Strykersd's 1971 C20 Brave

[strykersd]

Thanks guys!  She's definitely a keeper but her sister is taken haha. 


Although I've put 40-50/hrs into the Winnebago every week for the last month and took this past week off from work to finish the RV and my drag truck I ran into too many issues with the truck and wasn't able to finish in time.  I was able to get the RV 'good enough' but by no means is it finished.


Ever since I replaced my water pressurizing pump I've noticed that my toilet ball seal leaks, toilet valve leaks water and that my water valve to my toilet doesn't completely turn the water off.  After taking the toilet apart to find that the toilet ball also rubbed the toilet throat, I decided to replace my old traveler 910 toilet with a new Dometic 310 ceramic toilet.   It was only $130 and is the standard height of a residential toilet (18", compared to the old 14" traveler toilet).  Here's a picture of it installed

Figuring out plumbing to it took sometime though since I had to replace the water valve too and the toilet had a different fitting than the last.  After some head scratching and a few trips to home depot I decided on a Brass Craft water valve fitting with a 1/2"NPT male thread on one side and a 3/8" compression fitting on the other.  I dunno if it's true for all classic winnebagos but mine ran a 3/8"OD copper line.  All in all I'm very happy with how it turned out!


So I've been driving the Winnebago around lately and it has a horrible exhaust leak.  After inspecting my exhaust I noticed that I was missing the exhaust manifold gasket on two cylinder.  It was so bad that I could see the spark coming out of the heads!  After swapping that out she purrs like a kitten now!


Also while driving the Winnebago lately I had my power steering return line rupture on me.  Turns out the guy who owned the RV before me cheap out on the V-belt and used a much longer one, which put the power steering pump way out from the block until the lines rubbed my frame rail.  Thankfully I was able to get a new power steering return line and it was a $12 fix.


The only other thing I have to report is that I finally got around to checking my furnace and after playing around with the pilot light setting I'm happy to report that my furnace is completely operational! 

[CapnDirk]

Probably one of the smartest things you have done is those little trips.  They revealed  those little things that would be a much greater problem a couple hundred miles from home.


Might seem weird, but why not drive to the Walmart on the far side of town and spend the night, then drive back?  Cheap insurance.... Or assurance 

[strykersd]

Yeah that's what I was thinking.  Plus I have no idea if this thing has even driven in this century.  We thought about camping in the RV overnight one night this weekend but we currently have no blinds and our dogs would have woke us up every time anyone walked by.  Blinds are on the list, somewhere haha.

[brians1969]

I like your dj-5. I had one a number years ago. It was a left-hand drive version that postal supervisors used.
One of the 4 wheeler magazines had a series on a dj that they built for off-roading. You could probably find it scanned somewhere on the net. It was in 3 or 4 monthly issues if I remember.

[strykersd]

Took advantage of MLK Day to get a bit more work done on the Brave.  Starting tomorrow I'm back to 50-60hr works weeks so progress will inevitably slow down. 


I finally started on my towing setup for the Brave.  My Brave didn't come with a hitch but it had a 1 3/4" tow ball on a 1/4" piece of steel on the bumper.  I replaced the 1 3/4" tow ball with a 2" tow ball I had in the shop to work with my tow bar and boxed the steel 1/4" steel with 3/16" steel sheet to add more strength and a place to add safety chains/cables.  The setup is only rated at 3500lbs but that should be good enough to flat tow my drag truck or my jeep.  Here's a shot of the finished product

Oh and the magnet my girlfriend got for the Brave.


A few weeks ago my girlfriend and I considered buying a TV for the RV on Black Friday.  After talking bout it for a bit we just decided to make a Facebook post asking our friends if anyone of them wanted to trade our extra 42" TV for their smaller 32" TV and I got a ton of responses.  Although it felt like slapping a baby in the face, we made the trade.  The 42" just sat in our garage not getting used so at least this way we have a third TV that will actually get used.  I used a mono price full motion TV mount and mounted the TV right above my refrigerator.  I pulled off the wood paneling inside the closet to find a wooden "T" shaped frame.  I utilized the T, and added two more pieces of wood with the help of wood glue and my nail gun. 


The finished product.  It's a full motion mount but has a decent amount of resistance to movement so I'm hoping I won't regret the decision to go full motion. 

[boohoo222]

great job,,,you said you capped off ends of rear bumper,, I put rubber plugs in mine that I can pull out because I found that the bumper is the perfect storage space for sewer hose

[strykersd]

great job,,,you said you capped off ends of rear bumper,, I put rubber plugs in mine that I can pull out because I found that the bumper is the perfect storage space for sewer hose

I considered that but the inside of my bumper has some rust on it so I didn't want to chance putting pinholes in my sewer hose sliding it in or out.  Plus although the bumper fits the hose it's not large enough to fit my fittings too.  I just picked up some 5"X5" plastic fence post material to make a housing for my sewer hose. 

