60Patrol

RiverPatrol wrote:Great detailed write up, thank you!

I love the ancient tub of wheel bearing grease. I know I have one on my shelf that I've had for about 30 years, yours looks to be about the same vintage.

Unfortunately it's almost empty, I'll have to get a new one. But for wheel bearings, I have one of those packers that you use with a grease gun. Of course, it's a dedicated grease gun with a wheel bearing grease cartridge in it.

Referencing back to my earlier post on page 10 of this thread regarding needing four of the front axle stub shaft snap rings. I have totally struck out finding the original style speared end external retaining rings. No one makes a 'standard in stock' snap ring that matches the Nissan snap rings. I've been corresponding with various dealers with NOS parts stocks, but nothing. With as relatively few Patrols that were imported, finding these in the USA is probably a losing battle. If anyone knows of non-USA NOS (Australia, Columbia, or ??) parts dealers that have a lot of Patrol parts, please please let me know.

I do have some different style snap rings on order from Grainger that "may" work, don't know but I'm grasping at straws here. This is the style I've ordered, the specs aren't correct as far as the groove diameter that it's designed for, but it's close. They will be here tomorrow. This is the style that's coming, hopefully they will work: Now for a progress update.............long story short, cleaning nasty parts. The last work session at the Patrol, I pulled the spindle/backing plate/axle stub shaft assemblies off and brought them home. Nasty dirty: Popped the spindle off the backing plate (it was stuck pretty good); noticed there are no gaskets between the spindle and the backing plate, and no gasket on the back of the backing plate where it mates up with the trunnion (I think that's the right name). Tackled the spindles first, got one cleaned fully up including the bearing (I've used a lot of brake cleaner on this stuff ); the bearing on this one looks fine. I did pull the snap ring off but the bearing didn't want to come out by hand, and couldn't really see any way to knock the bearing out from the back. Decided since the rollers look fine, that the rest of the bearing is probably ok too -- I did not want to take a chance on damaging the bearing trying to get it out, and not be able to find a replacement! The second spindle is cleaned up except for the bearing, since I ran out of brake cleaner. Here's the first spindle: Scraped and scraped and soaked the backing plates in degreaser: Bead blasted and squirted some paint on the backing plates: Tonight I got the inner and outer bearing races in the hub. Since I didn't have bearing race drivers big enough for these races, the hubs got heated up in the kitchen oven to 200 deg F, and the races went into the freezer for about 24 hours, makes it easy! Here are the bearings and races that I'm using: Next step is to pre-assemble the brake shoes and wheel cylinders onto the backing places. I do have some cleaning and painting to do on the outside of the front axle trunnions (correct term??), as well as cleaning out some of the grease around the stub shaft joint. One thing I need to research is how much grease is supposed to go into the area around the stub shaft universal joint -- there was a LOT of grease in mine, gobs of it.

Excellent work. Thanks for taking additional time to write all this. It’s going to be a must reference for many of us.

About how much grease to put on the tracta joints? Difficult to know since the service manuals don’t have good detail about it. And due to the grease zerk available in the area, all cases seem to end up over greased.

Hope the snap rings ordered will be good!

Lots of good work happening there. Great detail with pics, this will definitely be helpful for others going down the same path.

These Patrols rolled out at the height of the Demming manufacturing approach in Japan. Their quality workmanship and parts are refreshing. Think what was going on in the late sixties and seventies here. My Great Uncle has a Ford dealership. I remember going into a Ford dealership in about 1978 and the steering wheel was upside down and the shocks and tires were rated for 1-2 years of service....and that was the showroom car! The US manufacturing slide continued through the 80s. Not to overstate the Gemming effect because Japan was technologically advanced leading into "the war to make the world safe for democracy".

Still, the true inherent value of these Patrols is that can be rebuilt and used.....not rebuilt and garaged like 60 and 70s muscle cars. Once rebuilt they retain the workhorse mentality they were designed for. I have personally proved that to myself.

