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Amphibious HEMTT

CarterKraft said:
I bet you could wire in a time delay timer to prevent hour long run times...
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I suppose, but now that the bags don’t need adjusting most of the time, the only thing I need pressure for is the horn. I got into a habit of turning on the compressor when I start and switching it off at the end of the dirt road. (1 mile) it’s good for the rest of the drive. Might be longer now.
 
So I had to take my wife in car this morning and just got home. Opened the garage and checked the pressure in the system. 100 psi from yesterday. At this point, the only leak I have is in the console mounted gauge. I have a shut off valve before the guage. So if I keep it shut off, the pressure stays up in the tank. On the gauge side is the four valves for the bags. They don’t leak, so the only thing that leaks down is about 4” of tube from the gauge to the bag valves.

I guess I will take apart the console for the 20th time and try to seal it. I can just keep the shut off closed and only open it if I need air. But that kind of irritates my ocd.
 
On my bagged pickup (my namesake), I put check valves between the tank and each bag's valve assembly. The tank can be drained and bags don't feed back thru the fill valve. I've had it on its suspension for a month with no pressure change.

Also has hydraulic hose from valves to each bag. Overkill, but my first system had to be bumped every 10 minutes so I went overkill with the second system.
 
On my old Toyota, it had JIC fittings and Teflon braided hose. Never leaked.

Same setup is now on my little utility trailer. It will go a year without filling it.
 
bdkw1 said:
On my old Toyota, it had JIC fittings and Teflon braided hose. Never leaked.

Same setup is now on my little utility trailer. It will go a year without filling it.
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As your only spring or helper?

FWIW my RV (kelderman bag suspension) loses 20-30 psi one side overnight.

My travelall (well before exhaust induced holes in air lines) leaked mostly down overnight. But I only did half the plumbing on that one. The loctite purple jelly stuff is awesome.
 
Java230 said:
As your only spring or helper?

FWIW my RV (kelderman bag suspension) loses 20-30 psi one side overnight.

My travelall (well before exhaust induced holes in air lines) leaked mostly down overnight. But I only did half the plumbing on that one. The loctite purple jelly stuff is awesome.
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Main springs on both the Toy and the trailer.

It also had ball valves to a common T with a Schrader valve. It leaned pretty bad if you forgot and left the valves open.
 
1720788811345.png
 
bdkw1 said:
Why be helpful? Fuck with them endlessly. This is what the internets are for.
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I do this with people on the street sometimes. My wife thinks I’m rude. For example,


Guy, “is that a US or foreign truck”?

Me, “US”

Guy, “you don’t see many of those around”

Me, “yea, pretty rare”

Guy, “not many are in civilian hands”

Me, “I don’t suppose”

That is an actual conversation I had. My wife says “why did you lie to him”? Im like, “where did I lie”?


Here is another,

Guy, “What is that called”?

Me, “HEMTT, that’s H, E, M, T, T. It’s a military acronym “.

Guy, “Did you have to do a lot of work on it”?

Me, “Yea, quite a bit”

My wife, “Your an ass, you didn’t tell him you built it”

Me, “he didn’t ask”


It’s not that I hate talking to people, but sometimes I don’t have time to educate them and it’s not my duty.

Even worse then the truck is my Delorean. People are always coming up and telling the history of Delorean. I mean really, How many Delorean owners do you think there are that don’t know the history? I’ve got to the point where if someone tells me about Delorean getting busted , I say “never heard that, I just bought it because the paint looks just like bare metal.”
 
Not my best day.

IMG_1529.jpeg


A stump poked through my sidewall. Of course I was out in the middle of nowhere. I drove on the flat for 25 miles at about 30 mph. Got to a restaurant my wife and I like. The tire looked like this when I got there.

IMG_1530.jpeg


Put it on a flatbed and took it home. Ordered some new tires. Got a little body work to do also. I guess I need to charge the Freon in the Bronco to press it into service for a bit.
 
WaterH said:
That’s stuff is impressive. I’m going to get a kit for next time. I would still get a new tire, but it would save a $400 towing bill. Thanx.
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Some will disagree with this, but get a spare tire that's not necessarily the same tire, just same tire height and cheap steel rim. Sort of like a doughnut spare, but actually useful.
 
WaterH said:
Not my best day.

IMG_1529.jpeg


A stump poked through my sidewall. Of course I was out in the middle of nowhere. I drove on the flat for 25 miles at about 30 mph. Got to a restaurant my wife and I like. The tire looked like this when I got there.

IMG_1530.jpeg


Put it on a flatbed and took it home. Ordered some new tires. Got a little body work to do also. I guess I need to charge the Freon in the Bronco to press it into service for a bit.
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Did you buy those fresh or were they new surplus tires you picked up somewhere that had an older date code?

Also, how hard/fast did you hit the stump? That's one hell of a big tear in that sidewall.
 
Will Scarlet said:
Some will disagree with this, but get a spare tire that's not necessarily the same tire, just same tire height and cheap steel rim. Sort of like a doughnut spare, but actually useful.
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I’ve thought about this, but even a narrow tire that diameter is big as shit. It’s funny they don’t look as big on the truck as they do in the bed. I have an aluminum military wheel with a run flat in it. I’m going to see if there’s any possibility of putting it in these wheels.

SLOWPOKE693 said:
Did you buy those fresh or were they new surplus tires you picked up somewhere that had an older date code?

