Vladislav

Ohellll !!! Did I say I want it? I really need to find an excuse as soon as possible. Damn, damn, difficult to find excuses when you see such a nice truck! Is that tandem or single axle? Is the original motor still under the hood? What is the asking price? Vlad

Hippy, how many MB's did Overnight have in the fleet?

Congrats on the purchase

Looks clean. Was it sand or another medium?

It was discussed not long ago on here and was described as America on Wheels museum property. A new home?

One more element - welded togeter 3 new reinforcement parts of the floor. The big one is to support the airbags assembly will be attached with 8 5/16" bolts to the floor rear patch. Two longitutional members had holes at the front ends. I welded 4 bolts into the U-channel flange so after the channel is in place you put that 3 element assembly and attach it to the U-channel at the front by 4 nuts. The last pic is all the floor reinforcements in place and the removable part of the floor test fitted. A cherry on the top of the cake - all bolts, nuts and screws were SAE, bought in the States and delivered by post Ok, seems enough for today to post. I'm getting afraid the readers would get upset enjoying my English more than me when I jumped around the cab putting reinforcements to the floor.

Found one more unpleasant point. There was a plank welded to the front edge of the floor opening. Actually to the lower edge of the firewall. When you put removable part of the floor it lays along that line so the plank was a reinforcement. The plank was spot welded at the factory and rust grew up in the gap. My helper drilled off one more nightmare of weld spots and removed the old part. The replacement was also fabricated together with other new parts. We put it onto the cab, attached with vise grips and drilled multiple holes both through the plank and the firewall. Than the most interesting nuance. I put 1/4" machine screws into the holes in the plank and welded over their heads at the outer side. Than my helper ground all that together with screw heads to make the surface smooth. That way you could put the plank in the place putting the studs (former screws) into the holes in the firewall and drive nuts onto them from the inside of the cab. No weld and the nuts will be covered with removable floor of the cab when all is assembled.

Next task was to redo the floor support channel we cut away due to rust between it and the floor. It was a simple U-channel with 4 holes which correlate with seat front mounting holes in the floor. Actually that channel supported seats and carried driver's weight so seemed as an importatn element. The part was fabricated with no troubles but I needed to organize its attachment. Again, no weld where you cannot blast and prime/paint it. I made different fitments at two ends. At the passenger side I welded a plate to the end of the channel and drilled two holes for 5/16" bolts. Than drilled two holes in the cab floor side plate (something like a inner side of RH rocker) and welded nuts at them. The cab was planned to be sandblasted again and with no rockers in place. So those nuts would be opened for sand and primer. At the driver side I could not attach the same way for some reason of final assembly I already forgot now. Appologizes. Made a bit different fitment welding a piece of U-channed to the LH rocker inner wall. You could put the reinforcement channel onto that small part. Drilled two holes where they were overlapping but didn't weld any nuts since possible to just put them there and tight with a wrench at any time.

Next step was working out a plate, actually a patch to cover the rear cross channel from below. I cut a rusty piece of the floor sheet from there so needed a replacement. Steel shop fabricated me a stepped plate because the floor also had step there. I cut its rear to form a curve following the cab rear wall shape since was originally lazy to figure the radious when draw the sketch. Than we had to drill an uncount amount of holes since the idea was to attach it to the floor and the channel flanges by small screws instead of weld. That way it could be possible to paint both the patch and the channel inside before the assembly and putting them together with screws and sealer to avoid steel and primer burn out at all. Getting further I say I liked the way and the result but the amount of labour involved was 3 or 4 times more than just to weld. There was also a reinforcement plate put below the rear channel to accomodate the cab support airbag assembly. By the factory design it was welded to the floor. But as long as I avoided welding I used bolts and nuts. Had to weld nuts to the opposit side of the floor patch since will not have access to them when the patch is in place. Sure welding the nuts is also welding but the patch was planned to be blasted and painted before putting in place. So that weld will not be a burned primer spot and no potential rotting is expected.

Further investigation lead me to one more unpleasant point. Rust sandwich was discowered in a spot weld seam where the firewall was mated to the right part of the cowl. You could not see much of it since the seam was covered with sealant and showed nothing of what you would be worry about. Blasting made 2 or 3 holes where metal was acually very thin and opened rust which took place between two sheets and already grew quite thick. We cut pieces off the both sheets making one opening longer than another. Welded 1st putch into the firewall and ground weld off on both surfaces. Than welded the second patch. I put it a way the long seam occured being not covered by any element from the inner side so we had access to grind it. Only two points of weld which were not possible to grind from the back appeared at the ends. For that reason I put those two patches not touching each other but having a gap of 2 mm between. All the seam will be covered by poliurethan sealer so no trouble with geometry and look. But the gap allowed to protect steel and weld with etch primer and further will be filled with sealer completely. The weld spots you can see on the final picture were actually not welds but local depressions I made hitting the patch with round drift. I made them on a bench, before welding the element in place. And that was done just for a look.

