G749 preservation

[Mattech]

We lost a good guy last week. Flying Tiger has passed away. He got a lot out of support from the 5 ton guys and the local MVPA club. He'd expect me to let you know. Can we paste a big American flag at half-mast on his monikor??? or something like that?

Gary Zito Obituary - Stony Plain, AB

Celebrate the life of Gary Zito, leave a kind word or memory and get funeral service information care of Parkland Funeral Services.

www.dignitymemorial.com

After seeing Goose the M135 on display at an airshow, Gary couldn't wait to get a truck and let kids crawl all over it. He cared about everyone around him and took care of his people.

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Our last ride together where we grabbed a little video. I apologized for the Low air buzzer in the video.......but Gary would say "If you idiots had the Low air buzzer working properly ALL your videos would start like this. Fix your buzzers!" Gone too fast too early missed already.

I will always remember how he used to tease us all with his gruff Yankee voice, yes it was way to quick and too soon, he is going to be missed very much..

 

[USAFSS-ColdWarrior]

We lost a good guy last week. Flying Tiger has passed away. He got a lot out of support from the 5 ton guys and the local MVPA club. He'd expect me to let you know. Can we paste a big American flag at half-mast on his monikor??? or something like that?

Gary Zito Obituary - Stony Plain, AB

Celebrate the life of Gary Zito, leave a kind word or memory and get funeral service information care of Parkland Funeral Services.

www.dignitymemorial.com

After seeing Goose the M135 on display at an airshow, Gary couldn't wait to get a truck and let kids crawl all over it. He cared about everyone around him and took care of his people.

View attachment 810347 View attachment 810346 View attachment 810345View attachment 810348

Our last ride together where we grabbed a little video. I apologized for the Low air buzzer in the video.......but Gary would say "If you idiots had the Low air buzzer working properly ALL your videos would start like this. Fix your buzzers!" Gone too fast too early missed already.

Thank you for this news, sad as it is.
Our prayers are with all who survive him whether family or his family of friends.

 

[DUUANE]

Sorry to hear of the passing of a friend. From your quote about the buzzer it sounds like he has gone ahead to get a proper pre trip and warm up done. In the garden.

 

[m1010plowboy]

Sorry to hear of the passing of a friend. From your quote about the buzzer it sounds like he has gone ahead to get a proper pre trip and warm up done. In the garden.

It's appreciated. We'd talk every week and solve the world's problems. Missed daily by many and the loss is one of a kind. It was a chance meeting at an airshow and I was so lucky to know him.



We had a chance to visit the memories with a few troops and mvpa seniors at the G749 farm. The fellas set up a real nice camp with immersion heaters for hot water washing, a tent, big fire, just a real cozy distant weekend.



A few fellas showed up that hadn't driven the M135 before so Goose the deuce got passed to someone who knows green iron. It was great watching the truck being wheeled by someone else so I could grab photos. Mattech's Iltis will have some trail stories to tell. It's a real clean example of some Canadian military muscle.

 

[DavyBoySmith]

View attachment 803953

I had a Fire Truck very similar to that when I was a kid...
Mine was a 1953 Ward LaFrance Triple Combination with a gasoline fired 602cid straight 6 Continental motor.
spiffy

 

[metal magnet 1963]

6 hr prime

We cheated and taped dash and important other items so we could get a little more primer preservation to places that might not see removal for a few years.

Prepped the truck with cab open, windows open and with nothing else to do for six hours, started spraying.

If you ever do this, take a patience pill because shooting primer into as many cavities as possible means rolling on the floor for at least two of the six hours. Gravity feed guns don't shoot upside down for some reason.

Endura Delta primer layed down fairly good but the outside temps went to about +3C last night so the shop was cool by the time we shut off the lights at 4:30AM.

Off to see the wizard at his paint shop to mix me some OD.

Solid work. Long term love project.

 

[m1010plowboy]

Well fellas, it happened again. We have another deuce going home, this time to a Veteran.

Thanks to RL from the heart of Canada we found a little history on a few of the trucks. The M211 worked at the Penhold bunker for most of its life. I waited until a fella came along that would keep the truck on the road and as original as possible. He's a highway guy so he swapped in a Duramax / Allison combo and the M211 is back on the road near Penhold. No kidding.



I listed George the 1956 CDN BATUS M135 this summer just in case someone was out there that recognized her importance to Suffield. I had lots of tire kickers and questionaires but only one guy stopped for a look all covid summer long.

This week, I get a call from a retired Veteran who just finished a jeep project and desperately needs another one. George the M135 will soon have a home in Medicine Hat.........30 minutes from Suffield.
https://www.cafconnection.ca/Suffield/In-My-Community/CFB-Suffield-BATUS.aspx

George is a good looker for his age and we know he'll appreciate retirement in the southern climate.



It's cold up here in the winter.

 

[m1010plowboy]

I got to haul a purple thing to the G749 farm today. A buddy is in the moving process and didn't have a place for his thing. I wanted to be sure it looked like she was strapped down.............



.............because you wouldn't want your wheel chock coming off a trailer. We needed a good sturdy wheel chock around the farm.



..........jeeps are nice because you can drive them around in a sea can.



Couldn't pass on the fall moon coming into view. Only four months until March.

 

[m1010plowboy]

I blew it today and forgot to grab a camera battery so all we have is a flip phone potatoe cam jam bam.

Finally found the time to open up the last crate engines and look them over. We found a few good manifolds, carbs, plugs, distributors and a pile of valve covers. The first one still had a tag and paper covering the front. It's better than Christmas.



.....and the other two.




Nesting may be the perfect use for a few of these but the first six are under a roof with two to go.

