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Christmas came early


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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.

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That is a great find and yeah putting a price on that would be easy for someone that was into recycling but Im going to bet its a tad higher to guys like us, if you have any Superliner stuff your willing to part with, especially in the 85 range let me know Im willing to give it a good home, I actually have a Mack shelf on my bookshelf in the office.

"Any Society that would give up a little LIBERTY to gain a little SECURITY will Deserve Neither and LOSE BOTH" -Benjamin Franklin

"If your gonna be STUPID, you gotta be TOUGH"

"You cant always get what you want, but if you try sometimes you get what you need"

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Yes I would say Christmas came early to you. I hope you can put those manuals up high enough that no water or any kind of damage can happen to them. And maybe guard them with your life. I have an armed guard license and badge attached to a uniform if you consider hiring one. At least hope you'll give me first dibbs at the job.

LOL

mike

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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.

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I think you are heading down the right track by trying to digitize the info so we can all share in lieu of it ending up on one person's book shelf. You may need to solve some copyright issues, but it would be great to make out of print info available to all of us.

I have been involved in a large scale digitizing project at work. It is not that big of a deal if you can find a reliable contractor to do the work for you. My vendor charged a per piece price based on the total amount we expected to digitize. (Ours was well over 100,000 documents).

I would advise you to look around your area to see what is available as opposed to trying to do the work yourself.

Having said that I would be more than willing to pay for a digitized copy of anything to do with the 510 engine or A model fire apparatus. If you don't digitize it I'd still be interested.

Money, sex, and fire; everybody thinks everyone else is getting more than they are!

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"Be careful what you wish for - it may comes true".

It's really a treasure but you have to pay attention a lot for.

The call of that sort means you are well-known person. And the income means that it's good.

If you'll need any help for digitizing I'd be glad to add my pair of cents.

Vlad

Никогда не бывает слишком много грузовиков! leversole 11.2012

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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.

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Ran into similiar with some old crawler manuals I would bet all those books are public domain with no longer being under copyright Take the copy right numbers and search them in this data base. Even if you did find one that was somehow renewed all you have to do is get written permission to copy it for forum members.

http://collections.stanford.edu/copyrightrenewals/bin/page?forward=home

Works published with a proper copyright notice from 1923 through 1963 had an initial copyright term of 28 years, which could be renewed for a second term. Works published with a proper copyright notice from 1964 through 1977 also had an initial term of 28 years, with a renewal term of 67 years. You can also contact the Copyright Office in Washington (202-707-3000, or www.loc.gov/copyright/), due to the type of material they may not even fall under this regulation.

disclaimer- i am no lawyer but have taken some business law classes

Robert

"I reject your reality and substitute my own."

 

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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.

I doubt seriously if Don and the Mack Museum will "toss" the material. I could be wrong but I have never known them to "toss" anything.

Copyright will likely be an issue. You may need to get permission from Mack/Volvo. Contact the Mack Museum and talk to Don.

Again, nice collection of material!

Ken

PRR Country and Charter member of the "Mack Pack"

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