Part 2. After bringing the blasted cab shell into a warm shop I investigated some stress cracks which were not seem or notable when the cab was still in paint. Welded those cracks and also holes we created drilling some spot welds. Had to cut off a piece of floor around the area of the driver seat front mount and weld a patch. There was extensive corrosion and plenty of tiny holes showed up after blasting overthere.

Same thoughts but I'm more to a case of broken oil pump drive after cold start with by some reason tough oil.

I remember 3 or 4 years ago some vendor was offering an aftermarket replacement densor for nearly $350. A couple months back I made a try through the net to find that product but had no luck. So if any show up I would like to be informed. If no I'm afraid the one at Watts is the only avalible option at the moment. And from tracking their web-store during 10 years I expect they may run out of those at any time.

Drool, drool, drool!!

Mack Superliner only had custom or aftermarket chrome grill. Factory grill was a grilldensor made of aluminium.

When i built the building (and actually it will be built more upwards in the future) I put 4 U-channels and welded wiring to them and connected to the main slab mesh. So they are both integrated into the slab to increase its load capacity and allow to hang sufficient loads on the hoists. Currently i made two cross beams in the half where the truck was parked to dismantle engines etc and only one so far at the right where the cab was lowered down. The matter to make 3 was the length of the beam I bought for - 12 meters gave me 3 parts of 4 meters.

Almost agree Paul. But taking that to account you should pay even more care to a choice of your purchase. Since the amount of efforts fixing the object is usually huge or at least sufficient. So making a step aside from the most valuable vehicle you put you on a track which will bring you too far away from the most desired result. And sure a long while will pass by as we all here know very well.

Paul, mate, I'm happy if I could please you. i remember you showed interest and I promised to share my progress so now i do. Unfortunately it takes time and attention. I still can't figure how and take my hat off to you representing the story of rebuilding Mrs Mack with so many detailingly filmed movies being in a tight shedule with managing your property. No, the cab didn't get any damage if you hook it up right. Worth to note i saw multiple samples of bent roofs and doors or at least drip rails on R or DM cabs even in Russia. So knowing of what you should not to do is easier to find a good way of things. For proper attachment you should use strong elements of the structure. Also you should distribute the stress to some area and not concentrate it in a small spot to avoid local depressions. The way I did is putting 150x100 mm wooden bean through the door openings. I even did the same to the completely painted cab when brang it back home from a paint shop (I will post those pics when the time comes) and didn't do any damage to fresh paint. Just put a thick pack of newspapers between the beam and the cab and also glued 3 or 4 layers of paper masking tape onto the painted surface. R-model cab seems is a tough enough structure to be lifted that way. This one was up with no doors and seats but I had experience doing the same to a complete cab. Also I parted many Mercedes G-model for business and we took complete bodies hanged to an overhead hoist using the same kind of wooden beam. I even used one hoist at the front putting the chain through the roof vent (which is quite large there though). It was funny when I took the body off my personal G when revised the chassis a couple years back. I hanged a complete body together with front end, doors, windows and interior including heavy seats. When got it off the chassis I found the balance was 99 to 100% of the weight was applied to the front hoist (usually we put 2nd one to the rearmost body to chassis mounting holes). That case all the body turned out hanging on the only chain went through the roof vent and attached to a beam I put through the door openings. And that turned out fine. No damage to the shell and no crackings in the windscreen which even had a couple to the moment. Put it back that same way after completed the chassis in 3 months.

Me either but it takes more time than I would like it to be taken. Thank you for the kind words.

I was thinking that buying each of my trucks. Don't want to figure how many I own at the moment but the purchase count was 10

Keith, I just try my best. And really enjoy fixing the things the way I would like to.

That was one of my original ideas also. Good thing that all is good. Knock on wood

What a beauty! Asks for love by all her look.

Spinning thoughts is mostly always a good deal to do indeed. Of the truck the purchase idea is what my hell part of the mind tells. And the angel one advices to not get in rush and wait for a B with big alu grill which is rarer and more to my taste but would involve about the same amount of job activities and costs. In the particular case the only possible way to import that truck is taking it apart in NJ and load into a sea conteiner. I would pay nearly $1 for every pound of the shipping weight. Taking to account I have a complete bogie with camelback springs, Mack axles and 22,5 Dyton hubs and also short block of something like 237 engine (it was tagged as EM6-225) completed with crank, rods, pistons and heads it seems I would easily get rid of that Cummins engine in the B as long as the rears and split the weight down to 2-3 ton. Would be $5-6K to import it anyway and a need to transport to NJ and spend there a week or 2 to convert it into a pile of parts. The cost of the truck doesn't seem very friendly also since it's not road ready to be driven to NJ, plenty of rust and the rears are really slow as I could figure from the content the seller posted on here in the past. He noted good tyres but you never know how such are really good until check out in person. On the brighter side I could purchase a B-model and that would be the only B in Russia. Again, in a case if no one else more crazy than me and with a thicker wallet would import a complete or restored truck during the time I would tinker with one more pile of scrap metal

In a memory of Tilted Kilt Good job I even feel it's time for me to pack my bags and fly to Florida. Oh, no, probably it's too late...