glitchwrks

Once they finally decide which types of emissions are really doing harm, yeah. If I remember correctly, we filter different things here than Europe because of a different set of guidelines/concerns/whatever. I've also heard that the environmental impact of setting up the network of DEF stations, moving DEF, fuel used on regen cycles, etc. may have negated any benefit that DPFs provide. I do wish we could legislate things based on looking at entire problems/solutions.

I know of someone with a DPF on a GMC Astro 95 with I believe a 6V92T. He hauls into California some times and it's required even on old trucks there, apparently. If they can clean up the output from a Detroit, I'm sure something can be retrofitted to your Mack 😛

Been following this thread for a while, excellent work! Projects like this give me hope for my long list of things that need a lot of help.

Thought I'd post this here in case anyone also has old military stuff. I've got a Reo "Gold Comet" OA331 out of a 1950s M49, which is a fuel tanker variant of the M35 deuce and a half. The truck was super rough and nearly got me killed taking it from our cousin's sawmill to the farm -- clutch disk exploded coming down a hill. I knew the brakes were out and kept it in low, but what I hadn't been told was the brakes had been out for years before good old cousin sold it to my brother, and they "stopped" by letting the clutch out and killing the engine! Anyway, the engine was the best part of the truck so I pulled it and kept it: Full album at this link: https://imgur.com/a/eHfQV It still has all of the accessories bolted to it, including the 24V alternator and waterproof ignition system. Someone chipped the front crank pulley either pulling or loading it. Ran excellent when I pulled it, lots of power, no smoke, but it has been years since I've run it. If anyone wants it, send me a message and make offer. Currently on the farm in southern WV, I can bring it back in the box truck to central VA if that makes it easier on picking up. Box truck has a liftgate and I can move it with my pallet jack, if you pick it up on the farm we can load it with the tractor. Just to be clear, this is an old gasser and not a multi-fuel!

Great looking truck and trailer, and it's nice to see this old iron still being worked!

After living in upstate NY and buying used cars, trucks, and equipment up there, most other states' cars look like zero-rust winners to me

Drilled 2 3/4" holes in the door skins today and installed 2.5" grommet mount combo reflector/signal lights in place of the old reflectors. Ran wire thru some convenient blank body plugs in the door and jamb. Ran the CB antenna wire while I was at it. Found some Bondo on the passenger side door, I guess whatever swiped the side of the box got that door too! Oiled the window regulators. Opened up the dash to fix my dash lights. Found out I didn't have any when getting home late one time last year. Turned out to be the usual culprit, the dimmer rheostat. On these Renault Macks, the dimmer rheostat has two faston tabs on both sides -- two for power connection, two for instrumentation lights. I just moved the wire for the dash lights over to the tab for power, so now they're on at full brightness, which is fine. Weirdly enough the other dimmer still works fine, but it only has two or three lamps on it. Perhaps the lower current draw has let it live a little longer? While I was in the dash, I fixed two long standing issues. First was the alternator charging dummy light, which was just a burned out bulb. Second, as noted above from last summer, is that when I switched to LED marker lights both front sets of markers would flash when signaling left or right. I finally figured this one out! They were trying to be clever with the dash indicator that tells you when the signal is on: One side of the lamp connects to the left front signal wire, the other side goes to the right front signal wire. Now, with regular incandescent marker lights, one side of the dash lamp will be basically at ground through the signal light filaments when the other is active. That's fine for the original setup, but LED lights draw so little power that they were actually being powered through the dash lamp! I removed my temporary wire from last summer, and hooked the factory wire back up, then made a little circuit with two Bosch-style cube relays to isolate the dash lamp so it's not across both signal lines. I can draw out a little schematic and post it if anyone else cares to see it. Caulked the CB antenna wire and grommet for extra water resistance. Used some of the leftover silicone caulk to close up a crack in the passenger side of the box where something swiped it while the previous owner had it. I had the plastic trim off from around the headlights to install the wiring for the new combo signal/reflector lights in the doors, so I decided to try out a new (to me) paint on them. It's a Krylon product that's supposed to actually bond with plastic. Dries super fast. I ordered two cans of it from I think Amazon, since the plastic trim and grille on the old Midliner is faded and uneven. It's still drying but from just having sprayed it and let it dry an hour it looks like it'll be a big improvement! I'll get a picture with the headlight trim painted and the grille between them unpainted for comparison. This may turn out to be a pretty good product for when you don't want to spend a bunch of time with plastic polish on something.

