Fino's 58 Wagon

Cheers Julius...I did the 3rd gear upgrade as well so hopefully won't have it jumping. I got it through Novak, but I think it's motive gear product. I am ready to move on to the D18....

 

Before leaving for Grand Canyon, I got the D18 disassembled....


Now its time for cleaning and rebuild with new bearings and intermediate shaft etc...Trying a new way of doing some cleaning (Novak says it works well):


If you don't hear from me in a bit, you'll know why.

 

I think it did...It leaves a flash rust on the surface, but it takes off all the oily residue that its really hard to get rid off and helps loosen up and get a lot of the stuff out of the nooks and crannies. I didn't trust the flash rust on gears and splined internals etc, so those are soaking in a bucket with degreaser and will be hand wiped down to get the carbonized gunk off - besides a little oil coating on those is fine as they will get more during re-assembly. I just did the case, pan and bearing caps. The flash rust comes off easily with a rag or wire brush - used a little dremmel to get in the tight spaces. It already had been hand scraped, but I want to try painting one, and just didn't think I could get all the oily residue off by hand...It will still get a rag wipe with laquer thinner or the like before painting, but this just seemed like it would help. I wanted to do this with the sm465, but the option was not there - so it will get the hand wipe down treatment and it was not covered in oily gunk anyway (must have gotten some serious cleaning by the PO). Would do it again for sure....YFYL (your wife, your life)....some pics:
the flash rust coming out of the washer:


after a few minutes cleaning up with a wire wheel, brush and rag:

 

Along these lines....been trying to figure out if I should paint the parts and then assemble, or just assemble everything including gaskets and do the paint at the end. It feels a bit sloppy to paint afterwards, but also seems like a lot of work to protect and tape off all the gasket and seal surfaces at this point....The sm465 is already back together, so its getting painted as is, although I haven't put the gaskets on that yet either.

 

Hmm - Parts in the dishwasher = dead man walking around here. I made the mistake of teaching my wife to shoot - and got her guns - and she knows where the knives are - and where I sleep...

Family friend took the 'old dish washer' from the house remodel and hooked a hot water heater outside his garage and ran it as a parts washer. Worked pretty good and he had some safe solvent he would mix in the water that made the soap work better.

 

Making some progress getting it back together...past the intermediate shaft instal which is one of the PITA steps....A couple questions:


1) The new hardened shaft from Novak had rubber o-rings to help with sealing - don't think I've seen that before. I think on previous ones I tried to put some RTV or similar sealant along in the inside of the case bore when pushing the shaft in - but I don't think it works all that well as I think the vasoline I use to hold all the rollers in place gets scraped off by the shaft and then contaminates the sealant. For now, I am leaving with just the o-rings - should I remove the shaft and try putting some sealant along the inside of the case bore?

2) Thinking of leaving out the interlock pin...I don't know that I would ever use 2Lo as its not an option with the single stick on the cj5 and I've never really missed it - I don't have a front locker such that I would want to disengage to help with steering - and worst case, can always just unlock the hubs? I also recognize that 2Lo can put a lot of stress on the rear axle if the driver decides to do something dumb. Maybe its just for the novelty? Guess the main thing I want to confirm is that with the dual rail D18, you can't accidentally cross-shift it and get the front in Lo and the rear in high (or vice versa) and cause serious issues.

thanks

 

thanks - that's what I thought - but wanted to make sure.

I am pretty conservative with the skinny pedal, but I more conscious of the rear axle in the 58 as its the 19spline version and will have sbc v8 power in front of it. Tire size won't be big - at least not at first...

 

Different versions (based on year mostly) have some different set-ups - the issue seems to mostly relate to a spacer on the counter shaft that can deteriorate and allow some sort of movement of the countershaft gear. I very well could be mistaken - I didn't research it hard, as mine was coming completely apart anyway and figured for a few more bucks I might as well do it - didn't want to complete this entire project with engine swap and all and find something annoying like jumping out of 3rd gear. Plus, I don't know anything about the history of this sm465 - CL buy - assuming it got pulled for a reason and maybe this was part of it. The version I have has the two snap rings and splined thin spacer on the counter shaft - seemed like it would have worked fine, but I think some had a hard rubber spacer that was more problematic. The new kit comes with a solid steel spacer for the counter shaft and a new 3rd gear and brass synchro ring for the mainshaft....As far as i could tell, the new 3rd gear and synchro in the kit is exactly the same as the original - maybe the new gear/synchro is more for replacing one that has been damaged from jumping out of gear than some sort of new and improvemed gear design and synchro. Anyway, I put the new gear in even though the old one looked fine (need a replacement 3rd gear and brand new synchro?). Basically, I probably paid a lot for a steel spacer that may not have been needed, but just wasn't worth the risk on this big project. I got the 3rd gear kit through Novak as an add-on to their standard rebuild kit, but they basically dropped shipped it from another supplier: