Breakdown and retrieval!!!!!


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Posted by Dylan (FFFPW) on Sunday, October 15, 2006 at 1:54AM :

I went grouse hunting the other day up by my old house which is about 70 miles from my current residence. I was checking out some old logging roads around Weippe ID. I hadn't had much luck grouse hunting so I decided to take a detour and check on some ground that I had been wanting to scout for deer hunting. I hadn't gone far down this old bumpy road when I decided that it might be worth it to turn the hubs in, mainly for speed reasons (it was pretty bumpy) rather than traction. When I got around to the passenger side hub, I noticed a funny looking piece of metal hanging down from the frame, then I realized that that funny looking piece of metal was a broken front spring. So I very carefully turned around and headed for the gravel road. When I got out to the gravel I kept it slow maybe 15mph or so just to be safe. I figured that I could make it to a friends house which was about 10 miles away. I hadn't gone very far on the gravel when I corrected for a slight curve in the road, the wheel felt like it had lost all influence on the direction of the front wheels!!! I very carefully coasted over to the side of the road, and jumped out. I expected to see something obvious where maybe the steering linkage had come apart or somehting of that nature. But after a quick look I figured something had let go inside the steering box. So I drug out the tools and warmed up my on board air compressor (which some time I'll post pictures of when my friend with the digital camera shows up!!) I quickly had the steering box apart far enough to see the problem. The steering shaft itself had broken off about 5 inches behind the worm gear!!! I figured I could fix it good enough to get to my friends house if I could weld it somehow, but I haven't put an on-board welding system on it (yet!!) At this point I decided to walk to another friend's house which was only about a 1/4 mile away. I made it roughly a hundred yards before someone picked me up, and gave me ride over there. When I got there, we talked a little bit and I found out that he didn't have welder of any kind, so I called my wife and had her pick me up, and the next day I was able to load it on a friend's trailer and haul it home.

This is the first time in the three years I've owned the truck that it made me walk. Not bad for a 60 year old truck!!!!

I was looking through the VPW catalog the other day for steering parts, and it looks as though all they have are rebuilt or NOS units which seemed to me like a good recipe for a repeat breakage, so I'm currently building a solid steering shaft.

I did however order one of there replacement top leaves for the broken spring, just to get me through hunting season. But I'm looking at putting some coil springs on it as a permanent fix. Has anyone ever done this before????


Dylan



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