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fxfymn

Pedigreed Bulldog
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Everything posted by fxfymn

  1. The real money at a dealership is in the service bays so I'm guessing they are intent on making it impossible for the customer to take it any other place for repair including your own shop.
  2. fxfymn

    Thanksgiving

    Here's hoping everyone has the best Thanksgiving. We get to spend it with our 17 month old granddaughter so ours is great. Sure do miss the Thanksgiving day high school rivalry games that we had in MA growing up though. That is a great tradition.
  3. As Mom told me; "The whole world's screwed up but you and me and sometimes I don't know about you." Each to their own.
  4. You'll like it or they will do it again. Paul's stands behind their work.
  5. I can't help but think about the electric trucks that were featured in a post that delivered news print in Philly from the teens to the 70's. They worked pretty well with very old technology. It may not be Tesla, but eventually a builder and the market will figure this out and electric trucks will become common.
  6. Every product will have its share of failures and the Dmax and 6.7 are no exceptions. But, there are hundreds of thousands on the road with most delivering good service. I have owned Dmax's since 2001 and with the exception of a gremlin filled 2011 they have all been reliable. The 2011 was the first with new electronics and it would throw odd messages out and had a failed transmission control unit that was done under warranty. A friend had the bottom end come out of his 2011 6.7 at 48K miles, but my view is one failure doesn't condemn the entire line. I would take the truck to the dealer even if the warranty has expired. I don't know about Ford, but GM will extend the warranty if they have had continuing issues with a part or system and they have fixed things for me for free that I didn't know about. Also, the fuel system should be a covered emissions system part and as such is covered under the federal warranty requirements which exceed Ford's warranty.
  7. All AC fire apparatus, that I'm aware of, were delivered with a starter and generator so that would be the place to look. The real problem is you have to change the flywheel to get the toothed ring gear.
  8. I wonder if the trailer will have to be a "married pair" for the system to function properly. I would think the aerodynamic profile of the trailer would be important to keeping the range where it is supposed to be.
  9. About $1000.00 per gallon for the entire system for red paint. A friend used it and said it was wonderful to work with as it had high pigment amounts and covered well. He used another brand for the next restoration which was about 60% less, but it does not cover nearly as well. Imron was the standard for fire apparatus for years. Durable and did not require much maintenance.
  10. We made the mistake of buying a couple of rescues without a booster pump. One of the maxims of the fire service is the first thing you will run out of on a busy day is pumpers.Turns out that having a 200 gallons of water and a small pump is pretty convenient when you are the only company on the scene of a working fire. Who would'a thunk?
  11. It makes sense that Mack's sales fell since they were introducing a new model and I'm sure buyers were waiting to see it before placing orders.
  12. Probably right; we used the term for any correspondence that went out as a reply to a non-business request. The format was the same even if the contents differed. Ron is way too old to have his heart broken now, so I think I'm safe.
  13. Items like this is an example of why Mack was so successful during Mr. Hanson's tenure. I'm sure the letter was what we called a "blah, blah" letter and was done by a secretary, but it was Mr. Hanson who set the policy that he could be contacted directly by a customer and that any contact directed to him would be replied to. That is quite a contrast to most corporations today where absolutely no contact information is provided for the "great and near great" of the company and they seem to have no concern about the average customer. When the boss pays attention to details and puts customers first a company succeeds. Folks like Mr. Hanson understood that if they made a good product and treated customers well, profits would follow. I today's world it seems that the bottom line is more important than the products that are produced at many companies.
  14. Happy belated birthday my brother! Hope you had a good one.
  15. There were quite a few L model rescues around that had very similar body styles, so I'd say you need to get the chassis number from John to be sure it is the same truck. Boston, FDNY, and several other New England cities ran L model rescues with the integrated body style like the one pictured and I'm sure there were numerous examples in the mid-Atlantic area as well. That looks like a BRUCO body to me.
