glitchwrks

Any idea on the service intervals on the air-over-hydraulic system? I likely wouldn't be putting a ton of miles on it and I don't mind doing regular maintenance on equipment. Anything to look for in specific as to telling whether it's been abused? Any idea how similar or not the Renault system is to the system on M35 deuce and a half trucks? That's the only "air over hydraulic" I've had to mess with. Also not a fan

Long time since posting! And this time it's about a Mack I'm looking at buying a used 1990 Mack MS series Midliner locally, I'll be going to have a look in person tomorrow. I understand these are Renault-built trucks and that parts can be hard to find, but that they generally last a good long while if maintained well. This one's got 183K on the odometer, so as long as it's not been abused, I think it stands a good chance of being useful to me. What I know about it: * Air brakes (I can see chambers on the rear axle) * Owner reports it starts well in the cold (not that we have real cold in VA!) * 5-speed manual transmission * Inline 6 Renault turbodiesel * 25K GVW The big question currently is, in what year did Renault/Mack ditch the air-over-hydraulic system on Midliners? I've read that it can cause real issues and be very expensive to repair if it wasn't maintained on a schedule. I'd prefer full air brakes, but I'm guessing it's not worth trying to convert a truck with air-over-hydraulic. Second, is the 5-speed likely to have overdrive for this year?

PM sent on the parts truck! That's a slick looking C60 -- looks like it's air brakes too, eh? I like those Dayton wheels with the chrome caps. Starting problem turned out to be a broken wire to the starter solenoid, just the low-current wire that drives the solenoid coil. They were supposed to install the hood hinge/spring assembly this week, I guess we'll find out Monday when we head in for Christmas! I will try to get some pictures this time

Yup, I went and looked at your MB, nearly bought it!

OK, so we got everything squared away for the inspection! Headlight issue was the dimmer switch Found out that the top-of-cab clearance lights were wired into a toggle switch, which was disconnected, so we ran a wire out to the terminal block and hooked them into the running lights. Added 2" round ICC grommet mount lights in the square tube that makes up the log standards -- we didn't have a magnetic drill so we punched them out with the cutting torch. Grommet hides all sins! Those got tied into the running light circuit as well, all soldered + taped on the connections. Fixed the heater motor wiring, ended up putting a 30 Amp fuse to a relay at the heater motor to keep the load down on the cab wiring harness, since it looks like it had issues in the past. Haven't messed with the transmission tailshaft or tach yet. Fuel gauge issue does appear to be the sender, waiting on better weather to drop the tanks. We'll probably do a single sender, eliminate the tank select valve, and put a crossover line between the tanks. There's already a port in the bottom of each tank for the crossover. Passed WV state inspection, and I don't think Grandpa even knew the mechanic He's hauled a few loads on it, loves the 427 compared to the SBC 350 that was in his old C60. Says he won't own anything that doesn't have airbrakes now! He had an issue where the start position on the key wasn't making contact, so they had to give the truck a little push with a loader at the mill. Fired right off, and I haven't heard anything else about it since. I'm sure it will be waiting for me over Christmas break. Finally found a hood hinge/spring assembly for the driver's side. I don't know what happened to the old one, but most of it is sheared off.

