M1010 expo build. The Mountain Turtle

stevo-mt

Member
I've seen where others have attempted to take what the US military used as an ambulance in the 80's and build them into an expedition vehicle. After purchasing a wonderful M1010 in Texas with ~21,000 miles and driving it 2500 miles home to MT through Moab, I can see why I couldn't have picked a better truck for my build! The truck has ran great so far and I have some wonderful plans in the making for it. The goal for the truck is to be something along the lines of an Earthroamer or the turtle expedition vehicle, but it will be a lot less money! I could buy one of those if I wanted to work forever, but with the $100k i'll save I can buy a lot of fuel! Besides, this truck was designed for expeditions and abuse. I bought this truck from Texas where it had been a swat team truck for a while and the owners previous to myself had done quite a bit of work to the old truck. I hope that I can continue where they left off and build a sweet truck. At least I've been shelling out the money to!

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To start out here are some details of when I first bought the truck. There were several reasons why I chose this truck over building my own camper body onto another truck. The main reason is the box on the back is very well designed and built. It is a bit heavy and not super tall, but the truck can still function as an off road vehicle to a good extent. I would take this truck most places I would take my old jeep.

1985 CUCV M1010 Ambulance - Basically this truck a single cab Chevy 5/4 ton truck with an awesome aluminum box on the back! You can access the rear from the cab of the truck as well. The rear box's exterior dimensions are 79" wide x 114" long x 71" tall. The walls are about an inch and a half thick aluminum skinned. Inside dimensions 76" wide x 111" long x 65" tall. There is a diesel fired forced air heater in the rear that was originally a 24 volt setup. (The trucks had a 24v system with a primitive switching system between 12v. The truck is now converted to 12v.) The box has four bunks that were used to haul patients. Two of them are aluminum and can be latched down to the bottom or placed in their racking system holding them up. There is even A/C in the rear! Ironically not in the cab of the truck though.

6.2 Detroit Diesel Naturally Aspirated - not necessarily a well known power house, but the fuel economy and reliabilty make it a pretty good powerplant. The other bonus is I can swap in a SB chevy motor in a parking lot if I have too. (I've done similar things before

TH400 3 speed automatic transmission - wonderfully tough transmission, very popular and they have proven to take abuse. It is easy to bolt things such as dual transfer cases and such if a person so desires.

4.56 gear ratios, Dana 60 up front and a 10 bolt corporate in the rear with a Detroit Locker - locker works phenomenally, winter in Montana is no picnic and this thing does great job. Partially because of the box over the rear axle.

~15 mpg driving highway (ranged from 14 to 16 going from Texas to MT through prairies and mountains) Not many trucks get that realistically and consistently good of mileage. The 6.2l doesn't use a ton of fuel idling either. There were a couple nights were it was so cold I was worried she wouldn't start up the next morning. It only used a few gallons of fuel. $10 is a pretty cheap for a super warm place to stay when your in Colorado or New Mexico. I am around a lot brand new trucks and when ever we hook up even a small trailer the mileage goes down to 10 or 12 (gas trucks) and the brand new diesels we have are pretty much hunks of junk. There are more issues with regen emissions and half those trucks spend as much time in the shop as they do working. The ford 7.3 liter powerstroke was the other vehicle I had considered, but with the pricetag of about 10 grand for a truck with an ave. of 100k miles on it is just silly.

~55 mph cruising speed with the 3 speed auto and 4.56 gears it is not a speed demon down the road. Granted it only has the stock 16" tires the truck has plenty of power from 0-55 mph. It didn't slow down at all going up mountainous passes. Realistically on the trip coming back from Texas it wasn't until I hit Utah were the speed limit was significantly higher than what the truck would do. Besides, I will say this if you have never went on a road trip going 55 you should. There is a ton of scenery, your mileage is much better, and it is pretty relaxing to know that your not in a hurry.

The truck came with some fun stuff, a little 9000# winch, a PA horn that sounds like the police, KC lights, and LED spotlights. There are some cool Military quirks too. You can flip a switch and all the lights go out. Not to mention that it looks pretty aggressive, even with the 16" MT/R goodyears.

