Installing a Cab: First Blood Part II

Quick updates: So, I guess it's been a super long time since the last post. In my defense, I lot has happened. After the last post (ummm, a couple of years ago) my wife and I both began new careers, we bought a house, and we had a baby, my mother passed away and there were lots of other things like trips throughout Wisconsin like Edgar Steam Show, EAA Airshow, Bristol Renaissance Fair, and let's not forget the fun winters up here. Also, the truck has been used a lot since we heat our house with wood. I have a few ideas for the truck, all of which will follow in the next blog post, including how my driveshaft decided to come loose going 60 mph down the highway! We'll get to that....

But first, let's do a little catch up between the summer of 2011 and now.....1/1/2014....

Fall 2011

The Move

Edgar Steam Show

2012

Spring Time 

Summer 

Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) - Airshow

Bristol Renaissance Fair

Winter

First time ice fishing.

 

2013

Eulalia

Our Daughter Eulalia - Born in April

In Fall of 2013 my mother passed away. This is for you mom, rest in peace.

(1948 - 1913)

Summer

The American Lemans - Elkhart Lake, WI

Ok, so as you can see, there's been a lot that's gone on from July of 2011 to January of 2014. It doesn't let me off the hook for not making another blog post, but it does remind me that a lot has gone on since we moved to WI. Anyway, back to the truck.....

 Installation/Preparation:

Background:
I'm not sure if I mentioned this before, but I have two points to make by giving a little bit of background knowledge, so listen up. I am from NC born and raised. I became a high school English teacher (ignore all grammar mistakes), and I taught for 5 years. Also, I got married to an amazing girl in 2008 who was also a high school English teacher. Anyway, I didn't know hardly anything about cars before I bought this truck. I knew how to change the oil and rotate my tires. And one time my friend and I used a Hayne's manual from the library to fix my Honda Prelude. It threw the timing belt and trashed all the valves. However, working on the Jeep with Jake and Jackie really taught me a lot about how to do stuff. So anybody who can turn a wrench, follow a manual, and listen to advice can restore an old car. The other equally or more important thing is that it's always going to cost more than you budgeted for and take more time than you thought it would, but don't give up! I lost count on how many times I debated on selling this truck, and how many times I told it to go to hell. However, all the while, I remember my friend's dad who had a 1966 mustang in his garage. I remember seeing that thing up on blocks when I was about 10 years old, I don't know if it even had a motor. The thing was old and covered in dust and looked like a junk mustang. When I was about 25, I saw my friend's dad driving that same mustang. It looked like it came from a showroom. The thing was flawless and sounded perfect. Anyway, be honest with yourself about restoring a vehicle, but also be patient. I don't know if my truck will ever be flawless, but I've gotten it's worth in work out of it at least.

The Move
Like I said, in 2008, I got married and my wife and I had decided that in 2011 we'd move to WI, where she is from. In June of 2011 we packed up all of our stuff and got ready to move. Her parents were coming down at the end of July, and we were also going to Germany for a wedding in the middle of July before the move. In June, 2011, two months before we were moving to WI, my truck looked like this:



Needless to say, I had to get my butt into gear and get this thing finished. I stayed with Jake and Jackie for two weeks. In 2 weeks time, we swapped the front axle, put the engine/transmission back on and prepped the truck to get the new cab. I had three days left before I had to go back home and get ready for a trip to Germany. As you know from my earlier post, putting the new cab on wasn't exactly a cake walk, but it was easier than I thought (then again, it is a 1976). So after we got the cab on, we got some chow and relaxed a bit.

The next day, we got adjusted the cab a little until it rested nicely on the frame. We still worked in and around it. It's pretty stable even though it's not bolted down, of course never take it for granted. Anyway, the next job was to hook up everything that needs to be hooked up. By the way, I do have a few pictures from this part, but honestly I didn't take many cause I was under a crunch just to get it done.

