Pugsly's FG rebuild thread

[pugslyyy]

As a lot of you already know, I am the new owner of the "Hackney BEV", which was well documented and discussed here during the build phase several years ago. Doug Hackney's original build is well documented here so I won't go into that in this thread.

What happens when you acquire an overland vehicle that has been in storage for years?

The purpose of this thread is to document the rehab/refurb/upgrades that are currently (2013) being done to the vehicle. After being used for overland travel in South American in 2008 and 2009, the truck has seen very little use. In 2012, when Doug and Steph recognized that they were no longer going to use the Fuso for its intended pupose, they sold it to Anil Sethi who relocated it to Northern California with the intention of using it for overland travel. 6 months later Anil realized that he was not going to use the truck as intended and sold it again, this time to me.

I picked the truck up in San Jose with a friend who I used to do a lot of expedition driving / camping in the deserts. Here we are on the initial rollout out of the storage yard.


After an overnight in the Bay Area we convoyed up to his house near Tahoe, and spent a solid 3 days going through the truck and bringing the systems back to life. During the 3 days I began to get to know Doug Hackney very well. The BEV is a very complex vehicle, and even though I'm an engineer/tech guy there was a tremendous amount to figure out and I remain ever grateful for the hours Doug has spent on the phone with me as I try to understand the systems of the vehicle.


The biggest problem I ran into was the electrical system. During the 6 months the truck had been stored in San Jose it had been in an open lot, without shore power. The truck does have a very capable solar charging system that should have kept everything topped off in normal conditions, but at some point I'm sure a combination of bad weather and accumulated dirt/grime on the panels meant that the house bank became completely depleted. When a battery is completely discharged, it will not take a charge (your alternator essentially won't turn on). Since all of the accessories in the cab (like the air seats, radios, etc) run off of the house bank, I had no creature comforts.

After talking with Doug we bridged the house and truck batteries to get the house batteries to start charging again. Possibly because of this, the Balmar charge controller had a fault and stopped working, so the only way I could get power was either by running the generator or by solar. This meant that after the sun set I had very little reserve until the low voltage alarms started screaming at me. These alarms are directly behind the driver seat, and there is no way to turn them off.

The vehicle has 4 210-Ah Lifeline AGM batteries in it. Since that is a lot of battery (and a lot of money) I tried a lot of things, with Doug's help/advice, to bring the house bank back to life. After a few weeks of working on it I did a load test and the batteries tested at 23% of capacity under ideal conditions. Lifeline says replace anytime below 50% of capacity so there was no avoiding it, had to replace the batteries. Just too critical a system, I need to be able to count on it.


Driving back east from the West Coat I had a lot of problems with fuel contamination. Investigation showed that the tanks were in great shape, but the fuel filler necks were uncoated steel on the insider. Check out the rust I knocked out of this one. I have since coated the fuel filler necks with POR-15 fuel tank coating. I'm still not sure how much muck is in the fuel tank - but I have a bunch of fuel filters on hand!


...story to be continued

 

[pugslyyy]

After three days in Tahoe, I had flushed the fresh water systems, spooled the winch lines, and cleaned the exterior. The macerator had jammed the first time I tried to use it (to pump out the tanks) - I think the almost empty tanks had collected solids at the bottom which then dropped right into the macerator. Access to the macerator was limited because the propane fill manifold was installed in front of it. I had screwdrivers that were long enough, and screwdrivers that were thin enough - but not one that was long and thin enough to manually rotate the macerator. I now have one in my specialty tool bag!


So three days to get to know the vehicle, time to go camp, right? We had two choices - pyramid lake/black rock desert or saline valley. The weather was tough to the north so we headed south to saline. The goal of this trip was a quick shakedown - do some back country travel in an area I knew well, with a second vehicle for support, and without my wife. I'm very much an 'improvise, adapt, overcome' kind of guy. The steeper the learning curve, the sooner you get up on top, right?

The truck drove well down US-395 (one of my favorite paved roads) and we eventually turned off the tarmac and into saline. We camped one night at the warm springs - chance to see some friends and soak, missed seeing Lee though.


I had done pretty well on the Saline Valley Road, so we decided to head up Steele Pass which is much rougher. After a couple of hours we reached a choke point that the width/wheelbase was not going to let me get beyond. This was shortly to turn into a mistake (or learning opportunity, as I like to think of it). Since we couldn't proceed forward, we needed to turn around. I am absolutely not yet used to the weight of this vehicle and made the mistake of backing off the road instead of going off trail with my steer axle. As a result, I dug my heavy rear axle into the loose gravel almost immediately after going off the jeep trail.


I didn't bury the truck to the frame, but I did bury it to the axles and skid plates. I became glad that I had spooled the synthetic line back onto the front and rear winches. the sand/soil/gravel in alluvial fans is very, very loose. The big challenge became finding a solid point to winch from. After several attempts at recovery that only resulted in rearranging the desert landscape by rolling huge boulders around, I finally figured out that the way to do it was to find a large, almost buried, boulder and then snag the pull-pal behind it. The pull-pal alone would not dig in enough, and boulders exposed enough to put a tree strap around would just roll/drag. After every foot or so of pull I needed to reposition / find a new anchor so that it continued to be a straight pull. The Warn 16.5ti is an amazing winch, particularly when you use a snatch block.


That evening we camped up on Steele Pass. There were high winds and a lot of sand/dust at the lower elevations so was good to be higher up.


...to be continued

 

[haven]

:lurk: Great story!

