Has anyone had a lorry transported? Is it hi - NOW BODGE 50 HORSEBO11OX THREAD (Now with added turtles)

[Mr_Bo11ox]

The indicator stalk wobbled about all over the shop adding to the general shonkiness of the Dodge 50 experience. Dismatled the steering column and removed the switch:

 

 

Same as a Rover SD1 dontcha know!

 

The collar had split that holds it into place:

 

 

Worked OK otherwise so I was reluctant to buy another one. Eventually:

 

 

'Repaired' it with a little metal 'strap' riveted into place. I tried to countersink the rivet heads then filed them down as best I could to get it to sit tightly. Anyway it worked. The switch clamps onto a cast-iron collar thats riveted to the top of the outer steering column - that was loose too so i re-riveted that into place. Now the whole lot is 'solid' (well, as solid as any Dodge 50 switchgear, i.e. not very solid)

 

While I had the steering column apart I noticed that the rubber coupling at the bottom was jiggered:

 

 

That was a right war to remove. Luckily when I stripped that cab earlier, I grabbed its column coupling, and it was in excellent condition:

 

 

The two are inexplicably different but seem to be interchangeable so on it went. What a bit of luck that I picked that up as I did not know at the time, that my own one was knackered!!

[Mr_Bo11ox]

speaking of the old cab, remember me wittering on about salvaging its front wings?

 

 

 

 

 

 

I spent a bit of time with the spot weld drill removing all the scraggy bits from the mounting flanges and welded new wheelarch lips into each one to finish up with as close to new wings as you're likely to find for one of these heaps!!! I advertised them for £100 on the Dodge 50 FB group and some lad from Malta was well into them. Shipping them was gonna cost about £75 so that wasnt looking too good. But then the next week he got in touch to say he was in the UK on a training course (learning about VW 'GTE' electric car powrtrains!!) and he drove up from Bristol to get them!!! Really nice fella too. So they ended up going from a Manchester scrapyard all the way to sunny Malta, would you believe it. Anyway i felt better about the whole 'cab' experience after that.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

The bonnet on this needed some attention. First of all the cable was snapped and to open the bonnet you had to tug on the broken-off piece of cable that poked through the grille with a little piece of wood on the end (almost visible here)

 

 

A new Land-rover cable was only a fiver:

 

 

That got the bonnet opening properly from inside, much better. Then one of the bump stops was rotted right off, anf the hole covered up by a bit of aluminium.

 

Drivers side: Rusty

 

 

Passenger side: vanished

 

 

Chopped it out:

 

 

Used a spare AV mount (same as those on the radiator) with the metal sliced off one end as the bump stop, mounted on a home made bracket:

 

 

 

Thats more like it

 

 

Aaaaaahhhhhh.

 

 

Now the bonnet sits even and opens correctly from the inside. Lovely stuff. The drivers side still needs attention but I'll get round to it eventually.

[wuvvum]

That is some seriously impressive fabrication work going on there.

[LightBulbFun]

Awesome stuff!

 

glad to see the rad setup worked out in the end

 

looking forward to hearing more about this van and your adventures

[vulgalour]

Hooray for BLLXBUS updates!

[GrumpyCat]

Always great to read a Bollox update. Top work!

[spartacus]

Nice one Bo11. It's great to see progress and to know it hasn't just got you down and languished on your drive! I'm really looking forward to seeing what you do with the inside, is that planned for this year do you reckon?

[Supernaut]

This is awesome, in the true sense of the word. I am simply in awe at the work you've done, and the creativity and fabrication involved! Top work!

[bezzabsa]

makes me want to learn how to melt metal together.....always loved watching welders at work when i was HGV driving, you knew they were good when they sold their automatic welding machine (for pressure vessels) as it couldn't match his pass rate LOL..

[stephen01]

Top work, love reading your updates.

[dave j]

What's the driving experience like? Good to see it back in 1 piece.

[wuvvum]

What's the driving experience like?