Well we decided to punt on the speedometer cable, I screwed the hex tube back on and screwed the cable onto that, so nothing else will get in there. We're going to pull the tailshaft housing off when we get a chance. It could probably use a tailshaft seal anyway, it's seeping a bit of gear oil. Drove it around 150 miles to Flat Top, WV, down I-64 most of the way. We cut over to US 19 at Beckley mostly to avoid tolls. According to Amy I got it up to 60 MPH going downhill while I was still on the throttle Most of the way we were doing 50-55 MPH. Got around 5-6 MPG which is about what I was expecting out of a big block engine. Dropped two cans of Sea Foam in the tank before we left Buena Vista, which seemed to improve running. Of course, that may have also just been shaking all the crud out from sitting for a year, and of course fresh gas. I'll be digging into the headlight issue over Thanksgiving. I forgot to check the dimmer switch on the floor so I'm wondering if it's just as crusty as the dash switch was, and is stuck in some in-between where it won't power either beam of the lights. There's a small fuel leak somewhere, you can smell it when you're idling. Haven't determined if it's in the rubber line(s) to the fuel tank(s) or if it's a carb leak. I suspect the carb could use a cleanout and reseal anyway. I was expecting more power out of a 366 or 427. It didn't seem to have the power that my '69 F600's FT 391 had, or even the power of the FT 330-HD we had in a '71 F600 dump. It did come up Sandstone Mountain in 4-HI though.

I'll try and take some pictures later today We finally found a truck my grandfather was happy with, it's a 74 C65 gasser with a log rack on the back. If the build decal in the glovebox is right, it's a 427, if not it's a 366 -- I don't know enough about the big block Chevys to tell them apart from looking. It's been redone recent-ish, very solid frame, suspension, and driveline. This one came factory equipped with air brakes and is under CDL at 25K. We bought it in Farmville, VA and drove it around 85 miles back to Buena Vista, VA. No major issues, but even empty it's a pig on gas. It'll be going to southern West Virginia this coming weekend, but I've got a few repairs to make before then. I pulled the dash apart yesterday looking at a number of issues: speedometer, tach, fuel, and temperature were all out, as were instrument lights. Headlights apparently out, too! Fixed the temperature gauge, there was a short somewhere in the chassis harness so I disconnected the factory wire and ran a new one. It looks like part of the chassis harness had a meltdown at some point. Took the lightswitch apart and cleaned it up, now I have dash lights but still no headlights, though the switch is good. I will probably disconnect the original wiring at the firewall terminal block and relay both the headlights and additional marker lights required (no side position lamps installed). I think the fuel gauge issue is a dead gauge, it's pegged out even with the sender wire disconnected. I checked for shorts to ground on the sender wire, it's fine. Tach isn't hooked up at all, someone swapped in a HEI distributor and didn't reconnect the tach, I don't know why since there appears to be a tach terminal. I have heard that a busted tach can fry GM HEI systems so I'll probably leave that alone. The speedometer is kind of an issue, the cable is fine but the previous owner had never connected it. There was a large hex tube extension on the back of the transmission tailshaft housing where it looks like the speedo cable would screw in. It was totally full of mud, looks like a wasp built a nest in it. Problem is, the mud nest continues down into the housing on the transmission! I don't know if there's a speedo gear down in there at all, but I don't think I want to go poking mud into an otherwise fine transmission and wreck it. Any thoughts on getting it cleaned out?

Finally heard back from the seller, someone came and picked it up over the weekend. Another old cabover to add to the list of possible projects, though!

Well, nevermind, someone else bought it!

My family has me looking for a new (to them) log truck for the farm. The current truck is a 77 Chevy C60 that's been used so hard that the double frame is starting to push itself apart with rust! My granddad would like another C60 since he has parts, but I'm trying to push him toward something newer and diesel, or at least industrial engine and not SBC 350! Truck needs to be pretty cheap and mostly ready to work condition. Doesn't need to have a log bed, or any bed -- we can transplant the bed off the current truck if need be. Pretty much has to be manual transmission, preferably with a deep reduction low, two-speed rear end, or aux transmission. The closer to either Flat Top, WV or Lexington, VA, the better!

Nothing wrong with that -- if/when we've got either a big truck + trailer or a large rollback, I'm sure we'll be moving old equipment for people! That way you get to check it out but don't have to find a place for it to live, right?

It's off I-77 between Beckley and Princeton. Thanks for the offer, I will see if I can find out what kind of timeline the seller is on.

Central VA, near Lexington, but it'd have to go back to the farm in southern WV (nearest town is Flat Top, but it's out in the country).

