GearheadGrrrl

Guys, Volvo owns Mack, which is a sponsor of this forum. Do you think they would approve of your hate that drives the 90% of their customers that aren't wacko teabaggers away? If you wanna kill this forum, just keep up the H8.

Is this the only part of the forum you read? Sounds like y'll got so distracted by Faux News that you forgot all about Mack trucks!

As for the permits, the two groups applied for two different kinds. The bikers asked for a permit to stop traffic during rush hour, those are never granted, even supersized loads don't get permits to move through that area during rush hour. The religious group asked for and received a permit to hold an event on the mall, those are pretty routine.

OK, 26 bikers... Before the 2 crashes they got into.

And where were those "million bikers"? I was out riding my rainbow sidecar outfit and the only other riders I saw were democrats!

Trent, you're clearly losing touch with reality... Have you considered getting psychiatric help?

Sorry guys, your candidate lost the election... Maybe because all your badmouthing of Obama drove the voters away from Romney. No point in wasting your hate on Obama, he's termed out and you get another chance in 2016... And you'll probably blow that one too!

Sorry, but it looks ghetto.

Looks quite tasteful and functional too.

Why? There's a reason they made tandems with juice brakes- $$$. Yup, they were cheaper. There's a reason they don't make tandems with juice brakes anymore- They don't stop worth a damn! So you're going to take a truck that is just plain marginal- juice brakes, gas engine, single countershaft tranny- and add another axle with no brakes? And do you even need another axle? Most of the machinery I've seen that would need a 4 axle truck to be legal would be over height on a straight truck. That's why the tractor and implement dealers have replaced their rollback trucks with lowboy trailers.

You gonna run this commercially, or just use it to haul your farm "toys" around?

Unfortunately, the markets seems to be saturated with "tandems", as many farmers have gone to tractor-trailer rigs to haul grain. Thus at every farm auction there seems to be a couple of these, and they're lucky to sell for more than scrap value. Even know of a couple T series cabover tandem grain trucks that haven't moved in years, hope they don't get junked. BTW, it'd be interesting to see how one of those Chevy big blocks converted to run on ethanol would do, 'specially with a pup trailer to give it more payload than a tractor-trailer rig...

It's not a Cruiseliner, but it's definitely worth saving just for that aluminum frame! Would look awesome with a drom on it...

For an east coast tractor a tag would NOT be original. The east coast states allowed 22,400 pounds on a single axle, so they could carry the maximum 73,280 GCW with a single axle tractor and a tandem wasn't needed. BTW, single axle tractors pulling tandem axle dump trailers are still common in Florida.

As a Mack lover and Volvo shareholder, I'm glad that Mack is still around... But I expect more! Volvo is very poorly run and misses one opportunity after another. For example the booming ag and oilfield markets, both of which Volvo missed with lack of both appropriate products and dealerships in the right places.

They own Mack, the perfect truck for developing markets and a brand recognized worldwide. So what do they send to those markets? A decontented Volvo rebadged as an unknown Nissan model! Sounds like time to dump the rest of my Volvo stock!

Sounds like enough power, but I'd be a little nervous about the ultrashift.

These clowns often don't even know what a piece of equipment weights- That dump truck is probably at least 12 tons and that trailer has at most a capacity of 10 tons, properly distributed.

Not sure what the voltage specs should be, but the "throttle" is just a rheostat hooked to the pedal.

I pretty much agree with BBIGRIG- If you're going to be running the truck 24/7/365, buy new. If you're going to be running just one shift a day, consider used, but don't buy something you'll have to spend half your time fixing instead of making money with. If your running the truck just occasionally, don't even consider new- The depreciation will eat up all your profits!

I'm a retired USPS driver and spent a lot of hours in the MC and MR tractors. kscarbel is correct, the '84 MC tandems has Reyco spring ride on Rockwell rear axles with a 285 HP Maxidyne set down to 1900 RPM governed speed and a 5 speed Maxitorque. The next order in '91 was MRs with an E7-300 and 4 speed Allison on air, not sure if any tandems were included in that order. Next up in '96 were both singles and tandems with air ride on Eaton axles with electronic engine controls. For the '98 purchase USPS largely switched to CHs, but a few MRs were included in the order, with the electronic Allison 6 speed "World Transmisssion" replacing the older 4 speed. The last USPS purchase was in '06, and I believe it was all CX conventionals.

IIRC, the Mack engine MRs were limited to 400 hp, and the USPS ones were only 300 HP. The MRs aerdynamics aren't, it's pretty much a box and the long gap betwen cab and trailer on a tandem didn't help either. That said, I've always though an MR with a decent air deflector on the roof and a drom box would make sense in some operations, especially since the MH was long ago retired. As for finding an MR tractor already built, about your only choice is the USPS ones, as IIRC Mack doesn't list a tractor option currently and USPS was about the only outfit that bought MR tractors. Best of these would be the few ones USPS bought in 1998, they had the newer Allison automatic that gets better mileage. Power wise, I think an upgrade to 350 HP might be possible, but beyond that is iffy... There's folks here that know that stuff better than me. The USPS tandems were 135" wheelbase, and I think there's just enough space behind the cab for a small sleeper.

I drove a 237 at around 32 tons )metric) back in the 70s when we had an 88 KPH speed limit in the midwest. It was quite on top of the job, pulling our short small hills in top gear and dropping a gear for the longer grades coming out of the river valleys. Also drove a 237 one day at around 40 tons and it was clearly beyond it's comfortable limits- Even thought the route was flat as a pancake freeway, it barely made it to that 88 KPH speed limit after a kilometer or too and was running wide open most all the time. On a very minor 1% or so grade it was down to around 70 KPH, barely able to maintain the freeway minimum speed. So while the 237 puts out an honest 237 and then some HP and will run with the 300s from Cummins and Detroit, on the used truck market here in the U.S. a 285 or 300 can be bought for about the same price and is a better choice if you're going to be running around the 36 ton (80k pounds) legal limit. That said, at 30 tons or less the 237 works fine, but if you buy that 237 and work it at 42 tons I suspect you'll soon be back here asking how to "turn it up" to 300.

Ford did a great job of rustproofing the 2nd generation Ranger cabs and boxes with galvanized steel, but their supplier for the frames, AO Smith (now Tower Automotive) really dropped the ball on the frames. Typically the frames rust through first behind the rear wheels and the bumper starts to sag, and in some cases frame mounted hitches with trailers attached have pulled the frame apart, spare tires have fallen on the road, etc.. This frame rust through is so common that I've heard of only 10 year old Rangers being scrapped because of it, and a whole cottage industry has sprung up to make frame repair pars for Rangers. Suffice to say, doesn't exactly motivate me to buy another Ford product!

If it has a 10 speed, it may not be a 237... 237s are high torque rise engines that usually came with a 5 or 6 speed wide ratio transmission.