- 307
- 2
- 18
- Location
- York, PA
Slight problem while recovering a pristine M105 this week at Mechanicsburg. Hooked up fine to one of my Deuce's. I was actually able to maneuver the trailer by hand from behind abother trailer out to the drive to hook it up. No help needed. Everything seemed fine. The new LED lights worked. Everything seemed to work fine. Front landing gear swivled almost too easily. Everything was going great and looked like I would be able to make my holiday lunch at noon. Or so I thought.
About 6 miles from home the truck started loosing power on the highway (I 83). I was going up a hill, so didn't think too much of it. This particular truck while great on the flat, gets lost going up the slightest grade with the slightest load. Even an empty 105. Anyway, topped the hill and started down the other side but couldn't get any speed, so knew something was up and pulled over. Luckily I was able to hit the grassy area next to a wide shoulder of a long offramp. So was not too close to the main travel lanes. As soon as I came to a stop, I saw a bunch of smoke coming from the back end. Oh crap!!! Hoped out and the smoke was coming from the brakes of both sides of the trailer wheels. Didn't know quite what to do, so unhooked the air and tried to move it further off the road, but now everything was really locked up. Just dragged the trailer about 25 feet to get it in a better spot. Got out of the truck and went back to the trailer to look under. Now the right side (passenger) caught fire. Not bad, just some little flames, but oh crap!!! I have a fire extinguisher, but thought I couldn't get to it (another long story) so started trying to flag someone down. One of the major construction outfits has a yard right next to where I was stopped and I was trying to flag one of the employees down to get an extinguisher. No luck. Went back to check on the fire and it had gone out on it's own. PHEW.... So now what? Well, I called my faithful backup (aka: dad) who is long retired and happened to be sick and I ended up unhooking the 105 at the spot and going home with the deuce to grab another construction trailer that i just bought. It's not adapted to the deuce yet, so I had to park the deuce.
We weren't sure how to get a 105 onto the construction trailer when the 105 had frozen wheels/hubs/brakes. We had a cable puller, but those things aren't all that strong. So decided my dad would drive the suburban with the trailer and I would take my LR Disco II with a 12k lb winch and might be able to winch it on with the rover. I thought I would have enough room on the off ramp to do a 3 point turn against flow of traffic to load the trailer. So we headed out. Oh, the construction trailer is not mated to the rover yet. When I hit the brakes in the rover, the trailer brakes lock up.
When we got back to the trailer, everything was done smoking, but things were still hot. BUT, we could wheel the trailer by hand again. The wheels were not frozen. That was amazing. As cooked as everything was, I though sure they would be looked until I took everything apart. So that made getting it on the other trailer that much easier. Which it was considering my dad was sick and I had to do it all by hand with the cable puller (didn't want to maneuver the rover if I didn't have to for saftey reasons). Chained and strapped it down and headed home (but still missed my lunch). We decided to still load it in case it happened again and we weren't in a great spot to pull over.
Now we needed to get it off the trailer, again by hand. This is where my JD 350B crawler loader would have come in handy, but it's at another spot. So we were left to get it off by hand. Ultimately I decided to exercise the winch on the rover and it winched it down just fine.
Pics attached of some of the recovery including the chared hubs/wheels on the inside. It is a shame because this thing was rebuilt in '06 and never saw service. Now it's got charred wheels on the inside and who knows what kind of damage. Any thoughts on that? Will take everything apart in due time to see what happened. I can't think of why it would roll by hand then lock up. Not sure how I could have avoided this since everything seemed fine. Crap happens I guess. At least the fire went out and didn't do any damage to the tires. Those on fire adds a whole new dimension to this event.
About 6 miles from home the truck started loosing power on the highway (I 83). I was going up a hill, so didn't think too much of it. This particular truck while great on the flat, gets lost going up the slightest grade with the slightest load. Even an empty 105. Anyway, topped the hill and started down the other side but couldn't get any speed, so knew something was up and pulled over. Luckily I was able to hit the grassy area next to a wide shoulder of a long offramp. So was not too close to the main travel lanes. As soon as I came to a stop, I saw a bunch of smoke coming from the back end. Oh crap!!! Hoped out and the smoke was coming from the brakes of both sides of the trailer wheels. Didn't know quite what to do, so unhooked the air and tried to move it further off the road, but now everything was really locked up. Just dragged the trailer about 25 feet to get it in a better spot. Got out of the truck and went back to the trailer to look under. Now the right side (passenger) caught fire. Not bad, just some little flames, but oh crap!!! I have a fire extinguisher, but thought I couldn't get to it (another long story) so started trying to flag someone down. One of the major construction outfits has a yard right next to where I was stopped and I was trying to flag one of the employees down to get an extinguisher. No luck. Went back to check on the fire and it had gone out on it's own. PHEW.... So now what? Well, I called my faithful backup (aka: dad) who is long retired and happened to be sick and I ended up unhooking the 105 at the spot and going home with the deuce to grab another construction trailer that i just bought. It's not adapted to the deuce yet, so I had to park the deuce.
We weren't sure how to get a 105 onto the construction trailer when the 105 had frozen wheels/hubs/brakes. We had a cable puller, but those things aren't all that strong. So decided my dad would drive the suburban with the trailer and I would take my LR Disco II with a 12k lb winch and might be able to winch it on with the rover. I thought I would have enough room on the off ramp to do a 3 point turn against flow of traffic to load the trailer. So we headed out. Oh, the construction trailer is not mated to the rover yet. When I hit the brakes in the rover, the trailer brakes lock up.
When we got back to the trailer, everything was done smoking, but things were still hot. BUT, we could wheel the trailer by hand again. The wheels were not frozen. That was amazing. As cooked as everything was, I though sure they would be looked until I took everything apart. So that made getting it on the other trailer that much easier. Which it was considering my dad was sick and I had to do it all by hand with the cable puller (didn't want to maneuver the rover if I didn't have to for saftey reasons). Chained and strapped it down and headed home (but still missed my lunch). We decided to still load it in case it happened again and we weren't in a great spot to pull over.
Now we needed to get it off the trailer, again by hand. This is where my JD 350B crawler loader would have come in handy, but it's at another spot. So we were left to get it off by hand. Ultimately I decided to exercise the winch on the rover and it winched it down just fine.
Pics attached of some of the recovery including the chared hubs/wheels on the inside. It is a shame because this thing was rebuilt in '06 and never saw service. Now it's got charred wheels on the inside and who knows what kind of damage. Any thoughts on that? Will take everything apart in due time to see what happened. I can't think of why it would roll by hand then lock up. Not sure how I could have avoided this since everything seemed fine. Crap happens I guess. At least the fire went out and didn't do any damage to the tires. Those on fire adds a whole new dimension to this event.
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