Thanks for all the replies, interesting history! That Diamond REO I posted pictures of is for sale near Reading PA, I thought since the cab looked a lot like a MB cab they might share some or many components. Kind of interested in picking it up but I have no way to get it home, and as you can guess from the pictures it's not driveable on the road.

I've attached two pictures of the Diamond REO cab I'm talking about. This one is on a 1974 straight truck.

Anyone know if these critters share a cab? I remember reading some time ago that the MB used a newly-designed (at the time) Budd cab, but I can't currently find anything to support that.

Looking at a truck that would definitely need hauled, old Diamond REO cabover straight truck, stakeside dump, 36K GVW, not sure on the empty weight. Anyone interested in moving it?

Yup, that's US 60! Do you still haul to Modine? It never looks like there's much going on there. One of my friends works at Munters, I see their finished units heading out on expedite flatbeds now and then. Until we found a place to buy, we were renting in the building at the first light after you turn onto US 501 from US 60, the one with the sign about "6003 happy residents and 3 old grouches" on the side.

Yeah, it's confusing. We stopped there on the way back from Charlottesville not that long ago. I think the last time before that, it was just a McDonald's and a fuel depot on the one side, and a Burger King on the other!

I can think of a certain large, unused golf course in central VA that, as far as I can tell, proves you don't need to be partisan to waste money I feel like voting third party is, for the most part, throwing away a vote, with how our effectively two-party system is currently gamed. I don't think I can vote for either of the mainline candidates this go-around though. On the trip back from upstate NY last week, I got stuck with conservative talk radio as the only thing I could pick up in the Southern Tier. I was *shocked* to hear Glenn Beck interviewing Weld and saying that he couldn't vote for either party this year. I think most of the people I know with a strong opinion one way or the other is most motivated by their candidate not being the other. I guess that's at least one fact we know about them

Yeah, nice place to live! Family still has a farm in the southern part of the state, between Beckley and Princeton, off I-77 (a ways off, 20 minutes to a gas station). You could take pictures all day, driving across the state on old US-60. We recently did a pick-up in Boomer, WV and took the box truck down US-60. Truckers must've really been truckers, when that was still a major truck route!

Like you said, it'll sound like a jet engine when the clutch kicks in. It's the loudest thing on most of our trucks and even the straight piped 25 kW diesel genset on the farm. Once you get home, change your ATF transmission fluid if the transmission cooler runs a loop through the radiator. That's pretty hot for an automatic transmission and unless you're running something like Transynd (what Allison recommends, but it's a relatively new full synthetic) it's probably not too happy about being that hot. If you're still driving on the trip home, open up the heater core hand valve and run the heat full blast, it'll help pull some heat out of the coolant system. That and whatever airflow you're getting without the radiator fan will probably keep you at a low enough temperature to get it home without stopping all of the time. At least it's cooled off some and you won't have the heat blasting in 90+ degree weather, been there!

Bradley for elementary, then Beckley for middle school/high school.

I'd think you would've puked coolant everywhere at 230, it would have to have a really heavy spring in the pressure cap to keep it from boiling at that temperature. Losing a gallon or more of coolant is not normal, even with a pretty substantial only-when-pressurized pinhole leak. Grab yourself a cheap mechanical temp gauge and find a place to screw it in, typically I'll screw in mechanical temp and oil pressure gauges any time I'm working with some new-to-me unknown engine, it's easy for electrical gauges to be liars, especially if it's a 1-wire sender -- those 1-wire senders work by grounding out to the block, so if you've got a thin spot in your insulation you can have gauges read high (or low, depending on how they're designed). Do you have a separate ATF temperature gauge for the automatic transmission? If it runs a cooling loop through the radiator you're probably overheating the automatic transmission, too, if your reading of 230 is correct.

Not mine, saw it while looking thru Albany NY CraigsList: http://newyork.craigslist.org/fct/hvo/5809535160.html