 

[m1010plowboy]

It's the Marvellum from Massachusetts that was tasked to protect the 'take-out' 302's and 30 years later it's still working.



Now all we need are a couple of strippers in the barn to take off some fine parts and sell the surplus.



That's 10 GMC 302's in the barn if you count Goose and the spare runner. It's a 60 cylinder block party.



Goose is finally nesting again waiting for an ice racing tune up. It's so nice to have the short exhaust stack instead of unbolting the towering CDN stack the CDN trucks come with.
Thanks short stack, we're ready for winter.

 

[m1010plowboy]

Are you thinking of pulling that old 6x6 out of the bush to see if you can get it running?

Did you hear, ...... if you pour marvel oil, a mix of brake fluid and acetone, diesel fuel or other magic mix in the spark plug holes for a soak that 'she might loosen up'.



This 1st engine came into the 1st Service Battalion in 1984. They did a compression check, obviously put a few new parts on it for trouble shooting then stuffed it in a box.

What do ya think folks, is she a keeper?



The oil on the outside of the engine was partly caused by the valve cover gasket installation missing the mark. Mattech, the frozen temperature engine strippen' motivation guy, discovered the valve cover gasket installing fella was a little sloppy.



Part of the reason she had low compression on number 2 showed up in the head gasket.



There's still a ton of optimism with a few of the engines having rebuild tags that say they haven't been bored out. The new or slightly used parts we're finding are a bonus.



This came out of one of the parts blocks. Can someone explain what was going on in the engine when this happened?

 

[G744]

Perhaps someone tried to bar over that engine when the oil pump was frozen?

DDG

 

[USMC 00-08]

Are all of those engines on metal frames? I'd be interested in some of the frames to put engines on, so don't scrap them.

 

[Another Ahab]

Did you hear, ...... if you pour marvel oil, a mix of brake fluid and acetone, diesel fuel or other magic mix in the spark plug holes for a soak that 'she might loosen up'.

A pretty loose formula there, plowboy, but you're half-kidding anyway, right?!

You're sayin any petroleum product and hope for the best?

 

[m1010plowboy]

The tags are a wonder of time. One rebuild tag says 1969 with no bore indicated. Does that mean the engine ran from 1954 to 1969 with little or no wear.........or was this truck parked on crates for Civil Defence preparations, like many G749's?



Some more block and part numbers.



The beefy, "Made in the USA" Champion plugs sure make the later plugs look cheap.



The plan is that I send parts home with my buddies and they tell their wives, "plowboy needs a bunch of parts worked on"......then they spend time in the garage away from the wife and their wife will never find out the parts aren't for me. Feels like the Flintstones Water Buffalo Lodge technique but it's working so far.

 

[m1010plowboy]

A pretty loose formula there, plowboy, but you're half-kidding anyway, right?!

You're sayin any petroleum product and hope for the best?

The jokes on me because in earlier posts you will find I spent some time this summer working on this old girl. Poured the magic fluid in the holes, pulled the covers, started turning the engine using hydraulics on the torus,......all that stuff we do when we see potential. I'm anticipating the engine looks similar on the inside so I had to poke some fun at my optimism. There's all kinds of magic fluid on the list of engine lovers but when they're this bad........well, I'm not sure the galvanic corrosion hasn't ruined the blocks. Any thoughts on the cylinder wall condition after seeing the head off?



We do have another mystery that is right up the alley of an electrical fella. Some of the coils were in backwards, wired wrong and it wasn't just one or two. How do these things run with the coil reversed?



Meanwhile, the engine stands are plentiful, I know where we can get a bunch more, with engines. We started to salvage hardware off the crates so they can be rebuilt. Send plenty money....we keep digging.



Valve trains and heads look salvageable, Mattech is starting to take inventory of surplus and usable parts.

 

[m1010plowboy]

Talk is cheap.....but it's still good to dream!

 

[m1010plowboy]

Have you ever been in a car that does 13 seconds in the quarter mile? It's a kick in the chest if you're in the passenger seat. We're not sure what the M211 does yet but I lost my breathe today with Betty, the Whistlin' Duramax Deuce. He drove the duramax through the original TC ...for now ....with the original diff' ratios...... and the 6 speed pulls hard.......scary spin the tires hard to 87......I wouldn't go faster then 87.

 

[G744]

Cool deal with the Duramax.

There was an engineer/crop harvester (several patents licensed to GM) in Yuma, AZ that repowered 211's with 502 Caddy motors and extended frames to accommodate 20' box beds for field harvesting.

Could slog thru muddy fields like nothing else available at the time.

DG

 

[m1010plowboy]

Cool deal with the Duramax.

There was an engineer/crop harvester (several patents licensed to GM) in Yuma, AZ that repowered 211's with 502 Caddy motors and extended frames to accommodate 20' box beds for field harvesting.

Could slog thru muddy fields like nothing else available at the time.

DG

This photo showed up maybe ten years ago....I think it was a 502.....interesting.



The Duramax allowed this old 55 Army truck to hit the highway and get back to its old military base 65 years later. The truck served Penhold Alberta from 1955 to 1979 and getting it back to the base in 2021 was all part of the plan.



This first picture was at the entrance to the base and now demolished Provincial bunker that we talk about. This truck spent 24 years around here so we just let it take us to different spots and when it stopped, we took pictures. https://civildefencemuseum.ca/penhold-ab-diefenbunker-demo




Mikey Mcbryan had his Plane Savers toy sitting by Buffalo air on the Penhold base and it was one of the stopping points to recreate some photos.



The base "Betty" worked at in 1955.