convoyduel

That’s a good year for the E7. Is the overflow tank on the firewall plastic or metal?

The movie studio is irrelevant.... I own the rights to the image and likeness and shared them equally with those that purchased the two surviving trucks. Don’t get me wrong....I didn’t expect a Mack-centric forum to love a Western Star. The exercise wasn’t just about copying a modern Rubber Duck.....it was about honoring what that character was based in and what the independent of that era was. As others have pointed out and this die-hard Mack fan found out....Mack corporate is not in the game anymore. For that matter, at least in my region, Peterbilt isn’t either. Unless you’re buying trucks a dozen at a time or buying some stock spec unit they ordered and have had sitting, they don’t have time for you. As someone who was fascinated by Mack and loyal to them despite all sorts of horrific experiences with products (ASET ring a bell with anyone?) for over 40 years, it was no easy choice to go with another manufacturer, but from an experiential level, it was painfully obvious who was interested and who wasn’t. Whatever spirit used to exist at Mack (and Peterbilt for that matter) that allowed them to pursue independents and small 2 to 5 truck fleets is dead and gone. Their product offerings aren’t geared for the small guy. I really hope they wake up and realize what’s been done to their iconic brand. In the end, I’m delighted to show this new truck and explain why it is the brand it is. The people at these shows aren’t the bean counters at a big company, they are the men and women that drive the truck, change the oil, swap out the brakes, grease the chassis, troubleshoot at 2AM on a freeway off ramp and try to rest in a truck stop parking lot next to a SWIFT reefer running wide open. These people work hard, start small and build on the successes achieved by being able to work on their own equipment without needing a laptop to plug in. What Mack is telling them is that they don’t add up to enough of a percentage market share to pursue. It’s a business decision and I get it. So was mine.

YOU WANT ANSWERS?? YOU CANT HANDLE THE TRUTH!!! Alive and well indeed here in St. Louis. Never stopped playing with trucks, just pulled back quite a bit from the public eye. So, to answer the question, I started with Mack a couple of years ago. Had some discussions at both a dealer and corporate level about what I wanted to do. Dealer seemed completely disinterested. Mack corporate was too enamored about chasing an NFL player that had the last name of Mack but had nothing to do with the industry. We pitched a pretty cool limited edition concept but just heard crickets in return. In the end, we were certainly welcome to buy a new truck and modify it, but we were stuck with a cheap, crappy grey interior with seats that look like they belong in an AMC Gremlin, an emissions motor, no single cab side exhaust and no cab mounted deflector. Aftermarket sleeper on a daycab Pinnacle or Granite was indeed an option but really wasn't thrilling given the stark lack of enthusiasm, the complete junk grey Gremlin interior and the shop queen emissions engine. In the end, the choice to look elsewhere stemmed from it being apparent that Mack corporate had ZERO interest in this project and continued to completely ignore and disregard any ties to what is arguably the single most globally recognized Mack truck ever made. Their silence was heard and noted. As indicated in the video description, I shed no tears and looked at other options with other dealers and manufacturers. I'm extremely happy with the direction we went. Right out of the gate, our salesman Greg understood exactly what we were trying to do and he pulled his local and corporate resources and contacts in to make it happen. We are putting on the finishing touches and modifications now. We will have a lot more to follow, including roll-out of a new website about the film and the trucks. Lots of good new information for the Convoy groupies.

That's a standard RS/RL7 hood on a later eastern model chassis with a sleeper from a Western Star. Yes, one of the originals was sold to a pair of collectors in eastern Canada. We still have the other. All/any others are just fan replicas.

They have been out of production for over 10 years. The molds ran thru the hands of several different manufacturers, so they go by various different names. The most common was AirShield.

I spent a little bit of time today again in the stack. The crash books are great and so are the service manuals. The most complete set of service manuals appears to be for the Fire Apparatus. Its hard to describe everything thats in the service manuals. Again, I did notice overhaul books for all of the Mack gassers as well as the older generation transmissions, rear axles, suspensions, etc. The books look to be last updated around '67. The fire apparatus books include the first generation R and CF models. There's no Brockway stuff that I've seen specifically, although there's several comprehensive manuals like Chiltons and.....can't recall the other brand, that include service, repair and overhaul proceedures on just about every make and model of truck from the 50's-60's era. I've thought about donating the materials to the Mack Museum or ATHS (wait....forget I said that) but the concern I have is that they might toss them anyway. Right now, I'm looking at digitizing the materials (best and highest interest first) and then offering copies in exchange for a set donation to the Special Olympics. Keeps people honest and those kids can make better use of the money than I can. I'll just blow it on more trucks I don't need. I'm checking with a reliable source on the copyright issues and the ability to password protect the electronic copies. I hope to have a preliminary list soon and will post it.

