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What have you done to your FMTV or LMTV today

Cgray

Member
80
21
8
Location
Lake Geneva, WI
Added a new Block heater. Didn’t drain the fluid. Simply lifted cab, laid out all necessary tools (pry bay, hammer, vice grips and the block heater). I then punched the freeze plug sideways with a few swift hits to get it almost wedged out, then cramped on with vice grips in one hand and block heater in other. Pulled the plug and immediately inserted heater. I lost about 1/2 a quart of coolant. Tightened the bolt head, zip tied the line and tested. I ended up topping off the overflow tank and called it a day. Tested about 4 hrs later. Best $80 and 20 minutes of my life invested in this project yet.

16* outside and it started up in about 3 seconds compared to about 3 cranks of 20-30 seconds before the install.

HIGHLY RECOMMEND THIS.

Thanks to to everyone who put up instructions and links to the block heater.
 

Bill Nutting

Well-known member
Steel Soldiers Supporter
573
1,284
93
Location
Chesterfield, Mi.
I put a block heater on my M934. When I plug into a ground fault outlet, it trips the outlet. Turns out the neutral is shorted to ground. It works as long as I plug into a non-gfi outlet. I Bought it at NAPA. When I tried to call the manufacturer to ask if it was made this way intentionally ( can’t believe it was), they didn’t call me back. They’re probably trying to figure out what neutral and ground is... ���� I will fix it this summer...
 

Third From Texas

Well-known member
2,766
6,498
113
Location
Corpus Christi Texas
Pulled all the bed cover polls. I was going to just sand them but the manufacturer must have used saltwater at a primer. I ended up taking a wire wheel to all of the poles and braces. I also made up four more flat bars and welded pieces of tube to each end (I only had two on the truck and water had been pooling in the canopy (I took it down this winter to prevent any further stretching).

Tomorrow I'll Ospho everything really good and then slap a couple coats of Rustoleum on them (looks like it'll be 80° again tomorrow). I'm also going to make some extensions for the base of all six vertical poles to raise the canopy up about 4-6" and allow for some headroom inside.
 

f8617

New member
106
7
0
Location
Northeast/AL
Steel soldier goes to church -- one LMTV's sin & redemption?
If Sunday school discussions stray onto the topic of the affects of an EMP strike (i.e. killing everyone's car), don't offer the solution that everyone should own a military vehicle, if you don't want everyone to laugh, because on the prior Sunday, your LMTV sat in middle of the church's very small parking lot, were it died (i.e. tree trimming good deed ends poorly when LMTV refuses to run...due to very small crack in fuel line, which I repaired the following Monday).
Perhaps by providence, redemption arrived Tuesday, when the LMTV rescues the choir director's loaded hay rig from a wet field.
20190223_125912.jpg20190226_174952.jpg
 

mkcoen

Well-known member
Steel Soldiers Supporter
5,637
381
83
Location
Spring Branch, TX
If Sunday school discussions stray onto the topic of the affects of an EMP strike (i.e. killing everyone's car), don't offer the solution that everyone should own a military vehicle,
Sorry to be the bearer of bad news but your M1078 isn't hardened against an EMP strike. What you need is a pre-60's vehicle like the M37 that doesn't rely on so much electronic junk.
 

snowtrac nome

Well-known member
1,674
139
63
Location
western alaska
the hmmwv tcm sits in a hardened case, I don't know about the tcm on the lmtv I suspect so, One of the reasons the military alternators is so massive is because it is emp protected, I tink the a-0 model I have is pretty well protected I don't know about the newer models.
 

Third From Texas

Well-known member
2,766
6,498
113
Location
Corpus Christi Texas
Anything with a PCB board is suspect and also needs to be protected from EMP, etc. I don't know about the transmission but I suspect the CTIS would be a goner in any case.

Not that would hamper the vehicle once it was unplugged and the tires aired up.

Edit: the idea behind most "EMP *Resistant*" items is basically just "put it in a steel box and isolate what you want protected from touching the sides"
 
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Awesomeness

Well-known member
Steel Soldiers Supporter
1,813
1,518
113
Location
Orlando, FL
So, the spec sheets I have seen hav HAEMP hardened listed on them.
What does that actually mean?
It means that the truck is designed to withstand a High Altitude ElectroMagnetic Pulse (HAEMP). One of the secondary methods of nuclear attack is to detonate the missile high in the atmosphere, not on the ground like in an attack designed for physical destruction. The resulting EMP is then able to reach a significantly large geographical area (e.g. most of the USA in one shot).

The EMP generates a rapidly changing magnetic field, which in turn generates a massive elecrical current anywhere that it passes through a "coil of wire" (or other analogous things like circuits with traces in a loop, power lines running in a loop around your city, solenoid coils, transformer coils, etc.). The specific wavelength of EMP expected to result from such an HAEMP attack is especially devastating to smaller-sized electronic devices (such as computers, gasoline engine ignition coils, small wall-plug transformers, etc.). It's anticipated that nuclear attacks would likely start with, or at least include, such attacks since they successfully impact an adversary massively, without many of the negative physical effects. There are currently theoretical new generations of nuclear weapons being studied whose only major effect is the production of an EMP.

For the trivia-minded people out there, this is different than the EMP wavelength created by coronal mass ejections / solar flares, which is much longer, and instead generates huge over-current in the power lines / grid itself. That in turn destroys the large oil-filled transformers used at substations and on power poles, for which there is little manufacuring capacity (currently) to replace them (compounded by the fact that large geographical areas would be without reliable grid power, some estimates are as long as several years to rebuild all the transformers that would be destroyed by a coronal mass ejection the size of the the Carrington Event of 1859, which destroyed a lot of telegraph systems but there weren't yet common residential power systems yet to affect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_storm_of_1859 ). However, generating huge over-currents in the power grid also destroys many smaller devices that would be plugged in at the time it occurred (e.g. computers, but not vehicles).

Military vehicles are hardened against HAEMP by shielding sensitive or critical electrical components. Like a faraday cage, the currents the EMP generates then flow over the surface/mesh of the enclosure/shielding instead of through the wiring of the component itself. Also, some interconnected devices have fuses, circuit breakers, or other current-limiting devices between them so that generating over-current in one device does not propagate to another. The antenna bases have some of that capability, for example.
 

Third From Texas

Well-known member
2,766
6,498
113
Location
Corpus Christi Texas
Got the cargo canopy frame all re-installed. Better than new (it wasn't painted for **** by the manufacture and I added four more spars).

20190406_121851.jpg


Also made up six 2" spacer collars (one for each leg) and raised the roof a couple inches.

20190406_124448.jpg
 

Awesomeness

Well-known member
Steel Soldiers Supporter
1,813
1,518
113
Location
Orlando, FL
Got the cargo canopy frame all re-installed. Better than new (it wasn't painted for **** by the manufacture and I added four more spars).

View attachment 760357


Also made up six 2" spacer collars (one for each leg) and raised the roof a couple inches.

View attachment 760358
I like the spacer idea!

Also, you were supposed to have 4 spars already. Did your cover only have 2?
 

Third From Texas

Well-known member
2,766
6,498
113
Location
Corpus Christi Texas
I like the spacer idea
I put the canopy back on today. I could have likely made the spacer collars 3" given the weight of the assembly and the hold-down straps at each leg. I just wanted to make sure that there was still enough leg slipped into the receivers so it would maintain integrity.

There's actually enough material to raise the whole canopy 6" and still have a slight overlap for the sides. Of course you'd want to make a full slip-on extensions out of two pieces.

I'm lucky at 5'7" that I didn't need much extra. LOL
 
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