ascinder

I have the 39-47 Dodge truck service manual at home, and I am almost certain this information is in there.. Unfortunately I am stuck at work in Afghanistan for another two months before I can get home and take a look. Can anyone get me a scan or picture of the frame dimensions sheet or point me to where I can find one? My truck is a 1947 and (I think) a WF-32. So the very heavy frame version. I am looking for something like this:

Well, the trick of the matter with the axle is that whoever had it before me dropped the truck as you can see in the photos. To do this, they took the normally very long frame rails and cut them in half, then took the frame rails with leaf springs and axle still attached and set it up on top of the remaining frame rails which are still attached to the rest of the truck. They then welded vertical risers to hold everything together. So end result is the frame is now completely boxing in the axle, so hanging the axle is trickier than you'd think. It is also bigger and heavier than almost any rear end I have ever seen. The thing is a monster, so getting it up in the air is next to impossible without heavy equipment. I don't have any current pics because just after I got the truck, I headed over to Afghanistan for work and have been there since. I am due for a month rotation home in March and am trying to get everything ready to be able to get some work done on this.

So a bit of an update to this aging post. I was able to get the octagon front hub socket and was also able to remove the rear wheels to get at the brakes. The brakes are super huge and appear to be in good shape. After I removed the suspect leaking cylinder(which was the actual culprit) I discovered that the piston had developed so much rust in the bore that it wasn't even able to be honed out. So I was able to find and install new cylinders, but what I would really like to do is clean out the years and years of accumulated brake crud. You know that stuff that is a combination of brake fluid, grease, dirt, dust, grime and probably a great many other evil substances that combine into a devilishly persistent, almost tar like sludge that stubbornly clings to nooks and crannies. How do you clean that off? It is stuck on THICK in some places, and immediately clogs up any wire brushes I use to try and get it off. I can feebly scrape at it with screwdrivers and such, but it is painfully slow and ineffective at best. I would ultimately like to deep clean and repaint the brake components chiefly for the ability to be able to more easily clean them in the future. The clincher is that they are riveted to the axle, so removing them to solvent tank is out of the question. I don't think abrasive blasting would work all that well either. Any ideas or insights would be really appreciated. On to the wheels. I have decided I wouldn't mind keeping the stock vintage goodness of the wheels, and having removed them, I had no problems removing the retaining ring and even unseating one of the tire beads, I am now stuck on trying to(in vain) remove the tube and other bead. It is kicking my butt. Should I just take these to a medium truck wheel and tire shop to have the demount them or is there some secret trick to these? I was also able to get some collision repair achieved on this bad boy. It had been previously used as a logging truck and way more than once, a log had slid forward and bashed the living bejeezus out of the rear/top of the roof. I have straightened out many of the most grievous dents, but there are still many smaller offenders waiting in line to be battered back into some semblance of straight. I have also gotten ahold of some copper slugs to use as backing to weld fill holes left where truck mirrors used to be mounted.

Sooo soooo jealous......... That is one cool find, congratulations!

You may want to run the engine a bit too. I replaced my pump due to a static leak as well only to discover that a bit of grease in the fitting and a couple of RPMs woild have fixed it up.

I was reading some old threads that were saying that old dodge truck cabs and powerwagon cabs were identical. Since they seem to have many similar if not interchangeable pieces/parts, would I be able to use a powerwagon hood and grill in place of the stock dodge truck equipment? If not, how much of a deal would it be to adapt it. My truck is already pretty butchered up by the previous owner and I have always like the power wagon look more than the civilian version.

I think my cups are actually ok. I think my leak was coming from one of the pistons being frozen in the bore and causing the other one to come out too far. I am going to try out the 1-1/2" non stepped bore since they used those on later trucks anyways. Someone on the yahoo groups message board said they used different sized bores because the front brake shoe would force itself into the drum because of the direction of rotation while the rear shoe would tend to want to "slide" off. Using the larger bore in the rear half of the cylinder was supposed to make up for that. They said my front shoe would probably wear out quicker using the larger bore in the front as well, but I am betting it will be negligible.

NAPA was able to cross reference the cylinder over to part number 17786. The only difference he said was that it was 1-1/2 all the way through. I ordered two today and will report back here if they work out OK. I am keeping the original cylinders as spares just in case though. They were about $50 each but I found the same part number online elsewhere for $25 on sale. Probably some cheesy china stuff though.

I just measured the bore again with a dial indicator and one is definitely 1-1/2 and the other 1-3/8.

I have a 47 WF-32 truck that I bought with a brake problem(among others). I located a leak at the left rear wheel cylinder and after some learning experiences, I got the cylinder off only to find it had one of the pistons frozen in the bore. I persuaded the piston out of the bore with some penetrating oil and a hammer and brass drift. Stamped onto the back of the rubber seals was 1-3/8 on one and 1-1/2 on the other. This was verified with a dial indicator as well. I have searched quite a bit And have yet to come across any info for this size. Everything seems to reference 1-1/8 and 1-3/8 on here. I have also seen some stuff about resleeving, but at least at one place they only go up to 1-3/8 max. The bores of the cylinder really dont look bad at all, but it looks like there is some pitting on one of the pistons which also appears to be made of aluminum while the other is steel. Anyone ever hear of being able to just buy one of the pistons?

No Isuzu VehiCROSS, what gives?

That's actually the reason I was asking I was hoping to be able to at least somewhat take advantage of their broad selection of stuff for sale, but I wasn't sure what might fit and what might not. It's pretty nice to be able to pin down one stop shopping for many of the parts I'll be needing so I won't have to pay so much on separate shipping, but I don't want to order stuff then have to send it back if it ends up not swapping correctly.

Can anyone tell me whether or not similar year power wagon parts are interchangeable for normal civilian trucks like my WF-32? I searched and didn't really find anything that answered this. I just wouldn't think dodge would go to a lot of trouble to make power wagons and trucks produced the same year all that different.

Sorry for the somewhat repeated posts, but for some reason when I view the forum in certain formats, it hasnt been updating with the latest posts. Below are the water pump and bypass thermostat housing pics. On the newer water pump, the small hole allows water through at a very small rate while the large hole in the same location on the older pump is totally clogged up with RTV save for a similarly sized hole in the same loation. As for the front hub nut, that is stellar news! I was about to fire up the plasma cutter Also great deal on the rear axle. I am just waiting on the socket to show up and I'll be popping off the wheel so I can change out the leaky wheel cylinder.

The eight sided hubs are on the front, the rears come off pretty easily I believe. They are a full floating type axle, usually you unbolt about eight bolts, pull out the axle shafts, then take off a locknut or two and the drums come off. As for the actual eight sided hubs up front, I havent been able to track down a 2-1/4" octagon socket anywhere. I am just going to plasma cut one out of 1/4" or 3/8" steel and weld on a 3/4" socket. Thanks for the tip on the pipe fitting too. I was able to look into the drums up front through an inspection hole and determine that the shoes have quite a bit of life left in them, which hopefully means that I just have to make up some brake lines for the front and try them out.