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A jarheads first deuce Recovery/retreival

olverama

New member
11
0
0
Location
North Edwards, CA
I have been lurking around the site for a while and just picked up my first Deuce. The plan is to "bob" it and “flip” it. My plan is to take my cut of the money and pick up another one to keep for myself.
A little back story on me… I’m active duty Marine Corps (retiring this year) and stationed in California. I have been into air-cooled VW’s since the mid 80’s and haven’t really owned anything larger than that (13mm sockets are what I’m used too!)….
Anyway… a buddy of mine got me thinking about getting a deuce a while ago and recently, I finally decided to do it…
I saw that there was a good auction going on GL at Sharpe Army Depot, French Camp CA in December. Being as Sharpe is about 5 hours away we just used the pic’s for reference and went in sight unseen. Having never done this it wasn’t exactly the smoothest transaction but being a quick study, I put the wheels in motion.
I won the auction on 12/10/2010…. Figured out that I needed to submit a EUC on the 14th…. That same day my EUC was sent to Battle Creek…. With anal attention to detail and going above and beyond I received my approval on 01/18/2011. After looking at numerous posts on the site, it looks like we had a great turnaround!
Me and my buddy set our appointment. We decided to drive out to recover this thing up and drive it back the 5+ hours.
Our day came and we set out with a small array of tools, a spare tire to replace the flat trailer tire, brake fluid, oil, two fresh deuce batteries, a 5gl diesel can, and a can of Seafoam
It was actually in better condition than I had originally thought…. but the guy who was escorting us, mentioned that it had been sitting in that spot for almost a year, and who knows what kind of actual condition it was really in…
Upon first inspection of the area, I noticed a nice clean slab of asphalt under the deuce… I took this as a good sign as either this thing doesn’t leak, or… it had no fluids… ha-ha…
We popped the hood to see that this thing was well taken care of…. Fluids were at good levels, though we did need about a quart of oil. Yes… we checked the brake fluid too….
We proceed to the battery compartment to find that there were actually two batteries there… this was a pleasant surprise as I had only borrowed the batteries that we brought. (I haven’t put a charge to them yet, but I firmly believe that they will be able to hold a charge….)
Batteries now installed, we inspect the fuel tank to find that it’s got a fair amount of fuel… Bonus!
My buddy hops in flips the switch… hits the button… and she starts right up!
Everything is going perfectly… but I know the glitch is coming… I just don’t know when.
We take the deuce over to the yard where the trailer is parked.
We now take the spare that we brought and swap it out with the nasty flat that was on the trailer. We then have the guy with the fork lift pick it up and move to so we can hook up…
Everything is going great.. Hooked up, lights work and ready. At this point I add the can of Seafoam and the 5 gallons of diesel and we’re ready to roll.
My buddy starts to pull out in the deuce when I notice that the trailer wheels are not moving! I flag him to stop to we can release the brakes…. That’s when we notice that we DID release the brakes.
You may notice the skid marks in the bottom left pic where is still attached to the truck!!
We proceed to try to rock it back and forth to get it to break but nothing is working. I spray a compound in to help release it, we even brake out the tools to completely unhood the brake cables just to make sure it wasn’t catching…. Nope…. These things were completely fused together… time for plan B.
Notice the forklift putting the trailer in the bed of the deuce...
deuce loaded up and we're on our way
Over all she did well in traffic though the fog was a pain in the a$$.
She ran beautifully until we stopped for fuel. After fueling up she wouldn’t start.. we were in the midst of some trouble shooting when a trucker asked if we needed some help. We had him pull start us…. About 10 feet later we were started and on our way… she continued to run awesome all the way back. We’ll be hitting the starting problem weekend after next, as we’re both completely busy this weekend…
I’ll keep the updates coming along with some pics.
 

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SMOKEWAGON66

New member
1,144
21
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Location
California
Right on dude...congrats on a safe ride back with your truck. i can see by your location that your only about 45 min away from me...and i work due south of you on base. if you need a hand with your truck or something, let me know. be glad to help out...
 

daddy2

Member
276
3
18
Location
Easton, PA
Welcome to Steel Soldiers. I was proud as a peacock when I bought mine. I spent a year at pendleton. Can't imagine having spent enouph time in to retire from the corp. I had half a head of grey hair with the five I put in HA HA.
 

olverama

New member
11
0
0
Location
North Edwards, CA
being extremely busy, we didnt have but a couple hours to do anything to it, so we just unbolted the trailer bed from its frame and used a fork lift to lift the two pieces out seperately.... here's a pic just prior to us pulling it out...

we should be making some major advances next week...
 

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chvyking

New member
4
0
0
Location
Martinez, CA
Nice deuce took a look at some of the deuces at french camp couple months ago they were nice condition. Good luck with the project. I would like to get one just don`t have the room yet.
 

olverama

New member
11
0
0
Location
North Edwards, CA
Right on dude...congrats on a safe ride back with your truck. i can see by your location that your only about 45 min away from me...and i work due south of you on base. if you need a hand with your truck or something, let me know. be glad to help out...
Where do you work on base?

we've finally got it bobbed. I just had to pick up two new batteries ($400+ ouch!) I'll be picking up the driveshaft this week. Im still having no luck getting it started, though Ive got someone coming out tonight to help figure it out with me.
 
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