Waynos work truck.

[DRIVEN]

That really couldn't have been much easier. Good argument for saving spares -- even the broken stuff.
Sadly, I liquidated a lot of my stuff like that before I moved. Hope nothing breaks at my house .

[wayno]

When you make a move like you did one cannot take it all, especially when you have vehicles that do not run/move under their own power or are half or completely apart, you take what you can find and hope you have everything you absolutely need to put it back together.
I am very lucky I saved that part and was able to find it which has not always been the case as I have lost other transmission parts in the past, with my sight I was lucky to have seen it as it was covered with cob webs and dirt, that transmission has been broken for several years but I had visions of fixing it for the work truck, but when I made this 1986 chassis conversion I switched to a long shaft therefore eliminating the need for one in the work truck, the only truck left with a short shaft is the 521 kingcab turbodiesel which I now wish it was a long shaft also, the seats are so far back in that one I have to lean forward to shift into 5th gear(insert that's so sad face here).
I am going to make some changes if I have what I need, right now I am using a 620 long tube header, I can hear the exhaust thru the header at lower rpms, it sounds like a leak but I do not think that is the case, and if I wrap it I do not think I could get it back in position, I have a stock smog equipped exhaust manifold but I do not think I have the collector for it, if not that header goes back in or a different new shorty header will go in, I doubt I will have to do another transmission in this truck looking at the reactions of nurses when they do an EKG on me for the first time, but one never knows.

[DRIVEN]

I can only imagine what an archeological dig at your house would turn up.

[wayno]

I find stuff in the mud that I forgot about every once in a while, my tires find stuff I would rather they did not find like screws and nails.

I finished the transmission and put it back together, it is now in the truck again, I bought a clutch kit, I originally only wanted a disc and could not find just a disc, but I looked at the pilot bushing, looked around and could not find another one of them either, I kept looking at the disc and how thin it was(not hitting rivets yet) and caved in, I took it to the auto parts store and them guys also thought it was very thin, when I put it all together I had to make a new pushrod as the one I had was too short, I just now realized that I forgot to install the new throw out bearing/collar that came with the kit, I went out just now and pushed on the clutch, it feels fine, I had to chisel out the old pilot bushing, the transmission dropped all the way home the first try, never had that happened before, it went in all the way.
The last few hours of working on it I was trying to get the stock manifold collector to fit thru the transmission/torsion bar gaps, it came from a 521, this is not a 521 chassis, I actually got all the smog injection shit out of the manifold and the studs out by heating the manifold up with a torch, I bought 4 plugs and 3 studs, it's a lot cleaner looking now.
I have work tomorrow morning/early afternoon, I will play with the stock head pipe again tomorrow when I get home, I might have to cut it 3/4s the way thru and bend/unbend things and weld the slits back up, I expect by Tuesday evening this truck will be back in service.

[wayno]

I tried removing them bolts holding that exhaust warm air thing on and they are going to break before they move, since I have dual SUs I do not need it but left it there to see if it hit anything, if it is not in the way I might leave it on there.
I am not for sure yet on this stock exhaust manifold but I believe I will go this route, that header is noisy.

[DRIVEN]

I really don't see a downside to a cast manifold on a work truck.

[wayno]

Well it is back on the ground and I drove it up and down the block a couple times, except for the pedal being hard to push it is good to go, tomorrow I will go buy some weaker springs for the SUs, I drove the 720 today and that pedal is easy to push.
It has a few exhaust leaks and I am not sure where exactly they all are, I kept feeling around that 3 bolt connection off the exhaust manifold and could not feel any air/exhaust escaping, but I do have leaks in one of the temporary connections and the Nissan muffler itself has a hole in it.
Another issue I have is it appears the transmission has a slow leak in the middle, I cleaned the ends up before putting them back together but there was a 4 inch round puddle on the floor when I seen it the first time, I wiped everything down and tightened the bolts a little more, today when I got home the bottom of the transmission was wet again but the floor only had one drip on it, I am hoping it dries up and doesn't leak anymore, but I think I need to go thru another transmission and have it ready just in case, if I see more leaking I will have to keep filling it every once in a while.
It was not easy to get that transmission out of there and back in, I guess the 521 cab doesn't have the clearances the 720 cab has, next time I will move the transmission back and remove the clutch cover, then it will be easy to drop it out and put it back up there.
By the way I filled the transmission while it was on the transmission jack and then installed it without losing any fluid, I had a spare yoke in the tail shaft, and I didn't lose any when I installed the driveline either, I just lifted the back up as high as I could get it when I did that.

