Operation Army Truck, Part 2

Starting with an army truck means having a very durable vehicle (our Chevy came stock with a front Dana 60 and a Detroit-locked rear 14-bolt), but some of the amenities leave a little to be desired. We aren't looking for luxury, just enough comfort to get us to work and back, and maybe a few hours to the trails. The stock bench seat is fine for now so we just covered it with some Wet Okole seat covers, and before that we installed a set of vinyl floor mats from Auto Custom Carpets to help cut some of the diesel and road noise. Our buddy Karl was so impressed he asked to borrow the truck for a hot date he had.

Another problem we had was wind noise seeping past the old weatherstripping. J.C. Whitney has tons of good stuff for our model Chevy, and we called them up to order the complete weatherstripping kit. It came with all-new window rubber, along with new door seals. A blind monkey could easily install the door seals, but the door glass seals and track felt took a little longer.

Lucky for us our buddy Chuck Rostamlo from GM Truck Performance stopped by while we were working, and we conned him into "showing us" how the door glass parts went in. GM Truck Performance does a ton of restoration of '70s and '80s Chevys, so Rostamlo quickly had the situation handled.

Rostamlo also tried to convince us that the vent window rubber shouldn't be messed with since ours was in pretty good shape. We, of course, decided that we should change it since we had new rubber in the kit. Boy, were we wrong. The original vent rubber is a two-piece design, whereas the new rubber is a one-piece design, and in order to install it you need to drill out some rivets, and then either re-rivet it back together, or put in some small bolts. This became a huge headache to the point that we ended up leaving the old vent rubber in the passenger-side door.

One of the problems that arose is that our Powr-Lok was for 4.10-and-higher gears, whereas our truck had 4.56 gears, which are lower. This required the use of a ring-gear spacer from Mr. Gasket. We would have rather had a 4.56-and-lower Powr-Lok, but they are even more rare than the semi-hard-to-find Dana 70 Powr-Lok side gears.

A stock Chevy Dana 60 is a pretty stout axle--and ours was no exception--but we decided that a few upgrades would only make it better. Our first directive was some sort of posi or limited-slip to help the rear Detroit in keeping our tires turning forward. Our pals at Off Road Unlimited gave us the idea of a junkyard Powr-Lok limited slip.

There are tons of used Dana 60 Powr-Loks out there, but most have 30-spline side gears. We also tracked down a set of Dana 70 Powr-Lok side gears that are 35-spline just like our front axle and swapped them into the Dana 60 unit.

This also gave us a chance to order up some new clutches for the limited-slip from Drivetrain Direct. The entire rebuild is very easy: Just take the Powr-Lok apart, swap in the new side gears and clutches correctly, and reassemble.

Another issue with front Dana 60s is the skinny little 30-spline stub shafts. We would probably never have had problems with them while running 37-inch tires and the 6.2 diesel, but since we had the axles out while at Off Road Unlimited, we decided to install the larger 35-spline stubs from Drivetrain Direct for good measure. The company is currently working on a 35-spline Dana 60 upgrade kit that includes the stubs and lock-out hubs. We already had a set of the Tera Low heavy-duty 35-spline locking hubs ordered, and feel that with their cast-iron gears, they should be sufficient for the truck.

As an easy upgrade, we installed these U-joints (Spicer 5-806X) from East Coast Differential. Though they look like stock joints, they have been modified by replacing the needle bearings with bronze bushings.

Some folks have found that the needle bearings wear out and eventually get pushed out of the caps, so this simple upgrade may help alleviate that issue.

Chevys have a known problem with steering boxes working loose and cracking the frame. We couldn't find any cracks yet, but didn't feel like waiting around for them to show up either. Stephen Watson at Off Road Design sent us one of his steering-box braces to help keep the box in place. In order to install it we needed to drill a 1/2-inch hole in one of the crossmembers, but there is already a small pilot hole there, so it's really easy.

In addition, Watson supplied us with some of his burly shackles with greaseable bolts for our Skyjacker 4-inch springs.

Finally we ordered a set of toolboxes for the bed of the truck from Craftsman and a PT-15 CO2 tank from Powertank with its new Super Flow HP regulator. With a single-cab truck, secure storage is at a premium, and these aluminum diamond-plate boxes allow for storage of tools, parts, and recovery gear. We drilled mounting holes in the bed of the truck with a pneumatic drill from Viking Tools running off the Powertank. In addition, we added the Powertank mounting bracket to the side of one of the toolboxes.

We then mounted the boxes in front of the wheelwells so that we could easily reach them from the cab if need be. This install did require us to remove some of the old fold-down troop seats that many of the military Chevy's came with. Also, since our truck's fuel tank is right under one of the boxes, we had to be careful when we drilled through the bed to mount the box. We can now carry and run tools in the field as well as air up tires after a day on the trail.