There have been a number of UPS owned trucks that made it out alive. A Diamond Reo worked around St. Louis for years painted red. There was an MH for sale on Craigslist maybe a year ago. One of the UPS Peterbilt 282's has been on eBay in California for the past several months. It's now been painted black and has aluminum wheels, but its 100% UPS. Doesn't come with a title and the guy wanted about $6K for it.

Ideally, I'd love to have everything digitized into Adobe Acrobat files but there are just thousands and thousands of pages. I'd rather see these become available for the masses instead of sitting on one person's shelf. I was going thru a couple tonight and found overhaul books on 510's, 707's, and even the old smaller cube engines. Zenith and Holley carb rebuild manuals were in there as well. What struck me is that while some of the information in those books may still reside in people's skill sets, a lot of that will disappear in the next 20 years. The information in print may be the only reliable way of making sure future generations have access to it. I'm going to pull everything out in the next few weeks and inventory it. That's going to be a job in itself. I'll post what I have and maybe someone has a viable idea on how to make it available for mass reference.

Christmas came early form me. Got an anonymous call to be a certain place at a certain time and bring an empty truck. Drove away with a pick-up bed literally full of original Mack factory/dealer literature and service books dating back to the 40's. Full service manuals, crash books, parts records, service bulletins, operators manuals, wiring diagrams and on and on and on. Crash books for F models, U Models, R Models, Westerns, MH series, Midliners and more. I'm just starting to really go thru everything. So far, my favorites are 100% mint Operators Manuals for a WS/WL, M Series Off Road Dump truck and the entire service manuals for Mack's fire apparatus line from their heydays in the 50's and 60's. Not sure what this is all worth, but I'm venturing a guess on priceless. All of the cardboard boxes you see are filled with service manuals.

I know that truck well. It is from St. Louis....Bridgeton, MO to be exact. The truck sat for probably 15 years. It's rough. Really rough. I believe it went thru the flood of '93 here in St. Louis on the sunless side of the waterline. It had a short water tank on the back. It went thru Ritchie Brothers auction in St. Louis in December of last year with the water tank for $5k. https://www.rbauction.com/1973-mack-rs795lst-ta?invId=7097816&id=ar Baskin buys the lion's share of their equipment thru RB auctions. They're one of the few other outfits at the RB auctions besides me that are bidding on the old trucks.

Just be sure you are aware of the buyer's premium placed on lots of $2500 or less. The 10% premium catches people off guard sometimes. Ritchie Brothers is decent but you really must be aware of what you're buying. I've seen a lot of old and worn-out items that barely make it across the bidders ramp. RB has a whole staff of helpers that do whatever they can to get the vehicle across the ramp. I've watched them drive trucks across with brakes locked up, parts dragging, etc. Their website usually has a bunch of decent photos of all parts of the item.

On an air starter equipped truck, there is only one 12 volt battery to run the lights and accessories. That single battery lasts forever as there is no super drain or load on the battery to start the truck. Older air starter systems used air starter tank air plumbed to a valve in the cab to activate the air starter. Newer systems usually use a 12v key activated valve. The good thing about the old systems is that they didn't require any juice to start and run the truck. The change mostly came about with the electronic engines that needed 12V power for the ECM anyway. I'll take an air start truck over battery any day. The meth heads steal all of the batteries around here anyway, so its less expensive to run air starters.

Yes, those are Jifflox systems. The converter dolly between the double and triple trailers locked into the rear frame of the tractor to create a tandem. The tractor 5th wheel was held in place by pins that you pulled. The 5th wheel assembly was on 4 rollers and you rolled it forward to the rear of the cab and relocked it. The converter dolly 5th wheel then became the tractor's primary 5th wheel. Different system, but it seemed to work okay. There was no way to relieve the load on the dead axle in the converter though so you could easily hang them up on uneven surfaces such as driveway swails. I have one of their former Jifflox dollies and we have a '87 Freightliner FLC Roadway tractor at the Museum of Transportation that they donated with the Jifflox system on it. The rear wall A/C systems were Red Dot add-on units, most of which were installed after union contract negotiations stipulated a/c in the tractors sometime after they were built, or so I was told by a credibly Roadway Teamster driver. As for the passenger seat, the easiest way to enforce a no rider policy is to not have a seat there in the first place. Like UPS and other linehaul tractors, the tractors were traditionally very very very stripped down with no frills. There were no tachometers in Roadway trucks but the speedometers had markings on the gauge face to tell the driver which gear to be in based on MPH. The trucks have very very few guages and most things were monitored with idiot lights that came on when fluids or pressures were low. If memory serves, there were 4 gauges in the Freightliner FLC from the factory. It had a 6V92TA with a Fuller 9 speed.