[wayno]

I cannot get the pedal to operate smoothly, at first it was sticky from the word go, I worked on the SU linkage for a while, changed the springs(longer), lubed everything with no success, then I checked the pedal, it was fine when just moving it without the throttle cable connected, but with the throttle cable connected it was hard to move it as it is wore out, the holes holding it were way bigger, since it is a 521 the pedal mount is welded to the firewall, I cut it half of it out after finding a 720 replacement.
With the new pedal installed it's not a lot better, I get it up to maybe 1500rpms and it gets to a hard spot, I changed the throttle cable also, I want it to move evenly all the way to the floor but it is not to be yet, it's like your floored or not, I am running out of options other than to start over and redesign the whole thing with a larger bell-crank as I do have over an inch of pedal left before it hits the floor.
I used it today for work but it was not fun to drive with the throttle this way, I will try it again tomorrow the way it is now and see if it is better, I spent 4 hours on it with a little progress, just not what I wanted.

[wayno]

OK, so this is what I have now, I made it with such a small metal piece as it cleared the manifold below, but one has to press harder against the springs when putting your foot on the pedal when the cable is so close to the pivot point.





This is what I have come up with using extra parts I have around here, the cable connection/groove is at least a 1/2" farther out so I have more leverage and this should make it easier to press the pedal, but it does not clear the manifold at the bottom, I may have to play with the cable height mount point, I already have an idea about that also.



This is how much farther out the cable will be compared to what I have.



And this is what I may use if I have to change the cable mount height connection.



I am hoping to do this in the morning before I leave for work, since it is so cold at night right now sometimes I do not leave the house till after noon, I want it to be 40+ degrees out as my hands cannot take the cold when gutters are full of ice cold water in the debris I am there to remove, this time of year I do a lot of gutter cleaning as all the leaves have finally fallen off the trees.

[Taterhead]

So it hits the manifold at #1 ?



If so, could you do a little grinding on the rounded area #2 ? Or is it going to be too much?

[wayno]

It is just too big, but I think I can make it work the way it is in the photo, since it is larger it uses more cable to get around it unlike the small one, but I suspect I will have to play with the cable mount/adjustment or just make another mount using that aluminum one in the photo that dies not reach over far enough, I can add a piece to it and raise it as needed, I do stuff like this all the time, no big deal.
All I really care about is that the pedal is smooth and don't have a hard spot to get past, when I hit the hard spot now I press harder and harder till it gives and goes nearly to the floor, it hard to drive normally that way.
It's 39 degrees now, I will go outside and work on this, if it is too cold I will warm up the engine and then it will not be too cold for my hands/fingers.

[wayno]

Well I made it work, things did not go as planned but I got it functioning, the pedal is mostly smooth but it does not return to idle every time, some times I have to tap the pedal, I put shorter springs in after getting home.
I only have one cable that works smoothly so far and i am running out of 521 cables, the one on the truck now broke a long time ago and i had to use electrical tape on it to hold its shape, then it broke again and I made a new engine end for it, I was having issues so I made another new end and made the cable shorter and had an accident, now it is really short but it works.
I bought another one off ebay 5 minutes ago from some partsgeek guy, we shall see how that works out.
What I really need is an end that has a crimp type setup, but it would likely take hours to make it and I would need to find the correct stock size in brass, then I could cut the ends off and make it adjustable, that way if the end breaks I can adjust the mount and use the same cable again it will just be shorter.
I might go to the hobby shop and see what they have for model cars/planes, maybe they already have something that will work.

[Taterhead]

Is the spring at the pedal causing problems with it sticking?

Also, I’ve only seen under the hood of 1 521 but is there and way to use a bicycle cable for the throttle cable?

Something like this I found on amazon for $9. If anything you could use the ball end of the cable for the carb linkage and make it the length you need and you only have to figure out how to attach it to the pedal rod.

[wayno]

Is the spring at the pedal causing problems with it sticking?

Also, I’ve only seen under the hood of 1 521 but is there and way to use a bicycle cable for the throttle cable?

