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Stories of age and old trucks

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Saturday Again Ii

B-67 Update: The frame is leveled and squared upside down on stands in the middle of the shop floor. The front springs and axle are bolted in place. The rear air suspension cross member is in place, and the removeable parts are all sandblasted and epoxy primed to match the frame and axles. Rear spring hangers are going in, and the rear springs are next. The cab is almost back in one piece. The donor roof and back panel are all blasted and primed and fit in place. I should be welding to
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Saturday, Again

Another week gone by too fast. Seems to be a pattern. Anyway, we are reviewing all of our building options, including taking a long term lease on the new space available to us where we are currently located. There are some real advantages there - we get free use of the huge paint bay, the sand blast facility and whatever help we might need for assistance and specialized shop equipment. The complex is basically the home of Pooler Enterprises, which is a huge excavating and site development
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The Week In Review

Interesting week. Weather is getting steadily better. Snow's almost gone. I like these days - you can really feel the change coming, even though it's still only 15 or 20 degrees at night. It gets to 40 or so during the day. And when the sun shines, it really seems to shine bright. Not much Mack truck news this week. But we did get paid for the 2000 379 Peterbilt, and got a pleasant surprise when a fellow from Indianopolis showed up, like he said he would, and paid for, and took, a road w
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Happy Easter

Good News - Picked up my rebuilt rear axle yesterday and brought it in the shop. Then I organized all of the big pieces so I can begin reassembling the frame and suspension, and get this whole unit back on wheels. The snow's melting and it's warming up, which means that time's running out. Gotta get moving! Thought I was going to buy a new set of 12.00 x 22.5 drive tires - but now with all brand new stock length wheel studs, I'm not so sure. The additional height of the 12.00 tires wou
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Saturday Update #10

Cab surgery doing quite well. Cut off the bottom 3" of the back panel that I am using and welded in new metal. rather than try to make the hundred or so rivet holes from the original look good. Pretty neat fix, if I do say so myself. Got both of the knee action shock absorbers working nice today, so I can rehang the front axle starting tomorrow. Then the radiator support frame, steering column and clutch linkage. Soon I'll be blowing black smoke all over Tom's Peterbilt when I scream pas
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Saturday Update

Spent today cleaning and polishing the interior of the 379 Peterbilt. Even though I think the truck is a little too gaudy for my tastes, if I was going to spend any amount of time on the road in a truck - it would be a good way to go. The big Ultracab bunk with the queen size fold down bed and the nice seating, refrigerator and TV are sure a lot nicer than any truck I've ever driven. It's got closet space and plenty of interior lights. I was pretty impressed. Anyway, the prospective buyer
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Cab Surgery

I stopped in to the truck shop today. I was pretty well prepared to see the roof of my B-67 cab cut apart, having gotten a phone message from my welder/body man the other day. But - what I found was my old cab with no roof at all, no cab back panel and no windshield posts! Holy smokes - the shock set in big time. Even though I got a really good donor cab roof and concave back panel from Kevin All. And I've known this had to happen. I took some pictures for posting ASAP. Anyway, after my h
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New Possibility

Driving home from an appointment this morning in Pultneyville I spotted a very straight and solid looking B-61 tandem axle flatbed parked in a row of the farm's fruit hauling trucks and old tractors. Occurred to me that I have seen it there for a number of years. Just never thought about it before, I guess. So - I'll have to go and introduce myself ................. We'll see what happens. PVS
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Update B-67 Vol. #1: Entry 02/07/08

Top that title Tom! Anyway, Joe asked how the B-67 was progressing. The answer is quite well, Thanks. We have the ACE air ride crossmember in hand. Nice piece of equipment. And we have the new springs back from the shop. The rear axle is completely rebuilt except for one pair of pesky brake shoes, which the relining company now is refusing to do, although I paid for them. So I'm doing those myself. The engine has to be looked over by a local retired master mechanic, along with the trans
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More Parts

Got a call from Yellow Freight today. My air ride crossmember is here from A.C.E. in California. Now I'm really getting excited. I got the springs back last week. The rear end is still waiting for one pair of relined brake shoes, then it's done. The frame, front axle, radiator supports, transmission and mounts, and fuel tanks, brackets and hangers are all sandblasted and epoxy primed. Still need to blast and prime the rear end. I'll reassemble, plumb and wire, and re-fit and align everythi
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0

Sort Of An Apology

So, I didn't mean to be all that sarcastic yesterday with my blog entry. If I offended anybody - I apologize, as long as you haven't called me about the Peterbilt and promisd to send a deposit! Anyway, I picked up my springs from the spring shop today for the B-67. Brand new rear springs and re-arched front springs. Pretty nice. Apparently the center bolt holes were all rotted out in the old back spring stacks, and several leaves were broken. Got new U-bolts and nuts too. At the age of my truc
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Update

It's Tuesday night, snowy, cold and starting to look like winter - again. At least it feels right. We (my uncle & I) have been cooperating on trying to sell a late model (2000) Peterbilt 379EXHD tractor that the company owns. It's a big power tractor (C-16 Cat 600 hp) that Jim bought from one of the Owner/Operators with three trailers that he needed. So we have been listed on E-bay and now in the TruckPaper Online. It's amazing to me how many flakes there are out there. The number of c
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Friday