Also, how hard/fast did you hit the stump? That's one hell of a big tear in that sidewall.
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They were new surplus with old date code. The two I got coming are the same. The price difference is like $400 vs $1,000. I was going slow when I hit it. I’m not real happy with how easy it split. It is possible that the tire was smoking hot when I got there from driving fast before. There’s all kinds of metal cables in that sidewall, but they only go from the bead to the tread. (Easy to split)

The tires always get hot when I’m driving fast (60 mph), but nothing compared to when I drove 30 mph with no air pressure. I might have made it a lot further if I had stopped every 5 miles and let it cool.
 
WaterH said:
I’ve thought about this, but even a narrow tire that diameter is big as shit. It’s funny they don’t look as big on the truck as they do in the bed. I have an aluminum military wheel with a run flat in it. I’m going to see if there’s any possibility of putting it in these wheels.



They were new surplus with old date code. The two I got coming are the same. The price difference is like $400 vs $1,000. I was going slow when I hit it. I’m not real happy with how easy it split. It is possible that the tire was smoking hot when I got there from driving fast before. There’s all kinds of metal cables in that sidewall, but they only go from the bead to the tread. (Easy to split)

The tires always get hot when I’m driving fast (60 mph), but nothing compared to when I drove 30 mph with no air pressure. I might have made it a lot further if I had stopped every 5 miles and let it cool.
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Probably easier to just have one of those patches and a inflator than a odd spare, jack etc
 
WaterH said:
I’ve thought about this, but even a narrow tire that diameter is big as shit. It’s funny they don’t look as big on the truck as they do in the bed. I have an aluminum military wheel with a run flat in it. I’m going to see if there’s any possibility of putting it in these wheels.
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Nothing about your vehicle is small, really... :lmao: And although I feel it's the best option, I do understand.

Another option may be internal bead locks:

www.innerairlock.com

Inner Air Lock - Made In USA

Inner Air Lock is an internal pneumatic beadlock system handmade one-by-one of military grade materials in the U.S.A.
www.innerairlock.com www.innerairlock.com

There may be more options out there, but these are the two I'm aware of. Also, this is not an endorsement of them, just options for you to look into.
 
WaterH said:
The tires always get hot when I’m driving fast (60 mph), but nothing compared to when I drove 30 mph with no air pressure. I might have made it a lot further if I had stopped every 5 miles and let it cool.
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The 4k+ rated 10R20s or whatever the trailer has got pretty fucking warm running 70mph at 90psi. I think big tires just get hot :confused:
 
Will Scarlet said:
Nothing about your vehicle is small, really... :lmao: And although I feel it's the best option, I do understand.

Another option may be internal bead locks:

www.innerairlock.com

Inner Air Lock - Made In USA

Inner Air Lock is an internal pneumatic beadlock system handmade one-by-one of military grade materials in the U.S.A.
www.innerairlock.com www.innerairlock.com

There may be more options out there, but these are the two I'm aware of. Also, this is not an endorsement of them, just options for you to look into.
Click to expand...

They say it is not to be used as a run flat. I have internal double bead locks already. I’m going to check the run flat I have. I would guess it is a lot closer to the tire tread than what those are.

arse_sidewards said:
The 4k+ rated 10R20s or whatever the trailer has got pretty fucking warm running 70mph at 90psi. I think big tires just get hot :confused:
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I think tires get hot from friction on the road, but they get even hotter from flexing with low pressure. In the case of no pressure, they really flex.
 
So I got my new rubber and installed two new rear tires. I have to brag on this “Bead Buster”. It made a tough job as easy as it can be.

IMG_1551.jpeg


Still, working on these tires is a back breaking business for an old man. I would work on it for an hour and jump in the pool for twenty minutes. Then back to work.
I hooked up my helicopter balancer with the truck on Jack stands.

IMG_1550.jpeg


The sensor on the orange Jack stand reads rpms from a reflector stuck on the wheel. There is another vibration sensor out of sight on the front of the axle. Balancing it this way is a bit harder than a conventional dynamic balancer, but I don’t have one of them. Basically, I would start the truck and run it up to 60 mph on the dash. Then I would wait till I had the rpm reading on the balancer study. Then I push a button to take a reading. It gives me a vibration and clock angle. From that I can get an educated guess of where to put the weight. It takes several try’s to get the right location. After you find the right location, I just keep adding weight till it’s smooth enough.

Anyways, the first tire took from 9:00 AM till 9:00 PM to get mounted and balanced. The second tire was allot better and I had it done by 3:00 PM. I took it out for a test drive and it runs better than ever.

My plan for the spare is to mount it on a military wheel I bought years ago. For some reason, I thought it had a “run flat” , but it was just a double bead lock similar to the Stazworks wheels I have on the truck.

IMG_1556.jpeg


The plastic double bead lock on the Stazworks wheels are real hard to get in the tires. This one has metal that bolts together and the whole thing kind of screws in to the tire.

IMG_1557.jpeg


After bolting the bead lock together, I lowered the tire onto the wheel.

IMG_1562.jpeg


I don’t know if the tire was stretched wider on my Starzworks wheel, but the other side of the wheel would not go down enough to start the nuts.

IMG_1563.jpeg


I ended up hanging it by the wheel and clamping the side. I just about busted the clamps to get a 1/4” of threads showing.


IMG_1565.jpeg


Got them on and tightened them in circles. I like the side pointing shader.

IMG_1566.jpeg


Now I have to get a chunk of 1/2” plate or so to make an adapter ring for the Ford lug pattern.
 
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