Paul’s continuing to make progress on his trailer.

I can’t remember if I explained about the lunette thread damage and what it took to get it repaired so here’s the brief story. Before I began disassembly of my M100 trailer I liberally sprayed all the fasteners with penetrating oil numerous times in hopes of easing the removal process. Most of the nuts and bolts unscrewed with normal effort (including the castle nut on the lunette) but I was disappointed to see some of the threads on the lunette were damaged by the nut when things came apart.

Once the lunette was cleaned and bead blasted I took it to a local machine shop to see what could be done to repair or replace the damaged threads. Because I didn’t know if the lunette was cast or forged the machinist said welding was out of the question and suggested I just buy a replacement lunette. I returned home and made numerous phone calls to military parts sellers, Jeep parts sellers and anyone else I thought might possibly have an M100 lunette for sale. Not only did I come up with a big fat nothing for a replacement lunette I also learned these things are harder to find than unicorns. I made a trip back to the machine shop and had another conversation with the talented folks about the lack of replacement lunettes before we brainstormed about the possibility of thread repairs.

After I answered all their questions about the M100 trailer weight, load capacity and the type of use it will be subjected to a solution was suggested. The plan was to carefully remove the damaged threads and then cut new threads on the slightly smaller diameter of the lunette. The thread pitch would be an uncommon type so they would have to make a castle nut of the correct diameter with matching threads but very little strength would be lost with this repair. I wanted one change made with their repair plan, instead of making one castle nut I wanted them to make four nuts. That way if I ever lost or damaged a special nut I’d have spare nuts on hand.

The attached photo shows the thread damage on the lunette, the focus is poor but the missing threads are still visible.

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Take it away Paul ….

For the past couple of weeks I’ve been disassembling, cleaning, bead blasting and repairing parts for the little Willys and the M100 trailer so they would be ready to be powder coated.  I still need to install new wheel studs in the hub flanges along with pressing in the new bearing races but that task should be finished tomorrow.  The driveshafts need one to be shortened and one to be lengthened before they’ll go to the powder coater but progress is being made.

The blast cabinet is 48 inches wide overall and the axle is slightly over 53 inches long so I had a bit of a problem fitting the axle in the blaster and still having room to clean the rusty steel.  My solution was to leave the side door open and block the opening with multiple layers of cardboard (taped to the cabinet)  with a hole cut slightly larger in diameter than the brake backing plate mount on the axle to allow movement of the axle during blasting.  

Before I began blasting I added two more pieces of cardboard (cut to fit snug around the axle tube) to cover the larger hole in the cardboard end cover.  With this cardboard and duct tape combination I was able to carefully blast two thirds of the axle without filling the air with glass bead dust.  Once the axle section in the cabinet was clean I removed the axle, turned it end for end and inserted the rusty end into the cabinet to finish cleaning the metal.  This photo shows the low tech cardboard and cheap duct tape alteration of the blast cabinet so the axle blasting could begin.

The air compressor was blowing lots of air but the glass beads still had to work pretty hard to clean all of the rust off this 65 year old axle.  The metal is lightly pitted (especially on the forward side) but I don’t feel the original strength of the axle has been weakened in any way.  I checked the axle and the spindles with a straight edge and a level every 90 degrees of rotation to see if it was bent but the axle tube and the spindles are straight.

Here’s the axle just out of the blast cabinet ready to visit the powder coaters where it will receive a nice satin black coating.

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