The bottom line is, I've done a two week road trip and the truck performed amazingly, now to build it to the point where I can take it on my Alaska adventure that will hopefully happen sooner than later. I was born wiring and wrenching on things. I have to say its in my blood. I often consider working on these kind of projects to be as much fun as using them. By no means is this the best truck on the planet, but it fits my lifestyle and I kind of like it. Its pretty practical and the places I've taken it so far shows me that it was a good choice.

Of course what kind of build post would this be if I didn't list all the junk that I am going to screw and glue to this beast! Right now since I'm currently working out of state I am accumulating a giant mound of parts. Hopefully I can start here next month when it warms up, or road trip the truck to Oregon where I'm working and tinker on it here.

I have been able to collect many of the items over the last few years that were fairly universal so all it took was a truck! I have kind of a mad scientist setup and a pretty well educated background in these types of matters. At least building them! The things on hand and awaiting install:

-Husky 10 winches - Front and back 10,000#. I've upgraded these with new motors, solenoids, and synthetic winch lines. My dad found a nice pair at an auction that were originally 24v (everybody thought they couldn't be changed! so they were pretty reasonable on price) and I bought the parts to build them 12v. www.surpluscenter.com had the Superwinch wireless remote control setup for $60! exact same but without the label and less than half the cost than ordering from superwinch.
-ARB air locker- for front Dana 60
-Custom on board air - currently I have a very high quality Thomas compressor I found from www.surpluscenter.com for pretty cheap, grainger wanted 500 vs. SC was 90. I have a 1 gallon air tank that fits under the hood nice that will go with it. ARB has a pressure switch that makes life easy to wire. That will connect to another bosch relay. That is done for reliability, every time that a switch or relay is cycled under load (about 5 times higher for starting current for a brushed dc motor) you are doing damage to the relay. By installing a relay it will extend the life of the $40 arb pressure switch and will allow me to replace a 5$ bosch very easily. I am running airline to the front and rear for filling up tires.
-HMMWV Wheels - 12 bolt H1 beadlocks
-37x12.50x16.5 Goodyear MT/Rs - I have this same tread on the truck now on the 16" tires and they are ridiculously awesome and tough! I went with the current military tire size for the H1's because you can find large wheels and tires for pretty reasonable prices. These things are pigs! I have to do some serious fender cutting, but a lift kit does not do you a bit of good other than raising your center of gravity.
-auxiliary fuel tank - my dad found me an 18 gallon auxiliary fuel tank that will fit under the rear left side of the camper box! I will plum in a 12v electric pump to the other tank, I have seen too many issues where trucks fuel selector switches cause problems and fail. With a diesel you would have to run a return line back to the aux tank as well. Also it will allow me to pump fuel for the diesel heater without worrying about draining my trucks primary tank.
-2 five gallon jerry cans and racks. There is an awesome spot above the cab of the truck on the front of the box to mount a jerry can on each side. I have diesel fuel cans, but it could also be used for water.
-1600 watt inverter - I found a nice big inverter originally to charge my Zero electric motorcycle. I am going to install it in this truck and it will allow me to charge my motorcycle on the back rack as I go down the road!
-RV battery charger/power supply - one nice thing I found from a wrecked RV was the battery charger/power supply. For free! That way when the truck is parked it will take care of all the batteries and allow me to use whatever devices i need
-Norcold dual voltage fridge/freezer - for 75$ i picked up a used norcold fridge/freezer. Its in great shape and pretty clean. One thing im going to do since the compressor and evaporator are in one location and don't utilize the case as a sync is build it into an insulated box. I estimate that with the increased insulation I can reduce the power consumption by roughly a 1/3. Same theory as any cooler. I didn't do too much math on it. More of an engineer's guess.
-Dewalt cordless tools - i'm a fan of having an 18v impact driver that lets you zip lugnuts off quick! also a sawzall and grinder also come in handy sometimes! Where I live you need to pack a saw, but a chainsaw is a pain so I hopped on good old craigslist and found a set just for the truck! The sawzall can go through a 1ft diameter log, but if its bigger than that I'll have to get out the crosscut or the ax.
-Hi-lift jack
-Camp Chef oven - I was originally going to find a wrecked RV and steal its oven and fridge, but the new camp chef is so handy. I was camping out and had fresh baked rolls for breakfast. Hardly roughing it! I build a nice custom box for stove that allows it to anchor down to the rail setup in the back. This truck is more for primarily cooking outside, but it was super cold one night and it does alright cooking in back. It has vents you can open up.
-Rear air bags - I scored a set of slightly used air bags at a yard sale for 30 dollars. Since I have onboard air already I am going to hook these up with individual valves. Since I'm not doing a lift they should help keeping tire clearance if I hook up a small trailer or have a heavy load. I plan on building a two motorcycle rack that goes on the back so it will be just about right for that.