[LJ-TJ]

I'm impressed. Your doing a real nice job on the old girl. Well done.

[strykersd]

Been back to work the last few week so progress has slowed down considerably.  We're  two weeks away from our maiden voyage!  We recently did one overnight in it and it's finally starting to feel homey inside the RV. 

After a few months of working on the roof of the Brave, I'm finally done!  I eternabond seam taped each seam, rolled the section I replaced with Henry's RV roof sealant, installed a Grape Solar 200 watts solar panel kit for house batteries, a Harbor Freight 1.5 watts solar panel to trickle charge the starter battery and Winegard omni-directional HDTV antenna. 

Word's can't describe how happy I am to not have to get onto a ladder anytime soon!

My next thing I had to knock out was 120v power to the RV.  The motorhome will mostly be used for desert trips, drag strips and trips with friends where we won't have any hookups so it was important to us to have 120v power without having to run the generator.  My Grape Solar 200 Watt off-grid solar panel kit came with a Xantrex 450-watt power inverter.  It's not much but it'll be just enough to run our TV and laptop chargers.  I do like that the fan only runs when needed, unlike my cheaper power inverters.  Here's a shot of the inverter with the rest of the RV's wiring


And last but not least, we picked up a Kiddie carbon monoxide detector.  One less thing that could kill us on our trips haha.  We mounted it on the wall behind our TV.

[cosmic]

Can anybody else confirm that in 1971 d20 was offered on a GM chassis because in all my research I cannot find any evidence of this however I did find the option of a Ford chassis only available in the 17 foot brave.  In 1971!

Love the progress on your rig! Great work! You have something to be proud of! And that jeep is the perfect toad for pulling behind!!

[strykersd]

So after the Roadkill zip tie drag races didn't work out last week, I'm a week out from my first real RV trip.  AKA it's crunch time to get this thing done!

Maybe it's my background in off-roading trucks, but I just wasn't crazy about the idea of running six wheels/tires and only having one spare.  Plus after pulling the spare out to check on it's condition, i learned how difficult it is to remove and install the under carriage spare.  And also with the possible need to carry extra gas for my drag race truck or Jeep I figured I'd build a tire carrier on my rear bumper.  Which normally isn't too bad but since my brave has it's large access panel on the back wall, I had to make a swing out tire carrier.  Here's the finished product. 

My parts list
-4X Innovations swing out tire carrier hinge $100
-Powertec Latch $10
-2 Goplus 5 gallon gas cans and mounts $34 each, $68 total
-Barnes 4WD Spare Tire mounting plate $14
-Lug nuts and wheels studs $9
-Scrap steel from the local steel yard $30
Total cost $231

Here's the finished product

Primering and painting it was a pain, but I'm stoked with how it turned out!


Next up was finishing up my solar install.  To keep my wiring lengths to a minimum I installed my solar charge controller in one of my closets directly beneath the panels and above the batteries.  As for my charge controller, I'm using the 35 Amp Xantrex charge controller that came with my grape solar kit.  I just added a digital voltage gauge to controller so that I can keep an eye on my battery voltage. 



And last but not least my girlfriend has been working on our interior and we finally have blinds. 


It's finally starting to feel homey inside the Brave!

[LJ-TJ]

Man it looks like home. Warm and fuzzy. Koo-do's to the girl friend. She did a fantastic job. I think I said it before she's a keep and the motor home too.  D:oH!

[plockit007]

Wow!!!! What a make over. I have to come up with some easier ways to do stuff on my Chieftain as well Looks Stupendous. Lots of Work and Effort.


Keep going it's great to share ides and lots of pictures.


Congrats!!!!   

[strykersd]

Four more days until our first big trip!  And I'll probably be fixing things until right up before I start the drive haha.  I just upped my AAA coverage to include RV coverage and for an extra $37 annually I can now have my RV towed 200 miles if need be!


Next up was the dashboard heater.  When I bought the RV I noticed the previous owner bypassed the heater core.  Yesterday I crawled under the dash and noticed that the heater valve was so rotted out that their was a hole through the side of the valve.  After running the part number I discovered that the valves go for $50 and no one in San Diego had one in stock.  I started researching parts and was luckily able to find a replacement plastic valve also with 5/8" ports that was in stock for $20 at autozone.  For reference, the part number for the stock metal valve is 74764 and the part number for the plastic valve I replaced it with is 74628.  Here's a shot of the rusted out valve compared to the new plastic valve.

While I was in their changing the valve I just decided to change all the hoses for the heater also.  $50 later and I have a fully functioning dash heater!


