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wingman

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Posts posted by wingman

  1. I started out at the Double Diamond until they closed their doors, then Giant Food. Giant made you jockey for 2 years before you hit the street. That guaranteed you could back up!

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  2. Lots of things to think about. The B61 that has the ENDT 673 is a tow truck, and when I get it basically cosmetically restored, it will go to shows close by under it's own power. It won't be used for any work. The engine runs good but is tired. My other B61 is a tractor and runs great and no blowby. It may pull lowboy with other stuff to shows. If it becomes to much of a hassle to change it the B's will all ride on the lowboy pulled by either of the other antique tractors I have with air ride and A/C (Pete, KW, Marmon). I'm getting to old to get beat to death!

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  3. A question for the folks who are in the know about the 673 series of Mack engines. I have both END673 and ENDT673 engines and I am wondering if the engines are identical except for the turbo charger. Are the pistons the same (compression ratio), pump settings? Can I take the turbo setup off one engine and put on the other? Thanks

  4. The 237's we had were serviced very well as were the rest, but all the trucks had to work very hard and were hot seated. They ran night and day. The 237's pulled great and were about equal to the NTC290's and 300's in pulling, but none could compare to the Cat's. We all have our stories and experiences and no 2 will be the same, but for me the facts are the Cummins outlasted all of them. The Cats were the most fun to drive and felt like endless power, although they had problems with oil coolers leaking antifreeze into the oil and lost a few engines because of it. I have a friend who drives for UPS with a CH and an E7, and it has around 1.3 million miles on the engine untouched, so that does speak to Mack's longevity. It may be possible that our Macks wore out prematurely because they had 5sps and you had to take them to the governor to shift and then they lugged in the next gear. All the Cats and Cummins had 9 or 10 spds. The 237's when they got to around 250,000 300,000 had blowby rolling out the breathers. That is one of the reasons they left Mack because of the initial cost of the truck and short service life of the engine. They used to have their own shop and did full rebuilds. They could rebuild cheaper than buying one from Mack. Cummins or Cat, but still cost a lot not to mention the downtime. They kept a rebuilt engine of each instock and would swap a bad one out, but still the truck was out of service about a week. Toward the end of the last of the Mack F's they started outfiting a few with NTC290's and 10spds to get more service life out of the trucks that weren't that old and they were fun to drive! They usually kept a truck for 10 years, but those days are over as they are now all Penske leased Cascadia's and get rid of them at 500,000 and have all DD15's or DD13's.

  5. Rolling back the clock where I worked I started out with Cummins in COEs (Transtar, KW, Ford W's) which ran well, then Macks (R, U and F's) with 237s then the Ford Louisville with Cummins then Cat. The company was licensed for 78,000 and we routinely were over that. Company paid for the overweights before drivers became liable! The one thing I've not heard anybody say is the longevity of the engines. We were overhauling the 237's at 250,000 to 300,000, the Cats at 700,000 to 800,000, but many of the Cummins were well over 1,000,000 miles and still trucking when they were sold to buy new. I love the way the 2v Macks would pull and run but they were small engines that Mack got a lot of power out of but when dogged (no pun intended) they wore out quickly. I was young then and loved the Macks but when the Fords with power steering came along, the Macks and for that matter all the COE's without power steering became just a memory! Although many drivers were loyal to the Macks because they were the best driving on the open road, very stable, you knew what they were going to do, just point them straight and go!

  6. The first antique truck I bought about 4 years ago was a 84 MH613 w/ 350 2v and T2090. I also drove both Ford 9000 and Int 9200 with 425 Cats at work, and I'm sorry but there was no comparison. The 350 2v was very peppy, and I always felt guilty when I chowed down on it because with dual pipes it blew so much smoke you couldn't see the cars behind you! It was one way to make them back off! The Cats were just plain awesome. They had so much torque in the Fords(3406'Bs) they had problems with drivers ringing off the driveshafts and trans output shafts. The 9200's were computer controlled and you didn't get full power until top gear. The mack did put out a lot of power for the size of the engine though.

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  7. Got radios still in most of my trucks, havent put them in the B Models cause I couldn't hear them anyway. Connex, Uniden 66, and Cobra 29's in the rest. Retired after 37 years and a lot of miles on my butt. I got the handle Wingman from a buddy I used to run with, had it eversince.

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