Vladislav

Wow! Plenty of interesting info on here, as usually. Thanks for posting. Snowdog - my R-model(s) has the manufacturing date as 09.1988 marked on at least two factory tags. One on the door and another on the door opening (paper print under plasitc lamination). Unfortunately I haven't got factory records for them. Once I contacted Watts (long ago) and a parts guy said me he couldn't identify the truck. I than sent him the second truck's VIN and he had no luck again. Then he said he contacted Mack museum and they didn't have the records either. They requested the tags and I sent pics of them back. No luck in the end. Since then I found two more VINs of the other SGT R's (a lot of 5 was imported to Russia). Should request the museum myself. But it's a trouble for me to make donation to them so I keep this deal for better times so far. Oo, seems like I have an idea on the year coding mistake. It might mean the letter in VIN indicates a MODEL year, not a calendar one. You know the most producents swap models in September after re-organize production lines in August when the most workers have a rest. So if my truck was made in September it might carry 1989 VIN. Just an idea though.

Upps... 2M2N187Y8KC026171 Seems like #10 digit is K... September 1988, marked on the same plate.

I was thinking that the same matter along my R-model hood. Resolved to use car underbody protection coat in spray. Had one more ultimate idea of applying body seam sealer fatt layer by brush and than put a piece of thin stainless steel net. Something like 2x2 or 3x3 mm cell. Or make two pieces of SS sheet and put them into the fender inside ups glued with a thick layer of construction foam. Haven't done anything so far excepting a couple of extra layers of glass mat with epoxy resin. The same as I used for the other cracks.

Candy! I'm afraid you didn't get it for free though.

Neat UPS picture, Ed. Hope the doctor knows what he does. Best wishes on a good turn out.

Tommy, your textoshopping skills aren't bad.

It might be VIN coding system was a bit different for the US and Canada Macks. My R's don't look like they ever were gliders. Cabs have VIN plates stating the trucks as R688ST what means six wheel tractor. Moreover, there are paper tags in the door openings with info typed onto. They also contein VIN, the manufacturing date, tyre sizes and weight raitings for both front and REAR axles. The vehicle type is typed as "tractor R688ST". Seems to me as too many characteristics to be applied to a glider. I still do not pretend on to be an expert though.

Not one nice thing to hear. If I were you I might order new round tanks from Cleveland and than order some alu weld shop (or tank repair shop?) to weld used B-model steps in them. As for DOT the way seems to me as to represent the tanks as old original ones. Braking the law, braking the law... Talking about Cleveland tanks I got a question in my mind for a while. Can they sell just round aluminium bottoms of 24.5" diameter separately? I would convert them into complete tanks locally.

Ufff... She doesn't seem too young to me.

Happy Thanksgiving BMT!

Incomplete?? It seems strange to me since all 5 SGT R's imported to Russia had their VIN's starting from 2M2N.

Can you temporary employ them? For example to wirebrush AC bulldog frames? They might really start thinking on finding a new location. I'm not just kidding but share my experience

Good luck on the fight to Ed. Too sorry to hear.

VIN starting from 2 means the truck was made in Canada. At least a Mack truck.

What's about 11x24=NR?

Not many nowadays. There were plenty of them dump trucks in the North when building BAM railroad in the 80's. They were branded Magirus-Deutz though.

I'm with Hat this time. Also like the grader's leaker motor.

Deutz produced trucks. With their air-cooled engines in them.

That too might be not a missprint. In this discussion we missed one fact so far. If you look over the tyre sizes there are 11.00's and 11.00 R's. This means two mentioned sizes exist(ed) in both bias and radial design. And according to the chat above they have different sizes. Actually it's difficult to suppose exact dimentions of some tyre taking to account so wide variety of them. But from my practice 12.00R24's (tube's) I put on my WW2 Mack are really huge. Sure larger than 12.00R24.5 I have a pair of in my yard. And talking closer to the matter of question they are noticably bigger than 10.50-24's (!!) which my truck rode when was purchased. The truck had two tyre sizes from the factory in different years - 10.50-24 and 11.00-24. As far as i remember reading in different sources in the past older (bias) tyre sizes had the first figure in their designation as the heigth of its profile. So when you put that heigth twice and add the rim size that would mean the overall diameter. But for radials (or just newer wheels starting from some date in years) the firs figure is the profile width. When you have a profile share (/75, /60 e t.c.) marked, the higth might be count as the percentage of the width pointed behind the slash. And when you have it NOT, you should count the profile higth as 84% or 100% referring to different sources. Taking all that into a sum we can explain all those differences in tyre sizes we use to deal with together with difficulties to recognize an actual wheel's measurements. And getting further that's the reason I keep alot of scepsis to different tyre calculators and chats and trust the most to an actual size I can just measure with a bend.

As I remember from the talks on here they did. I have a couple of Oakwille RW VIN plate pic's saved somewhere. Just can't find them right now.

I once bought alu wire and filled correct gas up. Got sh*t. You sure might try it too. And better do. To have no doubts. I just shared my experience.

Thank you for keeping in mind my interest. Not much of need to make better pictures from my side, I have the most things understood. Currently I have some parts of my R-model interior in the upholstery shop and going to reproduce them as close to the original style as possible. My truck has level 3 blue color inside. The seats are with cloth on the main surfaces and vinil on their sides. The door panels are vinil with carpet at the bottoms, no cloth. And vinil headliner of perfarated material. I generally like blue but see no clue to have it combined with light green body color. So resolved to go with dark grey. Just had an idea to make doors of vinil top with something different in the middle. Maybe perfarated vinil or cloth. But it seems to me resonable to use the same material on doors as some other parts utilize. For example the same cloth as the seats do. Now I see Mack did different way and I generally dislike it. As for the seat cloth itself I hope to save my original stuff just combined with new vinil sides. So no spare seat cloth to put onto the doors if I want to.

Broky, depending on what do you mean as the replacement. I once found ocassionally that removed tyre of the size of 12.00-24 had almost the same inside central diameter (where tyre seats on a rim) as 11.00R24.5. I don't think though 12.00R24.5 has the same outside dimentions as 12.00-24 or 12.00R24 (tube type). The last ones look really large.

Such news aren't close to what might be called "nice". It's a big shame on my mind. Sems the locals have no respect to Dutch, American, British or Australian sailors who fought Japanise there. Frobably it looked like a "no their's deal" to them. On the other hand, respect to men who died and found their graves at the sea bottom is a normal thing to any civilized people over the globe. A very big shame is getting coins from a someone's grave. Lots of examples of that in the world though. Sad it's really difficult for British or other authorities to organize constant protection of such ship wrecks. The ocean is too large.

Not much of success with a wire welder for aluminium. Better to go for TIG. On the other hand (and on my mind) battery covers would turn out better of SS diamond plate. You can either weld them with your wire welder using SS wire. And that's what I'm going to do myself.