2015 at the Hammond Barn

[Bob Carriere]

Someting happened to me yesterday while driving my truck. As I was leaving the driveway onto the street...right hand turn....while crash shifting into 3 rd gear ( I was in 4x4 low range)...... truck continued to turn directly into the ditch...... a bit scary with no cab going in at 45 degrees over the snow bank nose first for the hydro pole.... truck stalled resting on the steel guy wire of the hydro pole. I obviously panicked trying to abort the shift, trying to get to the brake pedal and steering wildly to the left..... you have to understand that driving a cab 11 with the small foot space while wearing Winter boots only allows the use of one foot at a time...... CRASH.

Tried getting out but was floating on the hard packed snow bank.

The Pitman Arm ball had separated from the arm....front wheel full right lock.

Well I towed it back it back to the yard with the tractor and tackled the repairs today.

The Pitman arm ball is welded on to the arm but the weld penetration was only about 1/6 of an inch deep and fractured after 74 years..... what else is about to go????

Today I managed to wire the arm/ball together enough to manoeuvre the truck out of the sea container and into the barn.

I must apologize for the poor resolution of the pictures as I was only using my cell phone.

Had a bitch of a time removing the arm from the steering box shaft ..... finally resorted to a pulley puller which I installed with as much tension as I could and applied heat with the acetylene torch...... and it just popped loose. This pitman arm was from another truck as my original had some gorilla welding and plate reinforcement besides looked awful.

Now before applying heat I had liberally soaked the spline with penetrating oil which dripped and coated the arm. While heating the pitman arm the surface oil quickly evaporated but as I played the torch flame up and down and all around I notice small cracks where the oil was coming to the surface.... in all 4 cracks.
A potential disaster waiting to happen.

Well I do have spare pitman arms but they are on the trucks in the back field and it bitching Winter here so I reinstalled the same one for the time being.

So I set about to weld up the old parts......

I ground the ball/shaft and the arm to get better penetration and welded at the highest setting of my mig welder.... than did a second pass to created a weld button the width of the arm. Should stay in place.

Next Spring I must find a good Pitman Arm and will test it for cracks.

We have to remember that our machines are old and need special attention....... I shiver to think this could happen at full speed ........

Now for the pictures.