- 4,640
- 28
- 38
- Location
- Cambridge, Ohio
Well, First off let me say thank you to drgreg for all of the help and being my point man, with steel soldiers on the way back. And thanks to the rest of the guys who offered help and advice with the clutch problems.
We got onto Fort McCoy at about 0730, and I met Mike. To me, Mike seems like one of the best GL people I've dealt with. I haven't had the privilege of getting to a lot of different sites but of the ones I have gone through, I would definitely rate Mike at McCoy at the top. He took us back to the truck, and I gave it a quick looking over. It has a little more rust issues than I was hoping for but when you are buying sight unseen, what can you expect. I'm still happy with the truck. It's in real nice shape. The interior is very clean, with almost no rust on the floor pans and a brand new soft top. Motor was rebuild in 94.
The first thing I did was to check the level of the master cylinder, I didn't want to take a chance of getting air into the system if it was low. It was full, as were all of the other fluids. The truck had to have been just serviced before it was turned in. All of the grease fittings had the tell tale signs of fresh grease on the fittings. When I crawled under the truck to check the differentials and the tranny, I noticed another pleasant surprise. Brand new master cylinder, brand new air pack, and a brand new transfer case. Along with a new radiator and brand new ELECTRIC WIPERS
. The rubber wasn't in too bad of shape. There are a couple of new tires and some that have some wear, but they are pretty good, and as much as I'm going to be driving, they'll probably dry rot before I wear them out.
So we left McCoy about 10:00 eastern time. Later than I wanted to but I forgot about the time change so I really didn't get on base until 08:30 eastern time. Truck was running great for the first few hours. We stopped about an hour, maybe an hour and a half after we pulled out to check her over. I shot the hubs with the infrared thermometer, and they were all pretty close in temp. The hottest one was about 140 degrees, with the coolest one being about 110. This is where I first noticed the leak from the bell housing. We changed off drivers and kept going. We went to Rockford IL, and stopped to get some chow and check her over again. Still leaking out the bell housing, after setting about 1/2 hour while we ate, the leak was about the size of a small dinner plate on the ground. We took off again and went to Bloomington, IL where there was a car wreck blocking traffic right at our interchange. Luckily there was an exit right there so we pulled of and changed drivers again, got a drink and went a few miles through town to detour around the wreck. I'm back in the truck at this point, it was still running great, until we got close to Indiana. We were pulling a little grade and there was a bump that jarred the truck and trailer and the clutch slipped on me a little bit. The closer we got to Indiana it happened a couple of more times. I was getting concerned about it so I decided to stop, when I saw the exit for Crawfordsville, IN. My brother had been there many times for work and I knew he could find us a parts store or local wally-world where we could buy some brake parts cleaner to clean up the clutch and bell housing. We stopped, and parked the truck, and headed to the local Autozone to buy a boatload of brake cleaner. After talking to Greg, I decided to let the truck cool for about another 1/2 hour, then I removed the access cover to the bell housing, and cleaned off the tranny and bell housing outsides with the cleaner. I pulled the check plug for the tranny and of course the hot oil was way above the fill plug, so I let it drain down to the level of the plug. Even with all that had leaked out, it was still about a quart too full. Once the level came down I buttoned up the tranny and proceded to clean the clutch really good...as best as I could on the spot. After two cans of brake cleaner up inside of the bell housing, we left the cover off to allow any more oil to run out rather than be splashed up on the clutch. After that it ran like a new truck. We pulled out and headed on down the road. By this time it's now 10:00 p.m., but we kept on truckin. we pulled right on through Indianapolis and continued into Ohio. It was running so good I didn't feel the need to stop until we got into Ohio. When I fueled up again, we checked the truck for leaks, and low and behold there were none. With the tranny level down to a proper level the leak quit. The cleaned clutch was still holding so we kept going. I finally pulled into my house at about 05:45 on Tuesday morning, after having left McCoy at 10:00 on Monday morning. The clutch never slipped again until I got off the highway at my exit to come home. There are some pretty big hills I have to pull to get from the highway to home, but it still wasn't slipping too badly.
That was probably the longest day of my life. I'm here to tell ya, that 20 hours on the road and probably half of it being spent in a deuce will KICK YOUR AS*!!! But it's home and safe in the yard for now.
If I had just drained some of that fluid out of the tranny like I wanted to at McCoy, I would have not had any trouble at all. But I didn't want to make a mess all over the place up there, so I told myself "it will be ok". Take it from me......DO NOT run your tranny fluid more than one knuckle down from the fill plug!!!
