Vladislav

Ron, it looked to me like a kind of art work. Or maybe some reason of having no good hood sides. That LT was really nice and I have never seen it before. There's also interesting fact there were German plates on it. Not many German Mack enthusiasts use to show up. Unfortunately I missed a chance to talk with the owner.

Some of good looking non-Macks

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Mack dag just means Mack day in the Netherlands. I had to make a 3 hour flight to visit the nearest to me Mack event. The weather was surprizingly good giving a clean day in between of rainy others. I too enjoyed the trucks and met two of our Dutch members Rene and Leon who just came back home after their trip to Gerhards and Trucktoberfest. Was shown of their pics from there. Here's the best of my camera's content. Vlad

That above is interesting. Door frames and linings.

Joe, our talk looks like off-topic although I continue because it might be interesting to others. First reason is that from the beginning of 20th sentury there were revolution, WW1, civilian war, than WW2 and the Cold war wich wasn't a war for shure although took a lot of labour and other resources. So people overhere started to live relatively good to have a serious hobby about 15-20 years ago. As we speak about trucks there was another and very strong factor. During socialist politic there was a basic princip of communism - prohibitation of private property for any production facility. Actually you couldn't register property of any commercial vehicle until about 1990.

Big toys for big boys... Thank you for sharing.

Good note about the tile floor. That's a car shop and it's located in the groung floor of the living house so the higth was limited. That floor cavit turned out much more expensive to dig off and water insulate than buy a modern car lifter. By the word I don't live in that living house but filled it up with shop tools and shelves full of parts.

The last point was my current thought when i cut off the first corner. I could weld it back if not satisfied with the radiuses. Not shure the store folks would be too glad. By the word that sunk came three times more expensive than the one I have in my kitchen. Just needed the one with the closest to the sleeper corneres form. Don't worry about your wife too much. I currently have no dish washing machine and wash it myself. About once during a week. That's why I was figuring out so long about the corners to make of.

Joe, I indeed know about them alot. The beginning of the story was during WW2 when 4-71's were supplied under Lend-Lease to SU to be fitted on locally bulit artillery tractors. Along that some equipment was ordered to provide repairs of those engines. Probably some production stuff and technologies. After the end of the war (and the start of the cold war) Russian engineers reworked that engine design (mostly copied although re-did into metric). Than those engines came into series production. There were two versions, 4 and 6 cyl (4-71 and 6-71). The main destination were trucks of the marks MAZ and YaAZ. The first ones were single axles with 4 cylinders and the seconds were twin screws with straight six. Basik design of those first Russian series diesel trucks was taken from Mack L model, or probably more from its military version NR wich were also supplied under Lend-Lease. I myself too liked them old Russian MAZ and YaAZ by thier look although missed the time I could see them down the road. Single axler's you may see in several museums overhere or just as monuments. 6x4's are extremely rare, to the moment I know about the only one survived and it suddenly came on a surface some years ago. Before that I had strong doubts I would ever see one. Interesting point is that when trucks were designed basically as Mack the engine wasn't used of Mack (Lanova to the moment) but GMC (now Detroit). The reason was on my mind of difficult cold start of a pre-chamber diesel wich Lanova's were.

Thank you for the comment Paul. Recently I thought to myself I maybe will sleep in the bunk much earlier than put it onto the truck

They old Mercuries shure look very nice. Were they either covered SS and aluminium? Or alu only? There's the way to think along this kind of technology on my mind.

Neat scenaries Tom. Looking over it I feeled about a little bit but I think of the same as you was feeling while visiting the area you growed up. It used to both take memories back and show out how life has come to be different.

Sorry for the off-topic, closer to the matter. Those single wheel hubs are about the kind of front ones. They have a rim sitting shoulder near the outside to keep the wheel about the middle, not to put an inner wheel deep. My 1945 army Mack (not the one on the picture) had them original single rears. But during its service in Russia (Soviet Union those days) some one cutted the hubs over with a big lathe to apply double rims. He just "moved" the shoulder deeper to the truck's center to make a room for one more rim and a ring.

Don't know how about spokes (no, as far as I know there must be special spokes to fit the only rim inverted), but I saw this on evil bay esterday. Pricy !!