 

Slow, noisy and agricultural.  Great fun.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

The suspension needed looking at as I noticed when I drove it previously, that there was a horrible clatter from the OSF wheel on bumpy surfaces. A half-arsed look under the wheelarch failed to locate any obviously knackered track rod ends or spring bushes or leaky shockers so I wasnt sure where the noise was coming from.

 

 

Looking at the diagram its fairly simple, the steering swivels on a big kingpin, with a thrust bearing taking the vertical load, a bit like a strut top bearing. I found about 1mm vertical play in the kingpin, which didn’t seem like much but the manual reckoned there should be none so maybe that was the problem. I figured the only wearing part in the up-down direction was the thrust bearing so maybe that was dying. Not having any other ideas (and the thrust bearing being available and cheap) I dismantled it all to have a look.

I expected this to be a massive war, but it came apart really easily much to my amazement.

 

 

 

 

I cleaned up all the bits in some petrol.

 

 

 

Among the removed bits, there was strangely no sign of the seal (no. 18 in the diagram) ever having been there? While I was on I removed and cleaned the grease nipples, and loctited them back into place as one had been leaking grease straight out the thread.

The thrust bearing was a bit gritty but didn’t seem like it was on its last legs. Still, new ones are only £12 so I bought one, plus a new seal off the Dodge 50 geezer on facebook which was another tenner.

 

 

Also bought some shim washers. Seemingly, back in the day you had to shim up the suspension with some washers of selected thicknesses to get rid of all the vertical play and compensate for the machining variation in the hub and the axle beam. Though apparently Renault never actually made the washers a buyable spare part item?!

 

I cleaned the hub up a bit and tried to assemble the bearing and seal.

 

 

First thing I found was that with the kingpin in place, there was basically no room for the seal, the machining of the hub was such that it would not fit in! So it had never had one fitted. Very odd. I am sure theres one on the passenger side. I decided to ‘machine’ the hub myself with the angle grinder as it looked like it would only need a very light linishing

 

That meant taking the guard off the angle grinder. I have done this before with predictably painful results. IN this case, almost as soon as I started it up I nicked myself like a tw&t;

 

 

Still, I did achieve what I wanted – managed to skin 1/2mm or so out the back of the hub casting, allowing the seal to fit into place:

 

 

https://oi46.photobucket.com/albums/f114/Mr_Bo11ox/dodge%2050/P1090130.jpg

 

 

Now that it had a seal where previously it didn’t, my ‘selective thickness washer’ was going to be all wrong. I half-assembled the hub and measured the gap with feeler gauges:

 

 

It was about 1.9mm. Measured my washer:

 

 

Hmm that’s not going to go in is it. It was for this that I bought the shim washers off ebay, they were 0.35mm thick and a stack of 5 of them seemed to pretty much wipe out the free play. But they were only 35mm o/d whereas the selective washers are 50mm, and I felt they might encourage water and shiz to get into the kingpin. So I had a go at ‘machining’ the original washer with the flap disc in the grinder!!!

 

 

Spent about 45 mins on this, grinding, measuring, grinding, measuring, filing, then finishing off with a davenumbers-style polishing on a sheet of wet and dry on some kitchen worktop of all things. Believe it or not I got it to within 0.15 mm - it was between 1.85 and 2.0mm thickness wherever you measured it and slid nicely into place with a bit of moly grease. That’ll do for me!

The steering arm bolts had been secured with locking wire. That had all rotted away to nowt so I tried drilling the holes through the bolt heads out:

 

Predictably, within minutes I had destroyed all my 3mm and smaller drill bits, this job was going nowhere. I think you need a locking feature, so I have ordered some M16 spring washers to use instead of these locking wires. Hopefully that will be ok for the MOT dude.

Anyway, started putting it all back together:

 

 

Got it all assembled and used the WANNER to pump a load of fresh grease in:

 

 

Result: Lovely. No up-&-down play and it steers smooth as you like! While I was on I fitted some new Mintex brake pads with new split pins and anti-rattle springs (these calipers are the same as an LDV 400 would you believe). The old pads had plenty of meat but were clearly ancient and the pins and springs had rusted away to nowt.