  16. Welcome; I'm sure someone much more knowledgeable about this will break down the CN for you, but in the meanwhile check out this thread:
  17. From Global Industrial. sales@globalindustrial.com Product Description Item # Qty Price Total PIX, C60, V-Belt 7/8 X 64 B1976070 2 $11.50 $23.00 * Please note: This item is not returnable. Subtotal: $23.00 Shipping: $13.90 Tax: $0.00 Total: $36.90
  18. This dinosaur still uses MS Outlook. No problems either.
  19. I always say that most Jakes just consider whatever rig they have to just be a ride to the fire, but you always remember the very slow, very fast, and very unreliable rigs.
  20. We went 100% Pierce after I retired after being 100% E-One for a while. The lads tell me that they are just like any other builder; some good, some bad and pretty consistent electronics gremlins. They have taken delivery of over 100 rigs from them, so I guess they are not all bad. I ran into one of my ex-aids the other day who is now the driver of one of the 6 or 7 Mack Granite/Pierce 3000 gallon tankers they have. His comment was I love the Mack part, but the rest is Pierce so its not all good. MP7 engine and Allison auto and he claims it moves right along for what it is.
  21. It is; they call it computer security. No. 2 son does it for a living and the company he works for sends him to the hacking conferences. And yes there actually are conferences for hackers with the biggest being in Las Vegas. For every ying there is a yang. He makes very good money thanks to having hackers.
  22. 21st century vandalism. Its too much trouble to do something creative like putting a cow on the second floor of the high school.
  23. We started using air bag suspension on our EMS units several years ago in order to soften the ride and to lower the deck height for loading a cot. They never gave us any problems that I am aware of. I would go to an air ride suspension in my one ton dually in a NY minute if it was available as a factory option and was reasonably affordable.
  24. 65 may seem fast, but you will have to turn off the emergency warning lights and siren as soon as you hit the interstate at 65. I know since we used to do that in some of our rigs that were woefully under powered. It's pretty embarrassing to either have Yugos flying by you or to look in the mirror and see a massive traffic jam behind you with drivers afraid to pass as you plod along with red lights and sirens wailing. The C cab Fords with the 3208's were OK, but that was pretty much a different era when even OTR trucks were running 300 HP commonly. Unfortunately fire apparatus has gotten much bigger and heavier over the past 20 years and I'm sure if a 3208 was used in today's stuff it would be a slug. Like I said in the earlier post it all comes down to power to weight ratio. Most new stuff is going upwards of 15 tons for a pumper and I just don't see 300 HP moving that very well. If they went to an all aluminum chassis and body it might work, but then the cost has risen so high you might as well just stick to a larger HP engine in a conventional chassis. NFPA didn't kill the back step; a lawsuit did. A member was killed when he fell off of a Pirsch apparatus equipped with a grab handle that ran across the roof of the cab. The deceased stood in the jump seat area and fell off to his death. The widow sued Pirsch alleging that the placement of the grab bar implied that the area was designed for a member to stand and ride in that area and she won a rather large settlement. This product liability suit made the builders realize that back step riding was unsafe and potentially costly to them so they started affixing labels to the back step warning against riding there. It wasn't long before four door cabs were prevalent and back steps, thankfully, disappeared. NFPA 1901 legislated the trend well after it had taken hold. I'm curious; why did your department need a 1250 pump?
  25. That depends on the area they operate in. We have companies responding on the interstates several times a day with some of our engines doing 30K miles a year, a very high number for fire apparatus. We learned that when an apparatus is under powered it will be a headache for as long as it is around. In the long run spending a little more for a higher hp that could do the job across all operating conditions was money well spent. We also have the luxury of being able to replace apparatus pretty quickly compared to most places. Most front line engines are replaced every five to seven years which gives us the opportunity to experiment and find out what works best. And on a couple of occasions we realized that we screwed the pooch on a purchase and just dumped it before its service life was up.
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