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Not a great location if that tire ever kicks up something big or blows out, also don’t think bolting the air dryer to the frame and the bed is going work out well...
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What did you do to your deuce this week?
- Thread starter Seth_O
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I'm not worried about it. If I was to concern myself with the all the possibles of what MIGHT happen, I wouldn't be able to leave the house. What's the problem with bolting to the bed & frame?
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I seem to remember Garrett doing this on his YouTube channel, I think he did his on the inside of the frame under the bed if memory serves correctly.
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The frames of these trucks are designed to twist/flex on uneven terrain. The beds are therefore hard-mounted using the rear anchor points and the front anchor points have LONG spring mount bolts assemblies. HOWEVER... It looks like your front mounts have already been altered to be hard-mounted also using standard bolts and not the 10-12" long suckers with the springs on the bottom!!
The flexing of your frame/bed's interaction may have already been compromised.
By design, the bed itself does NOT flex, but the frame beneath it IS SUPPOSED TO be able to flex up to 45 degrees relative to the front/back-most frame cross-members. By bolting the front of a bed SOLID all of the flexing and twisting of the from under the bed is restricted, thus potentially damaging your bed's structure (AND your Air Dryer's mounting) should rough terrain induce those twisting forces.
I have seen both Deuces and 5-Tons with frame cracks just forward of the errant bed hard-mounts at the GOODYEAR PROVING GROUNDS here in San Angelo, Texas. They utterly rendered SIX trucks as SCRAP by hard-mounting and then torture-testing their tire products!!!
THAT is why your mounting may end up being a problem.
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Another Ahab
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Nothing's ever simple.
Yarz
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I think I see the springs on the mounts at the very left edge of the 2nd picture.
yes that is where he put it
That's simply not true take retirement for instance...... You simply get up go to work work all day come home go bed get up the next day and do it again and the next day and the day after that It's called retirement!
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They are there.
So the spring assemblies are still present, forward of the middle axle, forward of the rigid splash guard. That connection point to the right of where the dryer is, is that supposed to be a spring assembly as well, are all the connection points to the bed supposed to be spring assemblies? I notice that the spring assembly is made to have 2 bolts with springs, side-by-side. That connection point to the right of the dryer is clearly designed for one bolt. Was that a modification at sometime in the past? It doesn't seem like something a private owner would do.
Hmm...actually, looking at other pics, it looks like that non-spring bolt is close if not right on where the cross member is. So, I assume the application is that the ends of the frame rails (towards the cab) are designed to flex but once you get to the cross members the flex area stops? The dryer is pretty close to this cross member. It looks like the dryer mount isn't one piece. The upper mount just stabilizes the canister which is also attached to the bottom, so it doesn't look like it needs to be secured too tightly - maybe a flexible band will do the trick. Or I could put some slots where the bolts are so they can move.
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davidb56
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My brother in law could qualify as a "alcohol evaporator".
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Reminds me of the Jethro Tull song "Nothing is Easy".
fpchief
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that there be funny
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SHAZAM ! I DO see the spring mounts now! I'm viewing the pics on a larger screen and I now see that they are indeed present.
I apologize for sounding an alarm unnecessarily.
The beds on the Deuces and 5-Tons that I have observed in their unaltered state typically have bolts ONLY it the two aft-most mounts to anchor the bed at the back of the frame. The other mounting tabs further forward up to the dual-mount spring locations DO NOT have bolts in them... and judging by the unmarred paint from rebuilds at Toole, Utah and other depots no hardware had ever been installed in those mid-ship mounts.
Several local VFD's that have built custom brush fire trucks have added the bolts, and at least one has suffered a cracked frame rail. The worst case of that was those poor GOODYEAR PROVING GROUNDS trucks.
There are some videos out there on YouTube showing the amount of flex and twisting you can expect.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj096ypyDX4
I would personally avoid bridging between the frame and the bed structure in any area designed for such radical distortion.
Note: Your results may vary.
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I don't expect to face anything like what's in the vid except maybe in an emergency situation, and if I lose the dryer because of this, I won't mind. I'm not building a rock crawler.
I'll take a look at other deuce frames, do a little research and decide what to do about those bolts near the center axle. I'm wondering if those bolts would help with crane transport. Looking at the lift points for a crane the line might separate the bed a little if the only bolt down points were in the rear. I do have tentative plans to move the truck by ship at least 3 times (to Europe or Asia, Australia, back to the US, not necessarily in that order).
If you haven't seen it yet...Transportability Guidance.
It should be noted, for my purposes, I have plans to mount other equipment (tentatively: battery packs in ammo cans) on the underside of the bed, between the frame rails. Some of which I would prefer to keep out of obvious view.
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Aussie Bloke
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G'day everyone,....
Cool, let me know if your going to be in Melbourne at any time (depending on how your plans pan out) and I'll buy the first round!
My Deuce would love to have a friend to play with,....
I've also thought about hanging a few battery's under the bed for a 12V power supply.
Great minds think alike!
Aussie.
Cool, let me know if your going to be in Melbourne at any time (depending on how your plans pan out) and I'll buy the first round!
My Deuce would love to have a friend to play with,....
I've also thought about hanging a few battery's under the bed for a 12V power supply.
Great minds think alike!
Aussie.
Another Ahab
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Whoa, flashback!!
Have not heard that band mentioned in a L-O-N-G time. Thanks for the memory, Mr. Tracer.
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Hey this thread made it to a thousand pages!
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Mine says 9993 not quite
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