Larry, that's interesting. You noted correctly, we have to pay over twice ten times for original producer's economy. And it seems to me like a way of living nowadays. Although back to my bunk. If you look at the last pic you may note there must be something in the roof corners. Yes, you're right, there were special corner parts. Of aluminium. I couldn't say they were dead although they were far from to be alive (and holes-free) when in place. After removing they just failed apart. At all I had them 12 in 3 bunks but saw no chances to keep 4 solid from. Those corners took me scratching my head for a while. Finally i got an idea when washing the plates and forks. Next day I made a trip to the kitchen furniture shop and ended up with showed below. Took two days for two men to have it done but worked out pretty well. To the moment I have it like on the last shots. Two general ways to continue. 1st - I need to fabricate plywood walls and bases for the interiour panels. 2nd- remove all the sheet metal off, take out the lower steel frame (wich is not SS but common cornered steel due to its thikness), sand blast and paint it and than (and only than) put the sheets back together finally with liquid seal. Wish me luck, I start feeling I'm getting upset with that nice little truck...

...Next I went to SS selling company again to pick up pieces of lining. Orinial sleeper design had sheets locked to each other along the stakes. So sheets had 90 degree flanges along their sides to be riveted to the sides of stakes and don't show any rivet heads outside. I ordered cuttings of 0.8mm thick 430 stainless steel with 90 degrees bends. There was a kind of adventure because those guys had only the straight cutter and couldn't do "box" parts. It mean they could bend only parallel sides but neither crossed to each other because needed to cut off a corner in between. Although I needed both vertical flanges and bottom ones to cover the lover edges. After many discussing they agreed to allow me to make cut outs during their work. So we came to the shop with a small van having a grind cutter and 12/220V power converter and spent couple of hours helping to make what we needed. The most interesting part was the roof sheet. They couldn't bend any radiuses but had done double 90 degree water channels along all 4 sides. Next couple of weeks (far far longer than a day or two, Jim) we were busy putting new skins onto the skeleton. To the moment with no seal and rivets, just with temporary screws. Soft radiuses were formed just over the steel pipe.

I started research over the companies who offered SS beams and found out they all weren't 44x22 mm (something like 7/8x1-1/4) but 20x40 or 30x60. And pricy. Finally I was offered to form the beams I needed of 2mm thikness SS sheet. It was much more cheaper and correctly to the original style. I sent the guy to them and a couple of days later we started welding. Just forget to mention, I bought SS welding wire coil and special gas for. Than got something looked like a hope to get the job done in the future

Both ways I repair it or build a new one I would need a new (shure stainless) roof sheet. Making a new skeleton and linings I can easy build a lager one wich I like better than the actual size. I noted the extra holes in the frame rails wich could be used to remove the bunk brackets and found out I could do it longer for 9 or 14 inches. So I photoshopped two variations and ended up with all the nine yards nine inches. The longer one seemed to me ugly combined with behind the bunk Canadian style exhaust.

Yes, that's it. By the original plan this post was called "Rebuilding the sleeper" but things went a different way. Couple of years back I bought the extra box off one more ex-SGT R-model wich supposed to be the only remains of that truck. I was going to restore it and than just swap the one on my truck. There were generally two main problems with the bunk. Rotted through holes in the roof and, as followed, rusty substructure wich was repaired many times around the floor. The matter was all the sheet metal was stainless with the exception of the roof wich was galvanized steel. It got rusty and water started coming inside into glass wool insulation killing underneath. Finally in this past June I got a moment to put my hands on it. So I said to my shop guys to start taking skins off it. The lining was fixed with rivets and sealed with a liquid seal to the stakes. We needed some labour to get it off. Then I found out the best way was to fabricate everything new as far as it was simple done. It so looked to me that moment though.

When you remove the bank offer it for sale on here. I think there might be folks with interest.

What is your pressure gauge figures when it's purging? I have the same problem, the pressure comes up to 145-150 (must be held about 120) and then the dryer starts to "pffff". If I apply brakes to drop the psi down it doesnt. Looks like all the discribed above, I just don't get myself to resolving but it's a hobby truck.

Nice bunch of pictures, thank you for posting! I like them the shots down the road and the trucks are awesome. Too interesting brand X stuff.

It's wicked