mattb73lt

8 hours ago, Red Horse said:

Looks great Matt Unfortunately I got a new reverse shoulder yesterday.  Shots no longer did anything so at my old age I rolled the dice as the older I get the tougher the recovery will be.

 

MATT,  Looks great...front end wander any with that load?  No shows for me for next few months as yesterday I got a new reverse shoulder..left side.   Shots no longer gave me any relief so thought I should b ite the bullet now before recovery would be tougher.  Sorry to read about senseless loss of CSP Trooper the other day.

Hopefully the surgery will alleviate your pain and give you back some mobility and the recovery gives you no complications. It truly was senseless. The POS that struck him was caught about 5 miles up I84, after his truck broke down. My employer is a huge supporter of law enforcement and has several charities involved and made all the services of his company available to the family and the department, to include our helicopter and airplane. Services are this Wednesday and I'll probably be involved with the helicopter for the flyby of the funeral.

The truck rode great loaded up. The pickup was a little farther back than I would load it for long distance, but the weight was still pretty even. This truck is about four feet longer in length than the B42 and it makes a big difference in the ride and turning radius.

Used my military pickup to set my winch cable and to test out my new chains, binders and tie downs. Loading it is easy because of all it's built in tie down points. Then used it as a load weight to run the truck around to see how it ran loaded up. It's probably a little heavier than the Cadillac I had on it over the winter. It rode great loaded up and needed a bunch of extra shifted as expected. It was also a little role reversal for these two as I used the pickup to haul a lot of the truck around and as a parts getter while doing the restoration.

12 hours ago, 1961H67 said:

Matt ,  hope you keep posting updates on the 73 ,, that’s my inspiration! Especially since I’m seeing you drive it , that’s keeping me going on this LJ more than anything! Congratulations on all those views! 

I intend to. This is the fun part, using it and setting it up to use as I had envisioned. This season should be getting it out there to shows, finishing the details and building my confidence in it to go far from home with it. Future intentions are to load up one of my cars to take it to car tours. I attended several years ago, before life got crazy after 9/11, in the B42. All over New England, down to Virginia and I even went all the way to the Rocky Mountain National Park in Colorado in 2005. Drove my '27 Model T Fordor over the Continental Divide at  over 12,300' on that tour.

1 hour ago, mechohaulic said:

B-73 topic closing in on 2000 post .  73 defiantly a museum piece .👍

I never thought it would be this long, have that many posts or have almost 210,000 views, DAMN!!!!! 

No shortage of storage on the truck now!!!

15 hours ago, mrsmackpaul said:

Autocar's were never a very common brand in Australia, used primarily as really heavy duty type of truck, road trains and heavy haulage 

Sounds like it's going like a rocket Matt 

Dunno what the speed limit is in the U.S. but you would do your ticket in Australia at 78 MPH 

Enjoy 

 

Paul 

 

It's 65 MPH in most areas on that run. I was careful when I did it and it was only for a short period. I always try not to be the front runner going anywhere. As long as there's people going by you, let them get out ahead of you and run the traps. There's plenty of four wheelers screaming by you to draw attention from you anyway. Most of the way I was 65-70. Some grades I thought I was falling off on speed, they weren't any crazy grades. After dropping a gear the slowest I saw was 60. I'd probably be a little slower if I had something on the back. When I had that Cadillac on the back heading to storage last fall, I was still going pretty good up the grades on that run and still never saw much below 60 MPH. 

14 hours ago, mowerman said:

Excellent ….rain,,,,, gods gift. Not much we can do but ,,,doesn’t help all your time consuming detailing .. 1900rpm sounds perfect. I would not go much more than that either…. Bob

Nothing a little soap, water and elbow grease can't fix. I will say that cab is very dry, warm and tight in crappy weather. My home built electric wiper system was a complete home run! The intermittent feature was great in the mist and drizzle and I never needed to go to fast mode. They kept the visibility excellent the whole time I needed them.

Well, it made it's first outing to the Western Mass ATCA show at Yankee Candle in Deerfield. It was a mostly dry ride up and I stayed until about 12:30 when it was a more steady rain. Ran into several people I know but haven't seen in a long time. Some others I only know from social media I met for the first time. That's always odd to me that some one who looks like a total stranger knows a lot about you and your truck. I guess that's how we'll meet some people in the current times. Anyway, a really good time talking about the truck and how I found it and what I did to it  to bring it back. It ran great, up and back. Found it's sweet spot on the highway is about 1700 and 70 MPH. I did run a little faster, here and there, to try it out and although it'll certainly go much faster, 1950 is as I fast as turned  it and saw 78 as the fastest speed. Granted, I was empty and just wanted to test it out and get a better feel for it. I did run up a on a few trucks headed to the show that got on just ahead of me. I figured I would run with them as we were getting close to the exit for the show. Then I found the opposite end of my cruise spectrum. They were running about 60ish when they got up to speed and I found that I'd need to drop a gear to stay with them. After trying that out for a bit I headed on and chugged by them. We got to the show about 5 minutes apart. So a few more things learned about the new toy. Overall, a good day with a lot of great conversations! If it was 24 hours earlier, it would of been perfect with yesterday's weather.

These bigger boxes are going to work out great for everything!! Lined the bottoms of both boxes with some 3/4” plywood to protect them. Added the shelf to the left equipment box. Then organized all the new chains, binders and straps for the deck into Busboy bins to keep it all organized. This should keep all my stuff from getting all tangled up and a mess.