14K lbs

I do like to add a cheap mechanical boost gauge on turbocharged vehicles to get an idea of how healthy the turbo and plumbing is. Just because it whistles doesn't. mean the boost pressure goes where it needs to! You can usually pick up something adequate from Summit Racing or your choice of parts shops. If you don't want to tap a fitting into a casting or hard pipe, you can usually find a place in a flex coupling to bolt in a hose barb. Like TJC Transport said though, if the turbo is really sick there will be a ton of smoke.

Laughed so hard at the Swift driver comments...it's always that or a Schneider truck! I got a nastygram from the city about the little Mack box truck when we got it, as well as the M38A1 Jeep. Officer who wrote it up claimed everything was unlicensed -- the truck's front plate was sitting in the driver's side of the windshield because we had the front taken apart. Everything had insurance and city tax stickers. When I finally found the officer who wrote it up, he gave me some lecture about how I needed car covers, etc. Then tried to buy the Jeep off me. Guess we know what that was about, eh? Building the new barn is probably the only real way to go, like you said it's better to have it inside anyway where no one can harass you about what's going on, or steal parts or whatever. Stuff like this is why we'll be moving out to the family farm when we can.

Mystery solved on the plastic tube. I saw it had 315 016 001 stamped on it. Turns out it's a Haldex automatic drain valve. You can still get them, looks like they're common in Europe and cost around $35. I like my fix better

Got the new tap wrench in today, so I put new drain valves in all the tanks. This is the device from the bottom of the wet tank: I don't know what it was supposed to do, presumably it had at one point been some type of automatic drain system. It definitely doesn't work now. I unscrew it every so often and a bunch of water comes out. So, I decided to just remove the nonsense part and drill it out for a regular drain valve. Excuse the mess, I've got my 15" Rockwell drill press torn apart on the bench! The plastic part was supposed to unscrew from this, but it snapped off. I removed the stub with a chisel and small hammer. All the guts from whatever was in there before removed. Drilled out to 7/16" which is what the handbook said for 1/4" NPT with no taper reamer. I don't have a pipe taper reamer this small. I thought this plug was brass, but drilling and tapping it, it felt more like bronze. Tapping to 1/4" NPT. New old stock Greenfield tap. The big wrench and a little Tap Magic made it cut super nice. I recently had to buy a new bottle of Tap Magic, I got the one from McMaster that said it couldn't ship to California, figuring it probably still had the good stuff in it. Smells a little different (though the old can I had was ancient) but still cuts nice. Doesn't turn yellow metal black. Here's the stamping on the new tap wrench. Wells Brothers ended up merging with some other tooling company in Greenfield and became Greenfield Tap and Die. So, if you've got a Greenfield #7 tap wrench, it's the same thing as this one. McMaster still sells the #7 for about $100, part number is 2546A16. All done! Shined up the old fitting with the wire wheel since it was in the shop anyway. The other two drain valves got replaced too, no more stooping and getting under the battery box to open the petcocks! The other two plugs look like they were hydraulic fitting plugs that someone drilled out by hand and screwed valve into. The holes were drilled off-center and crooked. Since I don't have the lathe set up at the moment, I couldn't really correct them. Not like it matters, it goes on the bottom of the truck anyway! I installed the valves and crimped on the pull wires for them. Big improvement! Aside from not draining the wet tank, the goofy plastic device that was in there would start hissing air some times and cause the air system to leak down pretty quick. Don't have to worry about that, now.

