

We found a very nice campsite down by the river (with a dirt driveway that featured a 45 degree angle, pits and a fallen log — no problem for Trog)

It was hot there — in the 90s most days.    I recruited soldiers for the Swedish Army and we fought the Germans in their Mogs.

My valiant freedom fighters

Strafing some hapless Boy Scouts German spies.

Timmaaayyy! in his friends Pinzgauer joined in the fight against the Nazis.

Trog played in the pits — not even close to getting stuck…

Luci seemed to like the pits…felt closer to home.

A little Nitrous Oxide helped during the parade race.

All in all a great time.    I’m already looking forward to NWMF09.    I’m off on a road trip for a bit, so no TrogBlog posts til October…

A little processing, painting and new stainless stalk fabricated, along with stainless shaft collars as stops, and it looks way better:

I originally thought I’d hard anodoize them black, but upon further research, that may be a bad idea.   It turns out that glass bead blasting aluminum is a no-no if you want to anodize it later.   The glass beads heat up the aluminum, opening the pores.  Also as they hit, they explode into fine grains, which embeds itself within the aluminum.   The process of anodizing involves opening up these pores, then soaking it in a dye and then closing the pores.    The glass mucks up this process.   Also, these are cast aluminum, which often has high Silicon content, which also messes up anodization.

Also, powder coating may also be out of the question.   Again, the glass bead remnants mess with the powder coat as it’s curing, causing problems.

Hrm….maybe polishing w/ a 3M unitized wheel will remove the outer layer and glass beads?

Re-routing it to exit on the right side was super simple.   I picked up a 1 7/8″ ID right angle elbow at an auto parts store.     That, plus the now functional chrome exhaust bling now makes the exhaust exit on the right side of the vehicle.

I bent it a little bit so the angle is a bit more than 90 degrees so the exhaust exits pointing a bit towards the rear.  (pic is of 90 degree, before bending)

Most cars are designed with the exhaust on the opposide as the fuel filler.   In the case of Trog, there’s about 10 feet separating the exhaust from the filler at the rear of the car, so I don’t think safety is compromised in any way.

Some polyurethane caulk plugged the hole…Of course now I have to worry about the sill rusting out.   Maybe I’ll plumb up a proper drain, but access behind there is difficult.   Maybe a tube from the corner leading to the side?

The flow restrictor is the blue plastic thing.

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.

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 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.

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.

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???!??!?

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!

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

I got the modified brake lines back from Doug at Brake and Clutch Supply.   Dear reader, as you remember, the feed lines to the lower wheel cylinders on the front wheels is all wrong.   The lines feed to the upper port, not the lower port.   This means any bubble caught in the wheel cylinder won’t burp out when the brake lines are bled.   I have no idea why Volvo did it this way.

Old (removed and held for photo)

New

In retrospect, I could have ran a longer flex-line from the axle directly to the wheel cylinder.   That would have saved a lot of hassle and the $40 for Brake and Clutch Supply to make each new hard line.

I first took some cardboard and made a template. Then cut out 2 copies of it in Sintra. I use two layers because the clips that hold the door to the frame will show thru otherwise. You know the clips, those annoying plastic ones that look like xmas trees that hold the panels and upholstery in your car. They are good for maybe two uses before being destroyed.

Luckily they are cheap and readily available.

The first layer of Sintra, closest to the door has a hole drilled a little larger than the head diameter, with a slot with width just bigger than the clip’s stem diameter cut off of it. On the second layer, I make sure that there’s no glue in the region so the clip can slide between the layers. I need to take a picture of this to make this more clear.

Some upholstery guys like to use old (60s era and before) metal clips. The Au Ve Co 10780 or 2385 clips are popular. These clips last a lot longer, but are a bit fiddlier. Then again, they are more tolerant of misaligned holes.

The first layer is placed on the door and holes are drilled for the clips.

The next layer is 1/4″ of some open cell headliner foam I got at Pacific Fabrics. I have some 1/4″ Volara closed cell foam on order, which I’ll use when I do this for real. Finally I used a layer of Passion Suede, also from Pacific Fabrics. I’m not 100% on using the fake suede…not sure what else I’d use though.

All layers were glued together using 3M Super 77. There’s better PVC cement available from Laird, but Super 77 seems to work good enough. The Sintra was scuffed with 120 grit sandpaper for better adhesion.