One thing everyone with a 70s Winnebago understands is the limited amount of storage space.  We have zero exterior storage and I needed somewhere to put my sewer hose.  Most people put it on top of their rear bumper but with my tire carrier that was out of the question.  I've been shocked to find out that I have almost zero space under the RV, especially since I just sold some car parts to a guy with a 72 Brave on the Dodge platform and he said he had a ton of space underneath his.  The only spot I could find under my RV was next to my gas tanks so that's where my sewer hose went.  I ended up going with a 5" fence with fence end caps.  I riveted one side shut and then capped it off with a rivet nut on one side and a threaded rod with wingnut on the other.  I mounted it to the steel body supports with two pieces of angle iron and called it a day. 


The 8' length of fence post, caps and hardware set me back $30.  To be honest, if I were to do it again I would have bought a D&W Super-Tube for $50.  I didn't find out about them until after I already cut the fence post so I just went with it.  Learn from my mistakes!

[LJ-TJ]

 D:oH! Brilliant, absolutely brilliant on both counts. Never would have thought of it. This is why we persist in asking for pictures. Well done mate,well done.

[strykersd]

We're back from our trip!  We covered five states in ten days and 2000 miles.  We drove through California, Nevada, Utah, Colorado and Arizona.  We definitely had some high highs and low lows along the way.  Here's a few pics of the Brave along the way


If you look closely in this one you can see the pups in the windows




Now onto the bad.  Our only a month old fuel pump failed on us.  Thankfully we were only a mile away from an O'Reilly's Auto Parts store so I jogged over, bought a new one and threw it in.  Thankfully everyone stocks SBC mechanical fuel pumps so they had it in stock and it was only $20.  My fuel pump was under warranty at Autozone so when I saw another Autozone I swapped it out and now keep a spare in the Brave.  Up next was our water heater.  While filling it up our water heater tank bursted and completely drained out water tanks.  There was a hardware store a few blocks away so I just bought a plug and we were forced to take cold showers the second half of our trip.  And then comes our biggest problem...

All eight wheel studs on our rear axle sheered off.  It happened at highway speeds but the wheels rode on the hub until we were able to get it stopped.  It was a good thing I just upgraded my AAA membership to include premium RV coverage so I get free 100 mile tows.  I was expecting a tow truck, but what we got was a big rig with a tow truck on it's flat bed.  The tow truck lifted the rear of the Brave off the ground and pushed it right onto the big rigs flat bed. 

This at least got us off the side of the road and into a decent sized town, Yuma Arizona.  It's too bad I didn't have a 73 or newer model or else I would have the much more popular Corporate 14 bolt axle.  After calling every auto parts store in Yuma I discovered that most parts catalogs don't list studs for the rear end of my year make and model and only Autozone stocks wheel studs for the Eaton HO72 axle, sadly only one per store.  They ordered me a set of studs from their hub store in El Centro and informed me that they would be in that afternoon.  I picked them up, took my axle apart, installed them and made it home. 

Now the part that gets me is why did it happen.  I believe it's because whoever put the rear wheels on before me over-torqued the lug nuts.  If they were under-torqued the nuts would have flown off and the studs should still be there but all eight of mine sheered off flush with the drum brake.  When I went to change the wheel cylinder on the Brave a few months ago I couldn't break the lug nuts loose with penetrating oil and  my impact wrench or a three foot cheater bar.  Hell I bent my factory 5/8" diameter steel lug wrench trying.    It was only when I heated the nuts up with a torch that they came off.  In the giant scheme of things the combination of over-torquing and torching probably didn't help my cause either so I'll replace the other side's wheel studs here soon. 


But other than that we learned a lot about the Brave on the trip.  We learned that our Hadco 600 fridge only requires 125 watts to run on electricity so times we don't want to use propane, our power inverter can power it just fine.  Plus our TV is 135 watts, so those aren't a problem for our small 450 watt power inverter.  We love our solar system!  Even if we did manage to completely drain our batteries during the night, our solar panels could have a battery ready to start the engine by probably 8AM or 9AM.  Our omni-directional antenna also worked great, always ready to go.  And now that Verizon offers unlimited data, with the help of my Apple TV we have Netflix and Youtube in the RV as long as I have service. 