Rolling and Patrolling,
L60Boerne

The 'test' snap rings for the front axle stub shafts came about five days ago from Grainger, but did not have a chance to check them out until today. (Studebaker parts sales got in the way.)

Thankfully they seem to work excellent! Checked the fit on the axle stub shaft with both the original front drive flange, as well as the Warn lockout hub. Both worked fine with the new snap rings, not too tight and not too loose . Here are some pictures -- the first two are of the snap rings on the front and back of the original drive flange; third and fourth with the Warn lockouts; the last picture is of the bag of snap rings I ordered from Grainger. I'll go work on the Patrol hopefully late this week -- clean up inside and outside of the trunnions, and paint as much of the front axle as I can. All this will get me ready to reinstall the stub shafts, spindles, backing plates/brakes, lockout hubs, and drums the next visit.

r1lark wrote:The 'test' snap rings for the front axle stub shafts came about five days ago from Grainger, but did not have a chance to check them out until today. (Studebaker parts sales got in the way.)

Thankfully they seem to work excellent! Checked the fit on the axle stub shaft with both the original front drive flange, as well as the Warn lockout hub. Both worked fine with the new snap rings, not too tight and not too loose .

Excellent find! Thanks for your effort on this. Beautiful and clear pictures as always.

Update.............went to work on the Patrol yesterday. Got the outside of the trunnions (knuckles) cleaned up on the outside, and got them painted. Also cleaned up some on the inside, at least removing a lot of the old grease. Grease wasn't necessarily bad, but sure was a lot of it. I had intended to clean up & paint more of the front axle, but after looking at it some, decided to wait. Spring 2023 project will be to replace the shocks and sway bar bushings, so painting will be easier with that stuff out of the way. Besides, it was kinda cold yesterday morning here in NC, and breezy. Here are a couple of pics of the finished job, with the trunnions taped back up: One thing I noticed is that only the top knuckle bearing flange cap has a grease fitting. I guess the grease is just supposed to flow via gravity to the lower knuckle bearing. If the bottom flange cap ever has to come off, I'll probably drill and tap it for a grease fitting.

Earlier this week, got finished getting the stub shaft, universal parts, and spindle cleaned up. Will have to pack the bearing inside the spindle, but will do that when the wheel bearings are packed. For now, they are in big freezer backs to keep them clean. Also got the backing plates all assembled -- wheel cylinders (even went anal and made the gaskets that go between the backing plate and wheel cylinders ), brake lines and junction blocks, and shoes. The tie wraps are temporary of course, to hold the shoes from moving around; once the backing plates are on the car, the springs can be installed. I'm really glad I pulled the backing plates/spindles/etc off. Basides being able to do a much better job of cleaning and painting, the new brake lines would have been a bear to fine tune with the backing plates installed on the axle. The brake lines are the somewhat new Copper-Nickle (NiCopp) material. I'm so glad that the Australian wheel cylinders are available, but the anal engineer in me doesn't like the fact that the slots in pistons are a lot wider than the thickness of the brake shoe web. On the rears, using the original pistons in the new cylinders took care of this, but no good way to fix this on the fronts short of welding up the web on that end of the shoe and machining it down. I ain't going that far.........guess I just live with it.

Next jobs are to get the drums cleaned up and painted, then get the wheel bearing packed and the seals installed on the hubs. This will put me ready to start putting all this back together this coming Friday.

Need some feedback on a technical question: there were no gaskets between the trunnion (knuckle), the backing plate, and the spindle. Looking at the parts manual, there are none shown. With the inside of the trunnion (knuckle) loaded with grease, I would have expected some really thin gaskets. Thinking that maybe a light coat of Permatex Aviation Form-a-Gasket (the liquid type with the brush on the cap) would be good to put on these parts before bolting it all together. Opinions and/or advice??

Really great looking work! I don't have an opinion on the adhesive, but I'm sure it wouldn't hurt.

I'm surprised that no one has asked about the notches cut out in the outside edges of the backing plates.................