Something like this I found on amazon for $9. If anything you could use the ball end of the cable for the carb linkage and make it the length you need and you only have to figure out how to attach it to the pedal rod.

The ball end(at the pedal) is the easy end to deal with in my opinion but that end never breaks off, it is inside the cab nice and clean/dry, the other end is at the carb connection, it gets all the abuse.
Throttle cable


The ball end at the pedal


The carb linkage end


What I really need is a way of cutting the carb end off and clamping it to the carb end linkage, then I could use just about any cable from anything as long as it fit in the cable housing and was long enough which it is not that long, any 720 cable would work, I will think of something.

Something is wrong with the photos right now, I hope it fixes itself.

[wayno]

I mocked something up on my manifold in the house using my original throttle cable mount, I think it will work with the stock 521 throttle cable with the larger cable wheel but I will not know for sure until I mount in on my truck.

[wayno]

So I have this piece, it is made for clamping the cable on at the end, I figure I could cut and drill the shaft it is mounted on in the photo and install it in place of what I have now.



In the last post I tapped the inside of the hollow shaft and put a threaded stud in it, you can see the nut holding the cable lever on, that is what I have on my truck now but with a different cable mount, that whole shaft will come out and the rusty shaft one cleaned up could be drilled in the proper spot and cut to length to use the clamp on type cable lever, I could then cut off the end of the cable(or maybe leave it on), and have an adjustable cable instead of having to try and make it work with a pre-made cable length, I could even go as far as leaving the adjustment of the cable housing at its max stretched out, and if the cable breaks at the clamp point I could adjust it in to use the same cable again, it would be so much easier if the cable length didn't matter.
Right now my pedal is way better than what it was, but it still feels like it hangs up a little just after pressing on the pedal, I do not remember how I drove it before but I managed, now it is driving me crazy, I have pedal left when floored, so in theory I could even use a longer arm/lever to make it even easier to push the pedal, I suppose I could just make a flat arm, drill a hole in the end for a bolt type clamp and use that as the lever, but the cable would have to keep bending back and forth and eventually it will break at that point, that is why all manufacturers use what I have on my truck now, the cable end is not bending back and forth at the clamp point with the curved/grooved design.

[Taterhead]

Looks like you’re on your way to getting it figured out.

[wayno]

I made yet another throttle mount bracket and it is better, but I still have this hang up sometimes, I am going to wait for the new cable assembly and mount it and see what happens, it may be these used cable assemblies, the one on there now is my best one but still has an issue.



I thought about pitting a bunch of slack in the cable to get it past the spot, but if there is any slack in the cable and I slap the pedal with my foot the SU throttle shaft assembly return rod goes past it's seated position and then the throttle pedal does not work anymore until I lift the hood and move it back to the correct position, when there is no slack it cannot do that
Here is that rod in the proper position.



And here it is when it over shoots the return, you can see that sync screw is pointed sideways.



Here are the other photos I took of this area in case you cannot see what I am talking about.

[wayno]

I also am trying to temporarily fix the leak in the transmission case, it only leaks in the center bottom, I have no idea why as this has never happened to me before, but I am trying to stop the leak so I do not have to remove the transmission right now, it appears the leak is on the front case side of the center piece, the tail housing appears to have sealed just fine.





I don't think this is going to work, right now I have a jack pushing a 2X6 up against area, when I go to bed I will release the jack and move it away, tomorrow morning I will look to see if the is a spot below the transmission, if there is no spot I will likely go buy some of that flex seal rubber, tape that area off and spray it with that rubber coating and let it dry, if it does not work I will try something else until I find something that will work till I have a reason to drop the transmission again.

I thought about draining the transmission where it is and loosening the bolts holding the 3 sections together, and it would work if it was the tail housing that was leaking as it might slide back a quarter inch, but the front case will not likely move away from the center section much at all as the clip holding the front main bearing in place pretty much takes all the slop out of that area, I would be lucky to get the 2 pieces apart a 1/16th inch and one cannot do much at all with a gap you can barely get a feeler gauge into.

By the way I already stripped the fix off once, that gasket stuff comes off fairly easy, but it is supposed to not be effected by gas, oil, ect, so I thought I would give it a try.

[wayno]

No spot on the floor this morning, but it didn't work, it just didn't leak as much.