Now, here are a few pics for yoou all to drool over. Notice the rifle racks in the truck too
We got onto Fort McCoy at about 0730, and I met Mike. To me, Mike seems like one of the best GL people I've dealt with. I haven't had the privilege of getting to a lot of different sites but of the ones I have gone through, I would definitely rate Mike at McCoy at the top. He took us back to the truck, and I gave it a quick looking over. It has a little more rust issues than I was hoping for but when you are buying sight unseen, what can you expect. I'm still happy with the truck. It's in real nice shape. The interior is very clean, with almost no rust on the floor pans and a brand new soft top. Motor was rebuild in 94.
The first thing I did was to check the level of the master cylinder, I didn't want to take a chance of getting air into the system if it was low. It was full, as were all of the other fluids. The truck had to have been just serviced before it was turned in. All of the grease fittings had the tell tale signs of fresh grease on the fittings. When I crawled under the truck to check the differentials and the tranny, I noticed another pleasant surprise. Brand new master cylinder, brand new air pack, and a brand new transfer case. Along with a new radiator and brand new ELECTRIC WIPERS
. The rubber wasn't in too bad of shape. There are a couple of new tires and some that have some wear, but they are pretty good, and as much as I'm going to be driving, they'll probably dry rot before I wear them out.So we left McCoy about 10:00 eastern time. Later than I wanted to but I forgot about the time change so I really didn't get on base until 08:30 eastern time. Truck was running great for the first few hours. We stopped about an hour, maybe an hour and a half after we pulled out to check her over. I shot the hubs with the infrared thermometer, and they were all pretty close in temp. The hottest one was about 140 degrees, with the coolest one being about 110. This is where I first noticed the leak from the bell housing. We changed off drivers and kept going. We went to Rockford IL, and stopped to get some chow and check her over again. Still leaking out the bell housing, after setting about 1/2 hour while we ate, the leak was about the size of a small dinner plate on the ground. We took off again and went to Bloomington, IL where there was a car wreck blocking traffic right at our interchange. Luckily there was an exit right there so we pulled of and changed drivers again, got a drink and went a few miles through town to detour around the wreck. I'm back in the truck at this point, it was still running great, until we got close to Indiana. We were pulling a little grade and there was a bump that jarred the truck and trailer and the clutch slipped on me a little bit. The closer we got to Indiana it happened a couple of more times. I was getting concerned about it so I decided to stop, when I saw the exit for Crawfordsville, IN. My brother had been there many times for work and I knew he could find us a parts store or local wally-world where we could buy some brake parts cleaner to clean up the clutch and bell housing. We stopped, and parked the truck, and headed to the local Autozone to buy a boatload of brake cleaner. After talking to Greg, I decided to let the truck cool for about another 1/2 hour, then I removed the access cover to the bell housing, and cleaned off the tranny and bell housing outsides with the cleaner. I pulled the check plug for the tranny and of course the hot oil was way above the fill plug, so I let it drain down to the level of the plug. Even with all that had leaked out, it was still about a quart too full. Once the level came down I buttoned up the tranny and proceded to clean the clutch really good...as best as I could on the spot. After two cans of brake cleaner up inside of the bell housing, we left the cover off to allow any more oil to run out rather than be splashed up on the clutch. After that it ran like a new truck. We pulled out and headed on down the road. By this time it's now 10:00 p.m., but we kept on truckin. we pulled right on through Indianapolis and continued into Ohio. It was running so good I didn't feel the need to stop until we got into Ohio. When I fueled up again, we checked the truck for leaks, and low and behold there were none. With the tranny level down to a proper level the leak quit. The cleaned clutch was still holding so we kept going. I finally pulled into my house at about 05:45 on Tuesday morning, after having left McCoy at 10:00 on Monday morning. The clutch never slipped again until I got off the highway at my exit to come home. There are some pretty big hills I have to pull to get from the highway to home, but it still wasn't slipping too badly.
That was probably the longest day of my life. I'm here to tell ya, that 20 hours on the road and probably half of it being spent in a deuce will KICK YOUR AS*!!! But it's home and safe in the yard for now.
If I had just drained some of that fluid out of the tranny like I wanted to at McCoy, I would have not had any trouble at all. But I didn't want to make a mess all over the place up there, so I told myself "it will be ok". Take it from me......DO NOT run your tranny fluid more than one knuckle down from the fill plug!!!
Now, here are a few pics for yoou all to drool over. Notice the rifle racks in the truck too