Some of the things I am working on now and have plans for:

-Rear motorcycle rack - I designed a pretty sweet rack out of aluminum that one of my fellow engineer friends is going to have CNC lasered and bent. It is a modular design that will carry one or two motorcycles. The laser cutter will cut out the slots for LED lights since it will be more than 3 ft from the trucks tail lights. Then it can plug into the trailer wiring. There are two slots that go into the trucks' steel frame that are 2x4". With two sticks of 2x4" aluminum 6061 that will hold up two xr650r motorcycles with no problem. I will gusset it a bit as well, just because it will stick so far out the back when I have two bikes on it. And yes I validated by hand the results the FEA model produced. I use my engineering degree more for my personal projects than I do for work!
-Kitchen module - Not sure how i'm going to do this quite yet. I was thinking along the lines of the old chuck box that can anchor into the rear compartment. Currently I have a collapsible sink and the oven's box has cutting boards built in and some other little hand details.
-Front winch bumper - the current winch bumper is going to go and I'll design and weld up a new one that is lighter and stronger than the current. I'll donate the old 9000# harbor freight winch to my boss's kid who just got a jeep and wants to learn to weld a bumper for it.
-Diesel fired engine heater - I'm planning on finding a diesel fired engine heater that way when I'm in Montana or AK I can actually start the truck on a 20 below day
-Coolant heater in rear - I plan on installing a secondary heater in the back that utilized engine coolant. I think the safest way to do this is have a its own secondary coolant lines with its own heat ex-changer. I can graft in a water heater in the rear that way too. The big advantage is that when I'm driving down the road or idling somewhere it can heat the back more efficiently than just the diesel fired air heater.
-York air compressor or alternator welder - The M1010 came originally with dual 24v alternators. There is a nice open bracket now in the engine compartment that would allow me to place either a welder or more likely a york air compressor. Basically they are an old truck air condition compressor that are self contained with their oil system. They will air up a set of 37s in about a minute as apposed to six minutes with the electric on board.
Odyssey batteries - Hands down no other battery even comes close to thinking about being as good as an odyssey. I will be installing two PC2150's for the motor and two PC2150's for rear compartment. I'll install a nice big CAT battery switch in case I need to jump the truck with the rear RV batteries. Also I'll do some fun wiring with the charging setup and some diodes to where it will charge the rear batteries but not send any current back to the front. The other advantage of having separate rear batteries is all the accessories and lights for the RV can run on them and I don't ever have to worry about draining the truck's. The diesel air heater will run all night easily.
-85 watt solar panel - yet again another great free find. The panel blew off of its original bracket due to high winds, but didn't do any damage to it. There were only four quarter inch bolts holding this thing on originally and over a couple of years it just decided to pull out and blow the panel over. Now it will go on the roof of the truck with a charge controller. I'm kind of an electrical nerd in case you were wondering.
-CD player/radio - as with all my projects i'll put in a good stereo, it was a long trip from texas using an IPOD dock!
-backup camera's- surprisingly an awesome thing to have on any truck!

The list is limitless. The fun things are going to be all the wiring. I'll draw up some good schematics for it and build a harness. I've built a first class harness for my XR650R, which is probably the best way to do some overland expeditioning, and it turned out pretty amazing. It will be a passenger on this truck more often than not.