The embossed “feature” in the lower panel is me messing around with multiple layers of foam to break up the monotony of the surface. It’s still a bit awkward looking. I bet I could achieve similar effects by slumping the panel over a male mold with a heat gun. I didn’t glue down the grey fabric either — if i did the wrinkles wouldn’t be there.

I also messed up on the lower convex corner — should be rounded.

Looks like I’ll go with the grey and red color scheme in the font cabin. The rear cabin will probably be something more homey.

I elected to put BFGoodrich All-Terrain 315/75/R16 tires on. I considered the Mud-Terrain tires but decided that I’d be on the road far more than mud-bogging and the sanity of less road noise was worth the lack of traction off road.

I temporarily installed a couple on the rear. (These things are HEAVY — the Costco guys pointed that out a number of times!)

I like the Pi/2 out of phase version. A poll of friends was also unanimous. I’m still waiting for the chrome lugnuts I bought via EBay.

A note on lug nuts. The wheel studs are 9/16 x 18 RH threads. This is a relatively rare thread, with not a lot of choices for lug nuts. There are a lot of 2″ long lug nuts available, but they may look a little too much like Messsala’s spiked chariot wheels in Ben-Hur with the extreme offset of the C30x’s. I ended up finding some 1.4″ long Tunerlugs.

Hopefully they won’t look silly. I had to buy 60 total – I *only* need 48. Turns out I’m going to use 4 to hold the rear bumper in place — if I want to flip it up, I can use the same lug wrench I’m already carrying for the wheels.

Now, I’m just waiting for the brake shop to finally make new front brake hard lines and Trog should be rolling again!

Bench seating on both sides, the bed is two sections, the forward section sets over the folded down bench seat in the mid-cabin. The white box is a drawer style marine refrigerator

and check out the slide-out add-a-room, like on high end RVs!

The propane stove is attached to the door so you can cook outside, or in really bad conditions inside while squatting. If you look closely, you can see I’m cooking up some Indian fry bread and an acorn squash. Yum. To the right of the door is a detachable sink that uses the same faucet as the external shower.

The cool thing about this conversion is if anything gets trashed, it’s super easy to replace.

I popped my rear window and took a photo of the cross-section of the weather stripping.

and

The best match at Soffseal.com is E713. You’ll need 9′ of it.

I haven’t tried it, and it’s not an exact match, but i think it will work. The Soffseal stuff is maybe 1/16 to 1/8 thicker on the outside portion. There’s room on the outer window “shelf” for something like that.

The factory volvo seal is a single molded unit, (no seams at the corners).

I believe the side door fixed window weatherstripping best match is E750. I haven’t popped the windows to check for sure. 15′ will do both windows.

Eric, they guy I talked to was very personable, and friendly. He offers me a few tips on doing the masking myself so all he’d do is spray them for $25 a rim. He even offers to come down to my shop to inspect Trog to see about some future work. He said his father told him to help people out, even if it didn’t make a buck. Because of his attitude and friendliness, I was looking forward to working with him more.

So, I spend a sunny day masking the rims, scuffing the area to be black, and then bring them in. Eric’s brother is there and he checks out the rims and the masking. No problem he says, and he writes up a work order for $25 a rim.

About 2 hours later I get this aggressive call from Eric. He growls that I’m trying to work him over, to get him to lose money and that he’s going to have to redo everything I did. I tell him I want to work with him, not rip him off, if it takes more work, I’m willing to pay it, or rectify the masking job. He tells me he’s going to try scuffing one rim and call me back.

30 minutes later, he’s again angry and aggressive telling me he’d rather make money other ways. Finally, sick of his passive aggressive mood swings, I tell him he should make money other ways and that I will be by to pick up the rims the next day.

Maybe it’s the fumes? I did some Googling of inhalant abuse and found this:

• long-term abuse of inhalants may result in cognitive impairment, difficulty in concentration, anxiety, apathy, mood swings, depression, hostility, and ultimately severe brain damage or death.

Sounds about right.

Anyway, I ended up picking up the supplies to do it myself. Now, I can have an excuse for teh mood swings!

