Olivetroad

That engine really "cools up" that truck! Did you have to do much for the vacuum booster to work for the brakes?

Sharp looking Dodge! Where is the photo we all want to see of the cummins under the hood?

That is a good Missouri wife! Mine always puts herself last as well. My five kids have your wife included now in their little litany of prayers before bed - keep your chin up!

I have found a lot of really good oversized hand tools at some industrial factory auctions. I buy all I can that are name brand. When I get the pile home, I keep what I need and take the rest to a local tool store that sells used tools. He gives me half of what he sells them for and I usually come out with a bunch of free tools when it all washes out. I bought a used cargo trailer last week at a utility auction. I pulled it home and while checking it out, I noticed hanging on the inside on a hook was a brand new Ridgid 48 inch aluminum pipe wrench - JACKPOT! I try and keep about three dozen of 9/16 combination wrenches hanging around the shop - with three sons "helping" me in the shop all the time, I tend to go through a lot of them! I am just glad they do not sprout out in the fields.

My old truck has a good working set of shutters. I went ahead when I replaced the engine and replaced all the air lines including the shutter ones. They seem to work fine, but we only haul logs with this truck a load or two a week and if it gets down around zero, I tend to stay in the shop and keep warm! I have too different fans that will bolt up to the used water pump I am installing. One is a five blade and one is a six. Which should I use and why?

All it did to the radiator is kind of shave the bug goo and black paint off - didn't hurt a thing. It put a nasty gash in the side of the power steering tank, but neither leak so as soon as I get a new fan and pump on, we should be ready to drive it out of the shop. I thought the belts would be bad, but they still look new. Should I go back with a clutch fan or do I use one that spins all the time off a older R model I have? The one off the original engine won't fit.

I have another one with the same cab that is a 1964. We bought it from a neighbor that had painted it Allis Chalmers orange and it has a big AC decal on the hood. We use it to spread lime. It has some three foot tall floater tires and with it loaded, you have to start out going down hill because the gear ratio is not low enough to take off from flat ground! I never thought the clutch would last as long as it has! You can take a full grown mechanic along with you when you go to work on these trucks and both of you can fit to walk around the engine inside the compartment.

Check out this old Ford stub nose grain truck I am selling on ebay - I wish someone would buy it to restore, it is really a straight old truck. http://cgi.ebay.com/ebaymotors/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&item=330501168914&viewitem=&sspagename=STRK:MESELX:IT#ht_2119wt_1196

The fan and water pump shaft are missing in the photo, but a few minutes before, when the engine was first fired up, they were in place. Right when we were in the "High Five" position after it started up so well, we heard a loud bang and the fan went flying off the engine and embedded itself in the space between the frame holding the front motor mount and the bottom of the radiator. It is hard to tell from the second photo, but the water pump shaft had an old crack in it that you could tell from the rust and it just broke off - I am just glad it went down and not out the side! Now I need a new fan and water pump. I have an old R model out back that may have what I need. I DID NOT FORGET TO INSTALL THE FAN - it just looked that way. My middle son accused me of not tightening something down. I am going to tighten him down.

I finally finished installing a 1986 EM6 engine into my 1971 DM600 log truck to replace a ENDT673 that had given up the ghost. It cranked over maybe twice and it fired right up! It runs great and thanks to David in North Carolina, it was not too hard to convert. But guess what is missing from the front of the engine???????

Check out this tub grinder with a Mack engine - Johnny Cash says you can make anything fit with an AAA-dapp-tter kit. http://cgi.ebay.com/Lane-L-3610-Tub-Grinder-Wood-Waste-Recycling-/370408583391?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item563e1270df#ht_1101wt_698

The Diamond T yard dog had some sort of crazy air operated throttle. It had been several years since it had been out on the road and the air system had more leaks than a pasta strainer. The amount you pushed down on the foot feed to go a certain speed depended on how much air pressure was in the tank at any given second and it would vary a lot. Lots of fun backing 48 foot trailers into a hole with less than a foot on each side. These new Macks with the bulldog intact on the hood I see on the highway are a dream compared to the junk we drove around back then. 250 horsepower was a "big engine" and everything had the chrome removed and painted *%$# brown.