Message sent, thanks for the suggestion! Here's pictures, as promised: Here's a closeup of what I did to replace the messed up pedestal marker lights on the front corners. The green dots above are body plugs where I removed those goofy black plastic things that were on the corners. Still not sure what they were supposed to be. You can see they just masked off the old pedestal lights These little TeqNiq 3/4" grommet lights worked out excellent here, even though they're tiny and single LED they are *much* brighter than the pedestal lights ever would've been. I have two 2.5" combo amber LED/reflector grommet lights coming for the door skins, since the little rolled lip on the front of the cab does make the 3/4" markers hard to see from the side. Needs a bath! Parking under a tree will do that for you. Anyone know offhand if there's a standard Alcoa wheel that will fit these trucks? I haven't measured stud spacing yet. Not a really high priority.

It's old typesetting control systems, but the computers inside are applicable to my day-job, which is repairing factory line control systems! Like old trucks, you find parts wherever you can get them Put new west coast and round mirrors on yesterday, finally replaced the grille bolts with stainless from McMaster. Stuck a new antenna mount on the driver's mirror frame, waiting on a spring to come in. Getting ready to open the dash again and figure out where my instrumentation lights have failed. At least with the old frog dog, you don't really need speedometer lights at night -- it's still just, "keep foot on floor!" I'll try and get some pictures tomorrow. I had to order a bigger tap wrench, apparently a Starrett 91C won't hold a 1/4" NPT tap. Went with a Wells Brothers #7 (same thing as a Greenfield #7). Needed a new bracket for the CB, ended up buying an entire CB 😛 After I'm done wrenching, it'll be going off to Lee Hi for new belts, hoses, a block heater, and a state inspection. Might see if they want to do the exhaust work to turn it up and out the top instead of the current ground level configuration. Both were factory options apparently. It'd be nice to have it out the top for those cold mornings when you end up having to do a walk-around while also fogging for mosquitoes! Anyone have a recommendation for a place to get a custom bumper fabricated in central Virginia? I'm not having a ton of luck finding a replacement. The Mack dealer in Harrisonburg laughs every time we call up for parts

Been a while since I was on the forum, but the old Midliner is still on the road! I ordered new tank drain valves, a new pressure relief valve, new west coast and round mirrors, and some other odds and ends from AnythingTruck/Mutual Wheel. About time for another inspection, and then up to Michigan for a medium size load of old typesetting equipment!

What a cool machine! Looks like a Clarktor tug crossed with a welder!

Up to Poughkeepsie, NY (I-81 to I-84) and back for work, no problems, 14 MPG on one segment of the trip! Picked up a piece of equipment at the old IBM facility up there, we loaded it at a dock and when we went to unload it, we found out it was too long to fit on the liftgate, so we ended up calling a rollback truck and getting it off that way. Remembered to add body plugs and M6 stainless bolts and washers to my last McMaster-Carr order. Front grille and trimwork will get pulled off, cleaned, and repaired, then the whole thing painted. Figured I'd switch to stainless hardware for securing it since it'll look nice against the black trimwork and won't rust so bad. Didn't enjoy drilling out those fasteners when I redid the corner marker lights.

He's probably familiar with the Vintage Computer Federation museum's UNIVAC 1219B, then -- I believe the one they've got is badged as a Navy fire control unit (for large deck guns on destroyers, etc.). I want to say it was built in 1965, so that would've been right at the correct time frame.

I stumbled on that site from the guy's personal site -- he was one of the first operators on the first commercial digital computer sold in Canada (one of my other hobbies is computer/tech history). There are still men and women starting out on similar journeys nowadays, from NOAA postings in the arctic circle to remote mountaintop observatories in South America, to research and scientific missions in Antarctica. We just don't get to hear about them over the noisier, "viral" junk that the news prefers to spread.

Saw one or two of their CNG trucks northbound on I-81 on Monday.

Hey, then I can look for it next time I'm in Wall!

Next week he'll be under one of those wonderful low overpasses in Boston 😄

New product idea: proximity modules for road signs that text the driver the info on the sign :p I bet they have emoji for most types of roadwork even.

Looks like he barely cleared the pump canopy, too!

Quoted For Truth :) Can't stand that either.