I’m restoring the black and white quadrant styling on the wheels and hubs. I believe it’s there so you can tell if the vehicle is moving from far away. Here’s the hubs painted:

I used ceramic engine paint because this area can get hot when braking. That stuff is really nice to work with — it flows really well and creates a very hard surface. I’m not sure about how it holds up in UV light so I clear coated it with an U-Pol #1 UV protective clearcoat I got at a Wesco auto paint store. The U-Pol Clear #1 is really nice professional stuff — it has solvents I haven’t smelled in spray paints since I was a kid — so it must work well.

The wheels masked and scuffed before going to the paint shop:

And everything bolted back with BFG A/T tires on (note the bling chrome lug nuts)

I’ll talk about my rational for All Terrain vs Mud Terrain in a separate post.

I used Dico blue compound 529-PBC-B with a buffing wheel.

The shocks are Bilstein 5150 BF5-A196-H1 shocks

Which match pretty close to the Bogen stock shocks (Volvo part # 637962-2). which are fully extended 26.25″ and compressed 16″.

On the rear bogie axles, the axle extension limit cables stop the axles at 9″ of shock extension.  Nice!

I also ordered 6 3/4″ bushings as the default bushings are too small.

I’m not so happy with the silver powder coating — it looks a bit funny next to the black/olive green.

I elected not to use shock boots because I think they just collect dirt and mud inside, plus they look funny to me .

Thanks to Colby for figuring out all the shock stuff…I just implemented what he spec’ed.

I used the yahoo2mbox.pl script to download all ~6310 Yahoo Volvo303 user group messages into one archive. This allows me to import the messages into my mail client, where searching and reading by threads is infinitely easier than via the Yahoo web interface.

Instructions for a few mail clients follow.

Mac Mail.app:

Download http://www.kmonkey.com/volvo/yahoo303/volvo303.mbox.zip

To import into Mail.app,

• Unzip to a folder
• From Mail.app, File/Import Mailboxes…
• Import Other
• Select the folder where you unzipped the volvo303.mbox file

For Outlook Express:

Download http://www.kmonkey.com/volvo/yahoo303/volvo303outlookexpress6.zip

To import into Outlook Express

• Unzip to a directory
• File/Import Messages
• Microsoft Outlook Express 6
• Import mail from an OE6 store directory
• point to directory where you unzipped the files
• select the volvo303 folder

For other mail clients (Outlook, in particular, which is truly a sorry program), the easiest (honest) way is to import into Outlook Express. Then use Outlook to import the Outlook Express mail store. Same for Thunderbird.

Set up your mail client to filter new messages to the mail folder where you stored the imported messages so it stays updated.

If you have problems importing into your mail client, let me know by commenting on the blog entry and I’ll see if I can help you.

Note that the perl script had problems with a few messages, maybe < 1%, so some may be missing.

I read over the Yahoo terms of service and I’m pretty sure this doesn’t violate it.

Brake work, ideally, should be gentleman’s work. Fussing and cussing shouldn’t be necessary. If you are doing things right, they sort of slip on with only a minimal bit of prying to fit the shoes. Not true for me, at least at first.

First problem is the copy of the service manual I have doesn’t have the best pictures of how to arrange the springs on the shoes. Do they go in front or back? I read wrong the first time. Here’s a color pic of how they should go (behind the shoes). Also included is a shot of my shop made version of tool 6118 which protects the boots on the wheel cylinders.

Once on, over the kingpin there are lots of configurations that are almost right, but aren’t. Lots of fussing and crying ensues.

Some needlenose vice grips are great for attaching the upper return spring:

Once you get the right position, the shoes slip right into the slots on the wheel cylinders prying with a screwdriver using the 6118 tool as a rest works well.

It’s a good thing Trog has four back wheels — I finally got good at it on the fourth wheel.

I didn’t install the front brake shoes, because I think I encountered a significant bug in the design of the Volvo brakes. The front lower wheel cylinders are fed wrong! Check out how the feed tube feeds to the upper port on the wheel cylinder. This should make bleeding air out of the system just about impossible. I am having new feed tubes fabricated to connect to the lower port.

Finally, I have installed Mintex brand brake shoes. Hopefully they are good — I have read good and bad things about them on the web.

The Volvo uses the same brakes as a Series 3 109″ LWB Land Rover. Here’s my order from rovahfarm.com.