Would have to agree with Mackdaddy. The 2011 thru 2013 Mack products are the best vehicles they have offered in years, maybe decades. Powerful, quiet, smooth, ergonomic, etc. I'll be very skeptical of a new family cab concept if it comes about. The CH series cab has refined into a very durable product for the daycab market. If the family cab rumors are true, vulva will be hard pressed to beat it.

Yes it is. I really really really love this truck. It's absolutely perfect for us so I'll be glad whenever we are sure to get the issues behind us. Regardless of this being the issue or not, the things that VMAC is monitoring seem rather overkill in my opinion. Now that we've turned most of it off, I'm hoping we have less trouble.

After having the dealer turn off the speed sensor junk, the truck ran successfully today for a whole shift with no issues. Fingers crossed.

For the Mack service gurus, we had the dealer print out the Vehicle Data and Settings today and turn off some settings related to mph sensor. The Truck VIN is 1M1AA12Y74N155261. Engine SN is 3A0575, VMAC software version is 1MS379B, Datafile is 1MS380BP4. The EECU software version is 1MS368A. The datafile shows a T310 transmission which is the same transmission that is in the truck, verified by physical inspection. Not sure why the build sheet shows a T309. The VMAC had been programmed "YES" to Detect loss of signal from mph sensor, Limit power if no signal from mph sensor, limit power if electrical fault from mph sensor. All of those were changed today to "NO". The VMAC retained its Engine Load Threshold for no mph signal at 40% and Failed mph sensor engine power limit at 50%. We will try the truck again. The dealer is wanting to start leaning towards the EGR valve. I'm not wanting to keep throwing money at parts replacement guesses, especially when no codes are showing for EGR issues.

Thanks guys. Also forgot to add that the dealer put the truck on the dyno and loaded it down. Didn't backfire once.

Here's a shot of the passenger side showing the filter forward of the EGR cooler.

Would broken bolts cause it to run fine and then poorly for no reason? I'm asking because I would think that something mechanical like bolts, studs or physical hardware would cause the issue to be consistent, not random or intermittent to disappear suddenly as fast as it appeared.

The backfire seems to be the exhaust. It's a backfire under fueled conditions. The truck also has the loud burp when the rpms drop such as when shifting or disengaging the transmission and the engine returns to idle. It is throwing a 4-1 code.

Forgot to add, this has never occurred bobtailing, only under moderate load i.e. empty 53' van or up to 50k gross. Seems to like to do it at night versus during the day. That's probably a fluke. Has occurred in ambient air temps from high 60's to low 90's. Like I said, it ran perfectly all day Saturday. Really thought it was fixed. The thread I was referring to about the similar problem on here is :

Thanks, Staxx. My '00 CH612 has the blinking engine malfunction light at high rpm's from the cam position and flywheel position sensor issue. Just a minor annoyance and a very slight derate. This '04 CHN613 with the ASET does not have an engine brake so that's out. The hood springs are fine. This is a very prevalent backfire, sometimes in rapid succession like a machine gun. The 4-1 code is coming on when it is occurring.

OK, still having issues after a number of tries. Truck still backfires underload seemingly at random. The dealer replaced the #3 EUP this past week and replaced the fan belt to cure the 1-8 fan speed code. The EUP solved the 8-3 code, but the fan speed fault still comes and goes at random. The truck ran perfectly for 7 hours saturday grossing around 50k. The dealer worked with Mack and they put in some new data files that makes the truck run with more power than it's ever had. Truck still has the 71 series turbo. Truck has 184,000 original miles. Tonight, its throwing a 4-1 road speed sensor code when it pops and derates. I searched on here and found a thread from 2010 about Lost Pulling Power on a 355/380 ASET. There were two comments that caught my attention. One was about a speed sensor and the other was about transmission programming. The only other thing we found odd with this truck is that it shows having a T309 transmission, but the decal on the HVAC was for a T310. The truck shifts like a 10 speed transmission. Could this all be because of a road speed sensor or the ECM expecting a T309 versus a T310? How do I know which transmission is in it? (I know that sounds incredibly stupid, but I've got to ask)

Having the lights on while listening to an AM station causes it. Our 2011's and 2012's have the exact same issue.