Friday nite, and just leaving the office for home. I think I finally have most of the big pieces for the reassembly of my B-67 frame and axles. I did go with the ACE Superide air suspension crossmember. Thought about what Tom Gannaway told me about making my own, but I couldn't get comfortable with pulling a loaded trailer. And he agreed that his design would need some reworking for pulling a trailer. The springs are being re-arched and getting new center bolts and U-bolts. and a couple of
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Strange Mid-winter

It's 50 degrees here tonite. Very weird. Although we usually get some sort of a mid-winter thaw - it never feels quite right. Then there's the mud and the gray, dull weather to deal with. It might be the only time of year that makes me think of going somewhere else. All the rest of the year the weather is pretty nice - even the severe cold and snow. At least that's what winter is supposed to be like. And, sick as it might be, we actually like it when it's cold and snowy. Making progress o
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Post Holiday Catch-up

Two of the axle seals that I got a couple of weeks ago at Mack are wrong. By a lot! That's what I get for cheating everybody out of their Christmas presents so I could buy truck parts. So I took one of the originals to FleetPride to match them up. In about five minutes I had the right parts. Good lesson learned. It's a 60 mile round trip at $3.30/gal. for the gas. Now I open all the boxes before I go home to be sure the parts at least look right. This old stuff is a little tricky - with dif
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Mid Holiday Update

Got a big scare this week - Food related. I take that very seriously. After buying my wife a new septic system for Christmas (when you need one, it's a very romantic gift), apparently the plumber needed to move my freezer in the basement in order to connect the new waste line. Anyway, the freezer did not survive the move. So, after discovering water running out the bottom of it, I needed to find some borrowed freezer room fast for an entire year's supply of beef, venison and a couple of turkeys
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Merry Christmas And Happy Macking

Not to sound greedy or anything - but I picked up all of my seals and bushings, and my brake shoes with new linings on Friday. Before I did any Christmas shopping for anyone else. My own Christmas gift to myself. Pretty nice. If Kathy knew.... Oh boy I don't even want to think about that. Hopefully the rear axle will be ready to install by the end of the week. I do have to take two brake shoes back in for relining - they had several small cracks in the new linings. It shouldn't be any real
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Old Age, Old Parts And Luck

Well, I feel old this week. I fell down on the ice two weeks ago - a real classic, total surprise, feet straight in front of me, airborne crash. For a couple of days, I felt fine. Then all of a sudden, I became a cripple for about a week. Had to cancel my trip to Lake Placid this week (work) because a six hour car ride was definitely out of the question. It's getting better - but real slowly it seems. Anyway - because of the new found time in my schedule, I went searching for all of the se
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Prechristmas Blues

My old R Mack is covered with snow and ice. Probably won't go for another ride until spring. It's the only one thaty had to stay outside this winter, and I feel bad about it. I'll pull the batteries out of her this week for charging and store them in the shop. so they don't freeze. Just another case of the PreChristmas Blahs. On a Brighter Note: We got the H-63 inside Dennis' heated barn, so it's good until spring. We did get all of the Mack Museum info on the truck, along with a shop man
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Fuel And The Cost Of Life

I got to rambling on one of the BMT forums tonite - and it occurred to me that forum probably was not the place to ramble. I'm not a very active political rabble-rouser, but day by day I am becoming more concerned and more confused with where we are going as a country. Every single person in this country has to be committed to some small change in thinking. It's not even very drastic. Our total dependency on foreign oil, regardless of the price, is completely fixable. We have to reduce our oi
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Christmas At The Shop

Took delivery today of the H-63. Always nice to get a new toy! The only damper on this whole deal was that the engine turned out to have a bad rod bearing, and a pretty blued rod end. The transmission is questionable, but we are not too concerned. Kevin All (AllMacks) has been great to deal with, and he assures me that if the transmission is not good, he will exchange it for one of his other ones. Not too bad for a truck that was purchased "as is, where is". We do have a spare 673 in good r
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Post Thanksgiving

Well the holiday is past us. A little bit fatter, but I was able to take four days off. Nice. I also got my wiring harness for the B-67 this week, too. After all the discussion about just softening the spring stack up on the rear axle, I have been convinced to revisit the air ride idea for the B-67. I'm thinking of either building my own system, ala "Tom Gannaway", or buying an A.C.E. Superide pre-made crossmember and bags. In any case, the intent is to use the original rear end. Both of
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Catching Up

Finally ordered my new wiring harness for the B-67. Working on my shopping list of plumbing and air valves for the brakes. Hopefully I will be underway with frame plumbing and wiring in the next week or so. Still waiting for my rear axle to come back with the higher gear ratio. That's what I get for telling the mechanic that "I'm not in any real hurry"! I guess that what I'm going to do is fit everything on the primed frame, then disassemble it for painting. Hopefully it will look pretty
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Driving The R-600

Had my old R-600 out for a ride yesterday. Nice old truck and runs so sweet. I just went to the gravel quarry where I keep the old girl to check the anti-freeze and I ended up starting and running the truck up to temperature, then driving it around for a while, then looking it all over for the hundredth time. Before I knew it, the afternoon was gone. Not a bad way to spend a day. My old lowboy trailer is loaded full with parts from the shop that I don't need right away, things like old whe
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Partners In The H-63

Been an interesting past few days. For the 1st time ever, I am sharing a project with a friend. A friend new to trucks. Although his dad drove a Selden years ago delivering coal. It is surprising to me how many people are interested in these old trucks. And people from all walks of life. Kind of cool actually. I've got a top notch hot rod builder doing sheet metal work for my B-67. He's more excited about this truck than any rod in his shop! Those people who think these trucks are reser
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