As always, there's a 1000 different ways to skin a cat. I just tend to find a good line between quality and cost, but thats the advantage of being thrifty and having some mechanical and electrical skills.


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chilliwak

Expedition Leader
First off I would like to say welcome to the forum Stevo! It looks like you have a really good platform for an excellent expo rig and I can see that you have lots of ideas for improvements. I look forward to following your build and see the pics of your work. Can I ask what you payed for your truck? Congrats and lets see some more pics soon. Cheers, Chilli....:)
 

olly hondro

mad scientist
Welcome, and yes, you have good starting material there. I especially like the pass-thru feature of that setup. Regarding the 24 volt electrical system, I think its fine that its converted to 12 v. Sure, military vehicle purists will give you crap about it , but you don't have to listen to them. You see, the only component on the base CUCV that is 24 V is the starter. To support that one component there are two 12v alternators in series (one of them neccessarily isolated from ground) and two batteries in series. Even the glow plugs are 12 v, stepped down thru a resistor bank on the firewall from 24 V. So if you have a 12 v starter now, then you can have one alternator & battery for chassis electrical stuff and use the other alternator & battery for the expedition stuff in the back. cool, huh ?
 
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olly hondro

mad scientist
Oh, another cool feature of your truck is, as you mentioned, its "old school" diesel. No computer or fuel viscosity regulator doodads. Means, in a pinch, you could use filtered, used motor oil or transmission fluid as fuel. Won't hurt it none.
 

BurbanAZ

Explorer
Nice build. Seems like a great platform for an expo rig. I really like the old 6.2 diesel, like u said no powerhouse but it will always get u there and with good mpg lol. Definitely take a bunch of pics as u add stuff.
 

stevo-mt

Member
I ended purchasing it from the second owner after it came from the police department that had it in Texas. I was able to meet the guys that had done most of the work that got it too the point where its at. The springs were gone through, adjusted to factory specs (it had been sitting a while), and the fuel injection system had been updated and replaced with the more modern parts, including the glow plugs parts. It was a good chunk of change to fork out for it considering you can sometimes pick one up at an auction for a lot less, but I sure couldn't find one. There were a few others around the country that were for sale, but they were not in as good of shape and this truck had a lot of money and love put into it.

The thought of a sidewinder turbo kit from Banks did cross my mind. I think I'll just run it and live with the top speed of 65 mph it will have on 37s. Then when I go up the mountains, I'll just grin and bear it ~55. If I do anything along the turbo lines I think I would be ahead to swap in a turbo'd cummins with nv4500. I guy bought a car from me along time ago and he showed up with his car hauling trailer with a 84 chevy. It sounded strange and he popped the hood and there was a pretty clean install. It pulled pretty well around 65-70 mph and got pretty decent fuel economy. But that is a long ways away. I've got a lot more miles to put on the old 6.2 detroit before I start changing anything. It always seems that when you start adding boost and increasing the stress on components that weren't designed for it, you end up working on it a lot more. Generally having to upgrade more components to handle the stress from the ones that failed. Oh well. Fun stuff.

I'll get some more pictures soon. I work away from home so I can save up buy all the parts I want, but unfortunately I only get a couple of weekends a month to put them in, if I'm lucky. I think I might be forced to have one of my friends/mechanic install my locker. He has a nice heated shop and a lift, and with the foot of snow on the ground at home in MT its looking like a good option. I dread taking anything to a mechanic, but at least he's an avid jeep owner and has done several of his own and other's lockers. Sigh. I figure once I get that I can fly home and drive it out to the project I'm working on and start working on some of the simpler things in the evening. I plan on building shelves into the area's that used to have the air filtration system.

One thing I'm trying to do is to not modify anything that couldn't be undone. I've been able to build much of the stuff around the existing parts of the truck. About the only thing that will be irreversible will be where I cut out the fenders to put on 37's. I've got a pretty good idea for some aluminum fender flares to re-enforce them after the cut off disk is done. As always another detailed task! But oh well. I still have the 3d modeling program I had in college so I can build things on my computer before I get get home! Usually works out.