I used to drive for UPS while I was going to school (there were still a couple of old Diamond T's as yard dogs)and we had a package car one time that was wrecked on the interstate. I had to go help move the packages to another truck and then I helped tow it back to the yard. A few months later after all the muckty-mucks came and looked it over, we robbed the engine, wheels & tires, and a bunch of misc parts from it. We ground off all the numbers on the body and frame, and we burned off all the decals with a torch. Then we hauled it to a local scrap yard and we had to stand there in the rain and take photos of it as it was sheared into pieces, smashed into a bale, and then loaded on a trailer to take to the smelter. The funny thing was, for the next few weeks, anytime anyone in the whole midwest region had a customer call and complain about a missing package, they just told them it had been in the wreck and was lost/burned up/destroyed/stolen or whatever. One of the clerks added up later the number of packages that were supposed to have been on that load and that little package car was carrying the same load as a 53 foot trailer!

I have a Lincoln "Buzz Box" stick welder that is older than I am and it works great. Because of that, I wanted to buy a new Lincoln Mig welder, but I ended up with a Miller because at least around here, parts/service is better. I bought a Millermatic 210 and I love it. It will weld thin sheet metal and does a good job on 1/2 plate as well. I bought my wife a new van recently and so I got permission to buy a Hypertherm powermax 1000 plasma cutter that I had been slobbering over for some time. I use that thing all the time. It sure makes a smooth cut if you are going to reweld something like a truck frame. Stay away from the shielded wire units, spend the money and get a good gas shielded Mig and you will never regret it. I did have to get a second shielding gas tank for it though - I always seemed to run out on a Saturday when the shop was closed!

It was the Baken-ets brand of pork rinds that did her in. Is that an advertising shot for them?

Okay - Thanks for the info - I am heading to look at them, I will see what they really have under the hoods ----

Now I know how you got to be a CERTIFIED know it all - as they say on the game shows - Good Answer!

Can someone tell me the difference between a DM685S and a DM686S ? They are both supposed to be 300 horsepower.

That new paint sure looks good - what is under the hood? I saw a couple of retired St. Louis Mack firetrucks a few years ago at a fire department owned storage lot located off Goodfellow, just south of Natural Bridge. Did this come from there?

I also have used them before and I thought they were great to deal with as well. I have found since then that Hager Radiator in Columbia, Mo is quite a bit cheaper for the same things and do just as good of work. Hagar's does a lot of work on radiators that are shipped in and then they ship them back out and it has still been cheaper even with the shipping. I also have never found anyone named Hagar around there. Maybe radiator folks just kind of clog up and then dissolve away.

I had a 1980 White Road Boss with a 350 big cam Cummins (855 block) years ago and I lost all power one evening pulling a lowboy. I replaced the fuel filters and no improvement. An old hand got on the radio and said to take the plug out of the top of the injection pump and remove/replace the small filter under the plug. It ran like a champ after I did that. If I remember correctly, it was just a stud looking thing on the top of the injection pump that unscrewed and there was a little screen filter under it. He was suprised mine still had the filter, he said most drivers threw them away soon after the truck left the dealer lot. I went ahead and replaced it, but the engine had two filters before the pump that should be catching everything. Yours may be different, hope this helps-

David - The nice little stack of 24 inch wheels and rims I bought for you at the auction are sitting right here. The last time I walked by, they whispered that they were hoping to get sent back into action! I told them to calm down, they don't realize what it could mean for them to have to haul containers in the Carolinas. Hanging out on a cattle farm ain't such a bad gig. I noticed that one of the wheels has a 25 inch tire and it had a spacer rim inside it for when it was used on a truck with 24 inch wheels - was that some kind of off highway thing? I have never seen it on a highway truck. Several of the wheels are Euclid puke green. Strange stuff!

Chicago politics and Washington politics, they all are a bunch of crooks.

Keep your stinkin' mitts off my hard earned money!!!

That stimulus plan won't do me a whole lot of good. My little town's KFC just closed down. I don't miss the smell, but the cole slaw was hard to beat. You know it is about time it closed or was remodeled when you slide across the floor on a layer of decade old grease. I think the closing involved the health department. When those watermelons ripen, will they be special flavored like Mad Dog 20/20?