Since all the junk truck differentials were toast I have collected all the parts to rebuild the rear differential. I will get to that this summer sometime. (Anyone want to help me cut grass?)
I have been slowly cleaning and prepping the rear frame, springs and axle housing for paint. Before the 4th holiday I had the parts all cleaned and treated with phosphoric acid to kill any rust left behind. I like when the metal looks nice and shiny and new:
This weekend down south here we got a break from the heat and some less humidity! I decided to go back over the frame with the wire wheels to smooth the surface for priming. Then got the frame and axle housing primed. I will go back and do a second coat but it is looking good!
Progress for the weekend. I painted the frame with a Sherwin Williams industrial coating. This paint is used on industrial machines and dries to a hard surface.
I will have to probably go over it again looking for thin spots in the coverage.
To Bruce - yes it will stay a little shiny. But I plan on painting it OD later.
We have had sooooo much rain 6.18 inches in the last week. The grass normally is going dormant at this time of year. I can almost hear it growing.
I did have a chance to fire up and limber up the M35A1 of my Son's at my place. That was so I could cut the grass under it!
Other than that I pried back the metal lock plate tabs on the M37 diff ring gear nuts and loosened the nuts to remove the ring gear. (Anyone reuse these lock plates?)
One of the nuts just spun like crazy and didn't come off. I could not get it to back off at all. Who ever put it on just rung it out. I ended up cutting the nut off with an air version of a dremel cut off wheel. Geeze... it's always something!
Nice update, Sturm!
My Dremel has been the lifesaver on several of my M37 tasks-nothing gets into the smallest areas where you need to cut like the Dremel, and mine has held up well over the years. Next to no rain in my part of Utah for the past 2 months; plenty of monsoonal rain down in the Southern part though.
Gary
Pic, IV Corps, south of Camau, my little advisory compound, 1971. One SFC and I lived and worked with the Vietnamese troops. Used the rain water off our metal roof into rusty 55 gal barrels for cooking, washing and drinking. This the TOC in the center of our compound, note the anti-RPG wire.
Finally back to the M37. Sept has been a busy month. We had an encampment the first week of the month. Camped out in the humid south. I packed my M416 trailer with all I needed for camping. Got there and found out I had forgot to pack the cross pieces of the army cot I brought. So the first night I stayed in a RV with AC. I know I wimped out. The next day another member arrived and had just happened to pack two sets of cross pieces. So I slept out under cover on my cot. Nam Vet - No more camping out for you?
I cut the retaining race off of the bearings so I could put my puller on the core of the bearing. So I am ready to pull the bearings off of the diff so i rigged up my puller on the bearing core. I notice the core turns freely around the diff. Not good. The puller didn't even have a problem pulling it off.
Here is the puller set up:
Here is the spun bearing. It's hard to see but it was easy to turn on the housing.
The other side of that diff bearing was not so easy. I put the puller on it and torqued it down. Nothing. I took the torch and heated the bearing core and put the whammy on the puller and the bearing came off.
I was not happy with the diff so I got one of the ones that came off the junk trucks. So got down to the bearings and set the puller like last time and the diff just laughed at my contraption. So out comes the good old air tool with a dremel cut off wheel. I cut the bearing core enough so that when I hit it with a chisel it cracked and I was able to remove the bearing. So I am happy with this diff and will proceed to use it.
You need to get the bearing puller behind the bearing race, not on the inside of the hardened race. It looks like you have a bargain puller there and they are usually just not up to the job of squeezing behind the bearings. They need to have a fine taper and a sharp edge. The clamping bolts have to be fine thread and hardened, as do the nuts. And even then I have used the cut and crack method many times. But when doing a setup on a set of gears that is not an option and if you don't have a full set of setup bearings then you have to be able to put the good bearings on and off several times.
Yep, it's a cheepo puller. I didn't even try to get it in behind the bearing as it is too thick. I have a better one but it would not spread enough, an excuse to go shopping!
OOOOOOOHH, Tool shopping! Unfortunately there are not too many place to buy good tools anymore. You still have Snap On who thinks their stuff is made of 24K gold and charges accordingly, Proto and MAC Tools which are a crapshoot as to whether you will get American or Chinese.Craftsman went downhill years ago and now they are gone. I have used a fair bit of Kobalt from Lowes but I have also had a lot of issues with their tools. Since I am retired and pretty much done with full time work I don't really worry about it too much but I feel sorry for those who depend on tools for a living.
I have been trying to get the differential apart so I can do the spider gears, etc. I don't like to be defeated!! I even welded up this nice fixture to hold the diff solid:
I read one of Charles's old response to a diff rebuild and he mentioned that they need to be heated to near 600 degrees and to use a long lever attached to the tool to do a slow pull to loosen the interference fit parts.
Using a laser temp tool to measure I could only get the thing up to just over 400 degrees by using two MAPP torches. All I accomplished was to try and rip the vise out of the work bench.
Contacted Charles and he can do this part for me if I like. Been thinking about it. I might just call it a day and order ARB air lockers. Comments?
The mapp torches are not hot enough to heat the casing fast enough to expand it before the inner part also heats up and also expands. When that happens you are basically at square one. This is a job for an oxy-acetylene set with a rosebud tip. ARB's are a real nice way to go if you can afford it. You will have to drill and tap the housing for the air lines.
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I even welded up this nice fixture to hold the diff solid: 
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