Item Description Weight ShippingQty Amount
STC2797G Brakes Rear 109 Mintex S/s of RTC3418 2 107.38
STC3944G Brakeshoe Set FRT 109 4 Cyl Plain Box S/s of RTC3417 8.19LB1 47.99   — These are the wrong part!!! I should have gotten STC3945 — update, 3945 might be wrong too.   Just get them re-shoed!
600200= W/CYL LH FRT 6 CYL DELPHI 2 107.90
600201= W/CYL RH FRT 6CYL DELPHI 2 107.90
243296D Wheel Cylinder – RH Lockheed 1.24lb2 40.22
243297D Wheel Cylinder – LH Lockheed 1.24lb2 40.22
548169D Return Spring Rear 109 0.1lb4 11.00
531893D Spring Shoe Return 109 Pattern 0.09lb4 7.00
234889 Spring Shoe Return 109 Frt 0.11lb4 9.00
RTC3386D Brake Hose Ser IIa Frt & ser III rear 0.22lb3 29.97
RTC5903D Brake Hose ser III Frt 0.224 39.96
RTC3353D Brake Hose 109Rear Patt 0.221 9.95
556508= Bleed/Screw W/CYL 0.02lb4 4.60
252621 Stud 6 2.16
252621 Stud 2 0.00
They seemed to have the best prices in the US.

I also ordered flex brake lines for the jumps from the frame to the axles as well as the front wheels. It turns out the RTC3386D and RTC3353D are too short. I ended up having a Brake and Clutch Supply, a very good local brake shop make longer ones for me. The RTC5903D hoses which go from the front axle to the front wheels are the right length. The studs were also unnecessary.

Finally, one other tidbit. The red return springs for the rear brakes need a little bit of the ends of the springs ground off for them to fit in the appropriate hole in the brake shoes.

Update: The front brake shoes aren’t exact matches. They are narrower by about 3/4″ and the tongue that slips into the wheel cylinder is about 1/2″ too long. I had to grind it down to size. We’ll see how stopping power is w/ less contact area. I’m getting the old shoes re-padded at a brake shop so I may need to swap them.   See above, these are the wrong shoes.

Update:  I got the old shoes repadded at Brake and Clutch Supply and they are now installed.

The Volvo, despite being rather tall has a relatively low roof inside the rear cabin. Floor to ceiling height is approx 4 ft. I played around with a couple possibilities for the camper roof. Here’s a couple fixed roof designs that would give me standing room (I’m6’5″)

With roof height extension of 30″ or so, that preserves the rotolights. Awkward…

(using an old pic of Trog, before the current paint job).

Full length, dressed up a bit by my designer friend Marshall.

I prefer this version, but I’m worried about the extra windage trogging Trog even more.

Another option is to use a Eurovan popup lid, with the hinge side reversed (Eurovans pop up with the high side forward)

Finally, not shown is to do something like Colby intends and pop up all four corners equally. This makes for a lot more usable space below, but greatly complicates the mechanism. Shear strength and coordinated extension of the four posts (or scissor lifts) can be tricky. If i go with a four post mechanism, I’m considering going with something scavanged from a popup trailer.

Colby got his new roof panel at www.pacificpanels.com (warning, site requires Internet Explorer)  The panels are slick aluminum honeycomb core units that are very strong and relatively lightweight. Even lighter are Nida-Core panels which are plastic.

The drums came from the sandblaster with rust in some of the pocks. I don’t know if that happened while they were sitting at the sandblast shop or if it’s an artifact of how cast iron rusts. The sandblast guy indicated it was normal.

So, I had to remove the rust before priming and painting them. Harbor Freight and Eastwood sell a rust remover that I’m pretty sure is the same stuff — I mixed them and nothing exploded. It works really well too.   I dropped a very rusty light reflector in it and the next day it was completely free of rust, with no damage to the chrome or brass parts.

Rusty, the guy I share the shop with took offense.

The Oly beer, being damn near water, seemed an appropriate displacer to raise the liquid line.

The drums, with the races masked, hung up and painted with a high temp engine paint

So much better!

Only 2-3″ of the cutout is in the wheel well. This shouldn’t cause any interference with the tires.