Overall the Brave did great!  We had a great time and really enjoyed the RV'ing experience.  On the last stretch of the trip we looked back on the trip and started planning what to do next on the Brave
-new six gallon water heater.  It's $280 on amazon but there is an option to buy on that runs off gas or electric for $380 so we need to decide if we want to upgrade.
-our engine needs more torque.  It's easy to tell that our Brave was created when the speed limits were still 55MPH.  If we pull a hill and don't have the power to pull it in third gear, I can't shift to second gear until 50MPH due to gearing.  That would have been fine in the 70s but these days even the big rigs were passing me on the grades.  Long term I want to take one of my extra SBC blocks in my shop and make a 383 stroker with vortec heads running fuel injection for the Brave, but that's at least a few months out.  My plan for now is to throw some smaller combustion chambered SBC heads I have on my block to bump the compression ratio from 8.1:1 up to a still very manageable with pump gas 8.6:1.  Plus I have aftermarket springs in those heads so I could spin the engine up to higher RPMs without having to worry about my pistons hitting the valves.  I'm hoping that along with upgrade my points ignition system to an HEI distributor will be enough.  I've considered throwing an electric fan I have from a past project onto the engine but am hesitant due to the current draw it requires and how valuable electricity is to a motor home when not plugged in. 

[M & J]

 

[stanDman111]

holy cow batman that must of been one _ell of a ride
glad  you are all safe & sound

[strykersd]

Thankfully it kept going down the road but just sounded like a trashed a ring and pinion in the rear end. 

Oh and another thing thing I forgot to mention, was that we averaged 7MPG for the trip.  That's a big reason why I want to upgrade the engine a little bit to keep it in a better range of vacuum and less downshifting to second.  Utah was more mountainous than we expected but the majority of the trip I was between zero vacuum and 5" of vacuum.  I don't know how you Dodge guys do it with the 318! 

[Rickf1985]

A 71 350 should have higher than 8.1:1 compression. Do you have the block serial numbers? No matter what you do you are not going to get the torque you need out of that 350 to get the mileage up much. You are pushing a large frontal area down the road not to mention a lot of weight. What gears are in the rear?

[strykersd]

Rick, I haven't ran the block or rear end gear numbers yet. I'm assuming it has the normal stock -12cc piston that most SBC and I do know it has the horrible 624 heads which have 76CC chambers.  I have a timing light with an RPM gauge on it that I've been planning to use on a short highway drive to get an idea of the rear end ratio but haven't had the time yet.  Basically I'm doing upgrades I can do for basically free.

One other option besides building a 383 is to find a 400 SBC and rebuild that instead.  It'd probably be a bit cheaper too!

[Rickf1985]

400,s are  alright but the bottom ends are famous for going out on them. Ther are not all that great for torque either. For torque you need cubic inches, there is no substitute. That does not mean you cannot make a small block that will get you better than where you are but you need the right gears before you go too far with the engine. Assuming you are running 16 or 16.5 tires you need at least 4:11 gears. If you go with a 700R4 transmission then you can go with 4:56 gears. That would be ideal because the R4 has a very low 1st gear and a favorable .70 overdrive which goes nicely with 4:56 gears. And do not believe that a R4 cannot be made strong enough for your application, plenty strong and more if the right parts are put in.

I would do the tranny first with the 350 and then later do the 383 if you think you need more. The problem with the 383 is that it is a performance engine and you will lose mileage right there. You could do a 4L80 if you swear the R4 is too weak but then you are looking at a stand alone computer and harness, Pricey.

[strykersd]

I've considered regearing but since my Brave is a 1971 it has one of the last Eaton HO72 axles, aftermarket gears are not available.  I'll make the easy changes off right off the bat and see how it works pulling my drag truck/jeep/boat and go from there. 

[strykersd]

Now that our trip is over work has slowed on the Winnebago.  We had a beach bonfire with the Brave for my birthday this past weekend so I got a little work done to prep it for the event. 


During our trip we tracked a ton of dirt into the Brave since we didn't have a door mat.  Since I plan to take the Brave out to the desert often I wanted to do something to help keep the dirt out so I picked up two turf type door mats, one prest-o-fit wrap around mat for our pull-out and one normal doormat for our first step in the Brave.  I had to trim the normal doormat to fit but I really like how it all turned out. 

Although it didn't catch all the sand off 40 people coming in and out of the Brave, they worked great!  And as you can see I still need to finish the flooring around the first step. 


Next up were our speakers.  They were completely blown and were able to produce treble but almost no bass so we listened to high pitch music our whole trip.  Here's a shot of our new Pioneer Speakers on top and our old blown out speakers on bottom. 




After those small fixes the Brave did great for the bonfire.  It was most of my friend's first time checking it out and they loved it.  Here's a shot after my girlfriend decorated it for my birthday. 

We will definitely be having more beach bonfires this summer!


From here I'll probably be doing maintenance to the Brave for a while.  I believe our radiator has a pinhole leak in it and our shocks are completely blown so I'll have to fix those before any more long trips. 

[LJ-TJ]

 :)rotflmao :)rotflmao :)rotflmao :)rotflmao Well done Mate. Happy Birthday. Keep up the good work. Looks like she's really starting to take shape.