 

[pugslyyy]

After Death Valley I drove through central Nevada, stopped and got a beer at the Ale'E'In

Spent the night on the side of the road on the ET Highway, no aliens attacked so all was good. Then headed for the Grand Canyon north rim. There are good BLM lands there, with several good power line roads criss-crossing the area. Powerline roads are a great resource, because you know that they have been built to handle the large 4 wheel drive service trucks that the power company has.

Made my way up to Monument Valley - stayed in the campground there to dump my tanks, etc. On the way up through Moab I stopped at the diner - always a good place for a meal when on the road.


Bill Burke and his wife Rachel let me spend the night in their driveway in Grand Junction. Stopped in and had dinner with my Mother-in-law but in the morning it was time to beat-feet East. I had to be in Europe in a few days and was running short on time. So the rest of the trip was a lot of this
and this

I had to pay the idiot tax in Missouri when I ran out of diesel. Turns out that on my Fuso, E means 'walk' not 'buy fuel now'. 5 gallons of diesel brought to me at 1 AM costs about $120 more than normal. Too bad I didn't have a motorbike in the garage for self rescue!

This gets me back home to North Carolina. next comes the rehab/refurb/upgrades....

 

[mog]

The big challenge became finding a solid point to winch from.

Couldn't you have used the Rover as a boat[SUP](winch)[/SUP] anchor :sombrero:
Just joking with you. Very interesting thread, I sure look forward to reading more.

 

[pugslyyy]

Couldn't you have used the Rover as a boat[SUP](winch)[/SUP] anchor :sombrero:
Just joking with you. Very interesting thread, I sure look forward to reading more.

Oh, I could have drug that Disco2 all over the desert with the fuso (and that 16.5k winch)!

 

[pugslyyy]

So picking up where we left off, the fuso is now in North Carolina sitting in my driveway. Quite a lot of project work going on.

I've changed a lot of lamps over to modern LEDs (either incandescent or 6 year old LED technology with much lower CRI). I've had good success ordering very inexpensive LEDs from dhgate.com. Just don't be in a hurry as your package gets mailed from China. But you can buy the same replacement automotive LEDs as you would buy here in the US from a retailer, but for about 25% of the cost. You can also buy from these same suppliers on ebay for about the same price. One caution - your credit card will show a foreign transaction, so make sure you use a card that does not charge a foreign transaction fee.

The truck has a raw water system and a fresh water system. This allows you to bring in raw water into a holding tank and then process it into safe-to-drink water. I couldn't get the raw water pump to turn on. After a lot of diagnosis (which involved removing the pump and bench testing it), I finally realized that the switch was bad and that the pump motor was in fact fine. It was a good reminder that even though circuits test fine when they are not under load, pull current through them can cause everything to change. In the case of the switch it ohmed out fine, but when it had to pass current the resistance increased dramatically and there was enough of a voltage drop across the switch to stop the pump from turning on. Ironically I just had a similar experience troubleshooting a friend's truck where the fridge wouldn't turn on for almost the exact same reason (except it was a problem at the fuse block, not the switch)


SERVICE BODY REPAIRS
the two lowest boxes on the passenger side have become very banged up / torn up. This a combination of bashing things on trails and the way that they were mounted not accounting for chassis flex. One of the first things I did was demount the damaged boxes to assess.


As you can see, these are custom boxes with notches to accommodate the subframe, etc.


After investigating the options (repair, local fab, etc) I decided to source replacements from FMB, who originally made the boxes. The only change will be I'm going to put in stainless steel hinges to lessen the rusting. I also intend to mount them in a way that won't cause chassis flex to tear them apart.



If this view looks strange, it's because there are no side mirrors on the truck. Their steel tube frames were rusting pretty badly so I removed them and they are now at the powder coater. I always like being at the stage of a project where you get to take things to powder coat!

 

[jhrodd]

So, what does it weigh? Doug Hackney never would say........

 

[pugslyyy]

So, what does it weigh? Doug Hackney never would say........

I have not weighed it, but it is not light. Number 1 issue as I look at SRW.

 

[mhiscox]

Thanks for taking the time to show us your work. Your photos and descriptions are very interesting and very much appreciated.

 

[pugslyyy]

Thanks for taking the time to show us your work. Your photos and descriptions are very interesting and very much appreciated.

I'm sorry I haven't taken more photos. I have a bad habit of only taking photos of finished work and it is much more interesting to watch the progress. The service body modifications to accommodate SRW will be interesting.

I'm also much more of a bodger than Doug when it comes to trucks, a lot of the fun for me is the cycles of learning.

 

[pugslyyy]

ELECTRICAL QUIRKS
At this point I should point out that I am an electrical engineer and can get somewhat engrossed in all the electricals of a rig.

As I was trying to understand the condition of the house bank, charging systems, etc, I continued to see DC current consumption (at the panel meter) that was much higher than expected. After much investigation (and disassembly), I found that the digital 500A meter was hooked up to an analog 100A shunt. Shunts typically sweep 50mv, so this meant that the current readings were 5 times actual. Because of the way the wiring was run the meter actuallly showed about 4x actuall current consumption.

After installing the correct shunt and tightening up the wiring, the readings are now very close to actual. I still had electrical system problems to solve, but at least I was getting good data!

 

[Overland Hadley]

:lurk: Great story!

x2

 

[mog]

So, what does it weigh? Doug Hackney never would say........

I second that question. Since you are at the 're-build' stage, it's empty weight would be great to know, before it gets restocked with operator specific stuff.

 

[pugslyyy]

I second that question. Since you are at the 're-build' stage, it's empty weight would be great to know, before it gets restocked with operator specific stuff.

I'll weigh it at some point but don't have that ability in house!