And new stainless piece welded in. After cutting the stainless and bending it into shape, I TIG welded the seams together. Inside Trog TIG welding would be nearly impossible so I just MIG welded it in. I had to make a kajillion tiny welds because I couldn’t remove the undercoating behind. Every weld I’d have to take off my mask, dive to the ground, get on the creeper, grab a wet towel and weave my hand thru frame, steering and brake parts to make sure that Trog wasn’t burning on the other side. This made for some not so pretty welds and a rather sore Wes.

So simple. I don’t need to worry about sealing seams, popup mechanisms or anything. All I have to do is cut the Eurovan in half and then cut the roof of Trog and then simply weld the two together!

Of course I’ll paint the Eurovan part to match Trog’s red.

You know the best part about all this. I’m going to the Euovan’s motor as the drive motor. It’s a sweet 3.0L V6 that puts out 200HP and loves to rev fast. I just need to couple the output via some shafting to the Volvo’s drive system. Maybe use a diff locked portal axle? It’s almost the right size.

Some may laugh at my idea, but I spy a droll oaf.

An air chisel made short work of the rusty bits

I just need to form a piece of stainless steel to fit and weld it in. Luckily this is almost all non-visible bodywork so I don’t need to grind and fair it perfectly.

I am planning on adding a similar step to help getting into the main cab.

Listing here http://tinyurl.com/34q3l6

Too bad it’s the new digitally printed plates. I was hoping for old school plates made by hammer blows of a hardened convict. Washington residents may also note the great love taken in choosing the font for the red text. State law says plate designs have to change every seven(?) years and it has been getting worse every seven(?) years…

It had been bashed a bit with some popped welds and some rewelds by Swedish firefighters with a 12V battery and a coathanger. I initially intended on beating it into shape and putting it back on after getting it powdercoated. However, after taking it off and trying to straighten things, more drastic measures needed to be taken.

The new bumper, with the old huge ball hitch removed. The center horizontal part between the diamond plate is the only original part, the rest is fabbed new. I really should have made it all new as I spent way too much time cutting off the old ball and support bits. Way too much time really. Really. Stupid Easter Bunny. Anyway, I added a flip down step to make it easier to get in. It will be held in the upright position with a pit-pin when driving around so it doesn’t get banged by passing rocks.

After doing all this work on the bumper, I realized that it wasn’t standard equipment on C30x’s and hurts my exit angle. With the C30x’s high ground clearance, it encourages getting into challenging situations and it’d be double-plus bad to have the bumper clip on something. So I’m going to add a hinge so the entire bumper assembly can flip up. The hinge is the two horizontal cylinders above the bumper.

Here’s the step flipped up with diamond plate on the other side, so it also functions as a mini-step when up and held in place by the pit-pin.

With Volvo logo that I pulled off a 740 at a junkyard. I still need to weld in a standard 2″ receiver hitch.

I pulled an unleaded fuel fill inlet off a Mitsubishi at a junkyard. It took a while to carefully cut the military inlet in such a way that I could weld the new one inside, being sure to hook up the overflow to the unleaded inlet.

I had to cut a lot of little hose pieces to fill where it cracked on the unleaded inlet and mate the overflow tubes. Lots of fill welds to get everything leakproof.

With the unleaded cap inside and welds mostly ground down.

Update:

Here’s the painted gas fill.   I’ve also welded in a screen at the bottom to prevent ne’erdowells from syphoning the tank.   With gas only increasing in price from now on, gas rustling will become more prevelant.

Rear bumper off — I’m going to deck it with diamond plate (also powder coated most likely — there’s no shiny metal on Trog and I don’t think it’ll look good.   Then again fire trucks have lots of diamond plate and pull it off).    I’m going to add a flip down step to make getting in the back a little easier.

and here’s the rub-rails being stripped and sanded.   They are oak and in surprisingly good condition for 30 years old.

The 3″ thick civilian radiator was pretty beaten up — various impacts had smashed the cooling fins.   Also some impact had split the welds on the frame.     It turns out that a cheap plastic scraper from Harbor Freight was the perfect tool to realign the cooling fins.

I had to fabricate and weld some brackets to the radiator to attach the fan.    The whole assembly barely fits after rerouting the air intake snorkel.   There really isn’t a lot of extra space in the front of the C30x.

I can’t test it out until I get the CV boot installed and the brakes fixed…

An amphibious version was also prototyped as well.