We started hooking up everything one by one. At this point, there's a lot of stuff to do, so I didn't find any particular order of things. I decided to hook up the the wiring harnesses first. On these babies, it's real easy, three basic parts. One goes to the back of the truck for the tail lights gas gauge, etc. The other two go in the engine bay. One basic tip with the wiring is that if you took it off, it should fit where it was before, or pretty close, so remember which one is short, long, etc. If you're looking for a Wiring Diagram, but can't find it, here's your answer: http://oljeep.com/gw/elec/GW_wiring.html  The next thing I tackled was the pedal assembly because this cab was for an automatic, and mine is manual. This turned out to be more difficult than I thought. Apparently the assemblies for an automatic and manual are similar  but different enough that a little bit of fabrication was needed. Fortunately I had a mentor who could fabricate anything in his sleep. If you don't have somebody, there's always YouTube, or http://www.ifsja.org/, and many other Jeep sites. Also, I've found plenty of people at auto parts stores or shops who are very willing to talk through stuff.
We used an assembly from a 1984 J10, mainly because the bolts on my old cab had somewhat seized, plus, the pedals from the '84 were in much better shape. I first tried to take the entire assembly out including the plate that holds it all to the firewall (bad idea). I wasted at least 1.5 hours trying to get 5 bolts off. It was definitely one of those parts on the truck that isn't made to be replaced. The bolts need a lot of torque and are tucked up deep under the dash. Unfortunately I found that I tend to do things the hard way at first, wasting time and busting my knuckles, just to find there is a much easier way. Keep It Simple Stupid. Can anyone relate? Finally, I wised up and decided to leave the entire housing and take off the main bar that holds the pedals in place. It did fit, but we had to fabricate a special bar that would keep the pedals positioned. Otherwise, the brake pedal for instance would spring upward under the dash.

This was my sample from another Jeep
to help me get the hoses correct in mine.

After getting the pedals situated, I decided to work on the gauge cluster and get the heating system hooked up again. This is one of those things where it's really nice to have another Jeep to look at. There's essentially three vacuum hoses that have to be connected; the hardest part is just trying to figure out which hose goes where. Just like wiring, make sure you have different color tubes or it gets even more confusing. By different color, I mean different color stripes on the black tubes. Once this is done, then the other gauges can be connected, including the speedometer cable. When I screwed in the gauge cluster, it didn't seem to fit perfect, mainly because I had removed the dash cover. If you look at the picture with the green dash, you can see the holes where the dash cover used to bolt to. It wasn't a major problem for me. One day, I'll probably use some of the holes for switches, and other holes will just get welded up. By the way, there are many different ways to customize your gauge cluster depending on what gauges you want, and also the way you want it to look. Here's one example where I guy custom made his own cluster with the gauges he wanted: http://www.ifsja.org/forums/vb/showthread.php?t=87425

Unfortunately I don't have more pictures of putting the cab back together from the inside or out until it was about 99% complete, but essentially we finished up the inside of the cab by reinstalling the steering wheel along with other little things like plugging different components up and lastly putting in the seat. Jake talked me into putting in a newer seat then what I had prior. And, while moving the old seat, Jackie noticed that there was a paper stuck in the springs. It was the original order slip for the truck as it was going through the factory. It was neat seeing a little 40 year-old piece of history from my specific truck's creation.

Well, we got much of it put back together and it started to look like a truck again, though there was a good amount of work left to do to get it finished, but after putting most of that parts together on my truck, here is what it looked like:

And that's how it looked in NC. Here's the first couple of pictures I took after we got the truck to WI. Also, the last picture is at our house now, after dropping off a load of wood.

Installing a Cab 101 - Part 1

Equipment or supplies needed to swap a cab:

1) Machinery or people that can lift 500 lbs        

2) A handy set of mechanic tools

3) Knowledge of fabricating (optional, but handy)

4) Clever Problem Solving Skills

5) A case of Mountain Dew or Pepsi

6) A touch of insanity

7) A gun (why not?)

Good, now that you have what you need let me show you some things the Jacob family, a friend named Jonathon, and I accomplished to put a new cab on on my Jeep J10.

As I had mentioned earlier in my blog, I wanted to patch some holes in my floorboards to get my truck ready for Wisconsin winters. Jake pointed out that swapping a cab was really not that difficult, and actually a little easier than patching floors. With my tiny amount of knowledge and experience in fixing cars, this seemed absolutely insane. Jake explained that patching a few holes in the floorboard is not as easy as I thought. Also, he pointed out that my cab was fecal matter. My body panels, rocker panels and floorboards were rusting away. My wiring was worn and outdated along with my lap belts. And my doors were slowly becoming "see-thru" along with the body panels, not to mention the crack in the window. Swapping the cab would fix the rust and would immediately update wiring and seat-belts, and solve other cab issues. 