I am not sure what to make of this problem, the seal defo could never have been fitted with that hub, and now it is fitted, the ‘selective washer’ thickness is much less than the thinnest washer mentioned as being available in the workshop manual. Its as if the whole lot was meant not to have the seal. But what would be the point of deleting it? Anyway its got it now, so tough!

[Mr_Bo11ox]

What else? Did an oil change:

 

 

10 litres of oil!!!!

 

Got a new pukka filter direct from Perkins:

 

 

The old filter was on mega tight and had been painted with flippin schutz stuff so must have been on for years. The engine sounded fantastic anyway but a fresh sumpful of oil hasnt done the sound any harm at all.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Also while i had the front bumper off I rubbed it down and gave it a few coats of matt black:

 

 

 

 

 

That smartened it up a lot, I refitted it then the next time I looked at it a few days later, I noticed I'd put a massive scratch in it already, dont even know how I did this. Fucks sake!!!

 

[mk2_craig]

What a brilliant read - I love this sort of getting stuff to be "just so"

[Mr_Bo11ox]

The front grille looked shite:

 

 

I tried to give it the heat gun treatment but that didnt work at all, (wrong sort of plastic I think, it just got mega hot!!!)

 

 

Really faded. Anyway I gave it a good scrub with a scotch pad:

 

 

That worked amazingly well and a couple of applications of Autoglym bumper shiz have brought a lot of the colour back. Also got hold of a Renault badge and glued that on, its for the concours points innit.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Thats more or less where I'm up to with it, still havent got an MOT on the friggin thing and the back of it is full of car magazines which I still need to sort out. I think for the MOT all I need to do is passenger side brake pads and kingpin grease-up. Still plenty of problems though, the biggest being the scuttle rot, plus:

 

This rear cab mount looks very crispy! Is this an MOT fail? I friggin hope not.

 

 

 

 

 

The diesel tank does not leak, but it looks like it would if I picked at it!!

 

Also, saggy leaf springs on the back, pock-marked windscreen and general all-round ugliness are ongoing problems (and the truck is coincidentally suffering with similar issues LOLOLOL)

 

Still, feast your eyes on this mutha, who wouldnt want that on their drive?

 

 

Here it is partially blocking the neighbours window, which initially caused me a lot of stress when it fitrst came to live at home, the neighbour has never even mentioned it however.

 

 

The wonky reg plate gets right on my wick, i will get hold of some new pressed ally ones I think. Also look at that shiny new rad peering through the grille!

[somewhatfoolish]

Did you not buy that spare cab in the end?

[Mr_Bo11ox]

yeah I bought the cab but stripped it and left the remains behind

[Split_Pin]

Keep this sort of thing coming, it's gonna be at a Truckfest near you with Les Dennis or somebody 'judging'.

[Richard]

This one is still in regular use in a quarry near Lerwick.

 

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Wow fantastic!!! Looks like I could get the screen out of that without any risk of cracking it, just gently push it out by hand.

[shedenvy]

That horse! I can decide whether it's the greatest or shittest thing ever.

 

Fantastic work. Makes me want to practice welding.

[greengartside]

Keep this sort of thing coming, it's gonna be at a Truckfest near you with Les Dennis or somebody 'judging'.

 

Our survey said.....Bo1 is a WINNAR.

[taxi paul]

Men and their sheds. Made Britain great don't ya know. Excellent work. Way beyond my ham fisted efforts.

[The Moog]

Excellent workings... Nice to see the progress

[dollywobbler]

Great stuff! A ridiculous amount of love for something utterly terrible. Ethos of this place personified.

[Mr_Bo11ox]

Yo wobbler! Can you drive over 3.5T vehicles? You’re welcome to come and give this thing a razz* when its MOT’d if that’s of interest. It is ace fun to drive believe it or not. You’ll have to shout though!!!