And now… the conclusion: Transmission swap, driveshafts rebuilt, and 1200mi home at 45mph.
This is a continuation from So I bought an LMTV p1 and Part 2. Be sure to check those out if you haven’t. Or not, your choice.
Executive summary:
A weekend spent reading Technical Manuals, cutting the bed off the truck, using 10k forklifts to move 1,300# transmissions, and driving it home in time for Christmas !
Weekend
To say the weekend of 16/17 December 2023 was long would be an understatement. Warfox is a small business, with real people working there, who have families; it is not open on the weekend. Brett did say I had access to the truck, but there wasn’t anything for me to do except prepare for the upcoming transmission swap. I went ahead and skipped “Usual Conditions” and thoroughly read through the “Unusual Conditions” section. To my amazement, Brett Fox had the exact transmission adapter called for in both Usual and Unusual sections to hoist the transmission with !
Monday
On a gloomy Monday morning after a rainy weekend (which made this even less enjoyable…), we set about pulling the truckbed. The LMTV bed is held on with huck bolts, which was a new one to me. Despite looking like a bolt, smelling like a bolt, and feeling like a bolt… it is a hydraulically crimped, permanent fastener that no amount of ugga-duggas will remove. You can read about there here. Thankfully, all bolts, everywhere, can be removed through the power of an angle grinder. They’re kind of easier, actually, but slightly more dangerous… Huck bolts are held under tension and you must be cautious when cutting them off since they will pop off, ping ponging off of whatever is in their trajectory; eye protection is mandatory (duh, you’re also using an angle grinder…).
The weathers improvement throughout the pictures provided hope that this would work. I certainly have never done anything like this before.
Tuesday
A quick trip to Home Depot for some cribbing and, per the TM, 16x Grade 10.9 M12x1.5 bolts, 40mm long, to replace the huck bolts. Warfox has this super neat aluminum pallet covered in L Track (Airline track, Logistics track, whatever you wanna call it) that we would use to hold the donor transmission while moving it around the yard and under the truck.
And here it is
Using both forklifts, the old transmission was lowered to the ground and the LMTV was picked up and moved out of the way.
When the new transmission was bolted up, we fired up the truck to see if it had any codes… and bummer, it did. And an unfortunate one at that, indicating BAD SOLENOID A in the valve body; the truck would not move. The valve body of a transmission is like the brains of it, controlling which gears are used and when. Removing them is never fun, but we had to remove the one from both the donor transmission and the original transmission, to swap them.
With the original valve body in, the truck moved of its own power back and forth and we departed for the day.
Wednesday
Next morning, the fully rebuilt driveshafts went in and I took it on a lengthier test drive for any vibrations, shifting abnormalities, or further codes. This truck rides terribly without any weight on the rear axle (the bed weighs almost 2,200# and is designed to hold up to 5,000#).
After the successful test drive, I stayed late into the night changing the front/rear diff fluids (including the front hubs) and engine oil. Truck had new oil, new filters, and fresh diesel in it all around.
Thursday
The final day of the saga was spent putting the truck bed back on and getting it ready to drive back home to NC
Based on Broke Overland’s YouTube video, I decided to apply some DYNAMAT Hoodliner to the underside of the cab (the “doghouse”). I did not understand that I needed two rolls, so was only able to apply it to the forward section. It definitely helped.
Friday/Saturday
Ahh, driving 1200mi at 45mph. This took longer than google expected, of course. But it got better: the troop alarm decided to start going off constantly about 8hrs into the first day of driving. Which was odd, because I didn’t have any troops in the back. Or even troop seats. And the troop alarm was disconnected.
Turns out, the metal tag had chafed through the insulation on both of the wires. Easy fix, but damn that thing is loud.
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