I prepared the new cab except for cutting the bolts. This meant removing the steering wheel, braking system, installing a manual pedal cluster and fixing anything that was easy to get to, like the door hinges and interior switches.

A Lesson Learned: 

Only the tractor was holding the frame up, and I was underneath.

When I went to cut the bolts off of the new cab, Jake had already lifted the frame using the bucket of the tractor. I figured, "great, I'll climb under there and saw the bolts off and be done with it." I'd finished cutting 2 of the bolts when Jake saw me under the frame, demanded that I get out from under it and reamed me out for be so dumb. I thought, "what in the world is he yelling at me for?" He pointed out that I had zero support under the frame before I crawled underneath (remember, I said you needed a little insanity, not stupidity). If the hydraulics failed the only thing holding up the frame would be my body. Just weeks earlier we had read in the newspaper about a guy in our area who was killed because his truck fell on him. I saw myself in the newspaper. 

We put some tires, and some 4x4 posts underneath the frame before I crawled back under.

Moving the Cab:

After I cut the rest of the bolts, we attached some tow straps to the cab and the bucket of the tractor. We then put the new cab on the Kabota just like we did with the old one. By the way, if you know a tougher, more used Kabota than Jake and Jackie's I'd like to see it. 

Also, notice the terrain. Moving a cab is one thing, moving it up a 4-wheel only driveway is another issue. Jake decided to back the Kabota uphill to help give it a little security, and also to prevent having to turn around at the top of the driveway.

Preparations:

We finally had the cab beside the truck. The next thing to do was to fix any outside rust before actually moving the cab. We looked at a few minor holes in the cab and decided to weld those up and sand them smooth. This took a little bit of care and time, but it was well worth it in the end. How often does someone decide to remove their bed/cab and decide to fix the minor rust holes? Not exactly a Saturday routine at my house. 

After sanding down the metal, we noticed some pretty rusty areas. Jake welded those up. We sanded them down and then covered them with some undercoating spray. I wold eventually like to professionally paint the truck, but this is a good start to protect this new cab. 

Installation: 

So the scariest part of this ordeal happened when we were actually moving the cab about 20 feet to the Jeep frame of my truck. I don't have many pictures of this ordeal because all of us were just trying to steady the cab without it smashing into something. 

It had been a long day. Everybody was tired already and about to call it a day. But before it got completely dark, we decided to move set the cab on the frame and then call it a day. Simple task right? It wasn't. 

We started by moving the Kabota parallel to the truck. The tractor would then pick up the cab and have a straight shot to the truck frame as the Kabota was moved out of the way. We used the tow straps again and attached the cab to the bucket of the tractor, and lifted the cab up and off of the Kabota. Then, Jake lined up the tractor with the frame and began moving the cab closer to the frame. 

During the move to the frame, the bucket suddenly dropped. Jackie and I both thought, is Jake insane?? The answer is yes, but he's also pretty good with a tractor. Anyway, we just knew he was going to run the cab into the frame. Well, he raised the bucket again with the cab swinging on the straps--we could also hear the creaking sounds of metal....not a reassuring sound. Meanwhile I was about to pee my pants as I was imagining the cab flying loose from the straps and rolling on top of us, or down the mountain. The bucket lowered again, and this time we yelled at Jake and he yelled that he wasn't doing it, the hydraulics were going out. The cab had come crashing down onto the nose of the tractor. Jake was about 7 feet away at this point and I was in  between the cab and the frame which was a very dangerous place to be. Jake heaved the bucket up again off the nose of the tractor, causing the cab to swing again and he rushed forward with the tractor before the bucket dropped again. He managed to lower the cab onto the frame in one piece. When the cab came down on the frame, it made a loud crashing sound, but it had settled safely onto the frame without injuring anyone. The loud crashing sound was the receiving neck for the shift lever. We'd forgotten to take the trans tunnel cover off before lowering the cab on the frame. Since the new cab originally was designed for an automatic transmission, it had no hole for the shift lever to go through and made a loud crash when the two suddenly came together. 

The important thing was that the cab was now on my truck frame and no one was hurt. We were all pretty worried. Needless to say, after that, we quit, ate dinner, and went to bed.

The next day, we adjusted the cab to fit correctly on the frame.
We still had to bolt the cab down though.