Construction company that do road work would grab that quick if you put sprayers on the front a one one the side. they run in the 30K $ for a good used one.
So I picked up the fueler beast yestersay. Well, it took me a trip and a couple days of fixing leaking brake issues and adding a solar charger for the batteries at the yard (a parallel teo battery 12V system). Man they have lines of Het trucks out there sitting. Anyways, these 950 commercial batteries are a must. I tried winging it thinking two 500 batteries would be fine, nope. The thing would barely move the cylinder with no turn over possible. I had to go back with the cores and return the cheap new batteries with better ones. The dude at NAPA even told me the Marine 750 ones were too weak.
i could not fix a fuel line leak issue that was way behind (and occurs with engine running) and a de-beaded tire. I tried the ether thingy but it was too cold and would condensate more than vaporize. I was afraid to catch the tire on fire given rubber is very hard if not impossible to stop burning once in a smoldering state. I wanted to try some butane but then saw no one ever doing it, so nah. I did not want to create a bomb.
The thing started after a couple tries, priming the fuel pump prior and some ether. However it stopped after 5-10 min running. Then it would start and then stop Immediately. A cool off period of about 30 min would let it go again for 5 10 min.
There were a couple dead gauges (speedometer and water pump pressure). I thought maybe there was no coolant. But coolant was strangely brand new and full in there, a nice fluo green. There is no temperature gauge on that thing , surprisingly. So I thought maybe a sensor senses heating and it shuts it down automatically. “I’m started” getting worried.
I decide to take it out and stop every 10 min, see what happens. Did not make it out the gate. Frustrated I tied the SV valve open with a zip tie and ran the thing ready to check if it would boil over or something after 15 min. Nothing. Coolant still cool to lukewarm. So I decided to drive it the mountains for the 40 mile trip to the storage unit blasting the heater (quite cheap in the Reno/Cali border area at $35 a month for a 40 footer). The heater was a nice hottish but not scalding. Upon arriving the coolant was still lukewarm and no apparent problems I could detect.
Hopefully just a nothing burger. The gauges tended to flicker, so there might be an electrical issue going on. After a while driving, when idling, the oil pressure would drop significantly, gassing it up a bit cleared the low oil warning. Not sure what that is either. The oil level was full before I left and staid that way for the first 15-20 min driving.
I made a mistake of driving it off with the caging bolts on. They got loose and one of them fell. The bad leakey brake I had plugged staid tight of course, however. For the life of me I could not find the air tanks to the brakes either. This thing has at least 5 air tanks you have to crawl under and find. I finally found them as they were at the rear. I thought this was not really safe in case someone rear ends you. However, after emptying them, while the brake pedal became predictably ineffective, the caging bolts were still loose. Maybe they did not catch the notch or are slow to come back in. Hopefully I did not break anything.
All in all it was quite a frustrating adventure at first, but once driving it off successfully it felt the effort was well worth it. It was one of those moments of realizing where “business frustrations” and risk taking with a plausible reward can be very gratifying in fact, and to not take it so hard. I felt like I was doing another of those DART missions we trained for in the Army, and it was fun. I was not getting quite shot at except trying to dodge getting stopped and impounded for having a bad tire and a bad brake line on same tire. Yes, California has a border patrol, except it is not at the border with Mexico, but at the border with the rest of America with a mandatory All Vehicles inspection gate! Not even Florida Australia like agricultural super conscious is like that.
Anyways, the Cummins 6CT engine ran very very smooth and it all ran great. It just has some head scratching issues and what not that need fixed. As the guys at the gate said, all these trucks actually run! “We just say they do not so as not to mislead the customer, because technically they Are not in military running condition given the leaks and what not, red Xed what not”.
.