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I took a couple of screen shots of something along the bike rack that I'm building. I am debating whether or not to build it so it carries two motorcycles all the time and sticks out 4 ft, or a modular design that will only stick out about 2 ft with one bike and when I want to take a second bike I can install a second part with brake/tail lights on the back.
 
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olly hondro

mad scientist
The fuel system upgraded parts is huge : the injector pump is the most expensive part on the vehicle, $1000 bucks easy. So if that got replaced then you are ahead of the game compared to the surplus vehicles. I hear that alot as well : that you could have got it cheaper surplus. But after paying the bid price + buyers premium + cost of going to get it wherever it is + SF97 paperwork + tires + batteries +injector pump + glow plugs + who knows what else it needs, its actually cost effective to purchase it road ready. I don't know about you, but my time is pretty valuable, so needs factored in. Good score !
 

MakersTeleMark

Adventurer
That's a 14 bolt in the rear. Let me know if you have any CUCV questions. I daily drive a 1028 with a camper on the back.

Congrats. K9Vic from steal soldiers has a twin of your vehicle and knows his way around CUCV's too.
 

stevo-mt

Member
This used to be K9Vic's truck! I found it on steel soldiers! Small world. I met him down in Texas when I bought it from his neighbor. I had a little add with the rear end, 10.5", 14 bolt. Its pretty much the same diff that my grandpa's ranch truck had in the 80's and the newer ranch truck has from the 2000's. With the abuse they see I'm amazed how well they hold up. I plan on keeping the truck in more northern climates, but it will get 100+ deg F. in Montana in the summer. I'll keep it black until its at a point that paint is at the top of the list. One thing I've learned if you want to get ice off a darker color sure does help, at least with planes! I think one of the best parts about a truck with a heater in the back will be winter camping. I plan on taking it snowmobiling and staying in it. I found a score of a deal today almost new Honda EU2000i for 500$. Even if it doesn't end up on the truck it would be handy for projects, work, and emergencies.
 

MakersTeleMark

Adventurer
Cool. G's a good guy. Like I said, if you have any CUCV questions, just pm me. I've put a lot of time into my rig and addressed most of the CUCV issues over the years along with a lot on the camper. Solar, plumbing, heating, fridge, power, cold, music, you name it. I can tell you what oil to run, what glowplugs, what mandatory mods, etc. The rest is just convenience. The only thing, knock on wood, is my expo sticker got ripped off on a little expedition this fall. Ha! Wonder if Christian has another one?

Short story on your mods: screw the front locker and the turbo unless you have enough cash to buy the truck again. The rest, well, have fun with it, and post a lot of pictures from your adventures.
 

ExpoMike

Well-known member
I really miss mine. I had bought one to do a full conversion on but the reality of it, I didn't have the time I wanted to dedicate to building up the rig so I went the easy route and bought a Cummins powered Dodge Ram and a Four Wheel Camper. Instead of building the rig for the last year, I have been camping. Still have a ton of ideas I wanted to do to the 1010. Oh well. Good luck with your project and I look forward to seeing your build up. Here's a pic of mine before I sold it.

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stevo-mt

Member
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The rear is now carpeted. I was pretty surprised how much that made a difference on the feel of the rear box. It will help quite a bit on the feet in the winter! On the two aluminum racks there wasn't any of the padding or cloth installed on them, just bare aluminum. I installed some 1" thermax and laid 1/4" plywood over the top to make it flush with the top lip of the aluminum.

I started on the design and the build for the box for the 12v fridge. The way the compressor is set up it allows me to insulate around the refrigeration area and keep the area around the evaporator vented. It also has a spice rack and a compartment to store my plates, silverware, and utensils. It is adjustible to put whatever ends up in it, ie cast iron skillets etc. I've kept the dimensions so it fits on one side in the rear truck box. My camp stove box will fit right in there with it. Now that I finished installing the hinges, its time to take it apart to coat stain and urethane.
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Not exactly what I would prefer to be working on now, but for it being winter and I'm stuck in a different state I figure I'll work on what I can!
 

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