The Stovebolt Site Forums The Parking Lot Early 'Bolts (1916-1936 1st Half) 1927 truck -- Cab on!

The ODSS crew, meeting for our Mid Winter Coffee and Donuts Meet 'n Greet, helped me get the cab on the '27 and trial fit the spring wagon body ... It looks like a truck. Sort of ...

Looks nice.
Reminds me very much of my '29 Model A pickup, which was referred to as a "crackerbox."

I have Amish living three miles away and those spring wagon bodies are a dime a dozen. Why would you put all that time and money into a nice truck and then put something like that on it? Take that thing off and do it right.

Rest assured, when the time comes, I will be crafting a fine express body for the back of the truck. In the meantime, I picked two of these bodies up from the auction next door for a buck each. One of them has some neat hardware (tailgate latches, etc.) and the other has a few other details I intend to incorporate in my build. In the meantime, this one will provide a nice place to put things (to de-clutter the floor and bench). I'm pretty much done with the back half of the chassis so why not turn it into usable real estate for now? If you notice in the picture, they don't fit anyway -- the center cross piece rubs on the rear tires.

When they have served their purpose, and given up some parts, both of these beds will be given a Viking Funeral (lovingly tossed on the burn pile).

John I'm curious on what you came up with for cab mounts? I had sent you those pictures of how they should be mounted, just curious what you ended up doing.
Also curious on the neat hardware (tailgate latches) you mentioned. I have been looking for tailgate latches for my 901 express box I am working on and wondering what is on the two boxes you bought?
Looks good so far!
David

Davis -- I'll fess up -- the cab is just sitting there at the moment. It's not actually "mounted" ...

The bed latches are below. They look very similar to the ones Hanson Wheel and Wagon Shop offers. Mine were a lot less expensive, though. I paid $1 ea for the spring wagon bodies ...

I wonder what determined the use of 4 wheel brakes on these trucks? This one looks to have 2 WB as does a 29 1.5T we worked on while a 28 dump truck has 4 WB. The 28 has a 153 Mercury marine that fits like a glove.

Evan -- Yes, my truck only has brakes on the rear axle. Rustoholic (Dean) knows what year they went to 4-wheel brakes. I'd have to look it up. That's good info about the Merc engine... I'll file that away as it may come in handy. Is that a Ford block?

FWIW, my '72 GMC 9500 originally only had rear wheel brakes. At some point before I had it, someone upgraded it to have brakes on the front axle. It had S-Cams on the front and wedge brakes on the rear ... Yee haw.

Mid year 1928 Model "LP" was the first Chevrolet truck with 4-wheel brakes...


It's a Chevrolet Nova/Chevy II engine built from 1962-70...Mercruiser used them from 1974-86 and called them the '120'.

Mike B

As the son of a Johnson/OMC dealer, I'll stick with the ChevyII/Nova nomenclature. Thanks Mike!

At work, we have a project coming up at a local marina -- scrap/crunch 14 derelict boats (from 20 ft up to 60 ft) Maybe one of those will have that engine in it ... At least 4 6-71 Detroits (in the two Chris Craft Constellations) but I think that might be a touch too big for the '27.

My other option is a Deutz air cooled diesel. But hopefully today I can get back over there to resume forensics on the engine. A carburetor is proving to be made out of unobtanium, however.

I think that two 6-71 Detroits would max out the 27's load carrying capacity. Not to mention one basically killing the front suspension.

I've messed with one Deutz air-cooled diesel. We use it to power a high demand pump for a water system. It had a pretty slick governor system to provide constant pressure at the pump outlet.
Those are pretty interesting engines.

I'm surprised your Boss isn't taking those DD's home for future projects or parts!

The Merc 120's were mostly used with I/O drives...

Mike B

My boss doesn't need any more "future projects" One of the future projects has a nice 3406B Cat and the other has a big cam 400 Cummins, so we're good! We have a couple of 53-Series Detroits (a 4-53 and a 6V-53) and I can't even give those away. Even the Plain Community has grown out of 2-cycles now

Besides all that. Those 6-71's are set up for marine applications -- water jackets, heat exchangers, etc. Too hard to convert them over to automotive applications.

And I remember the Ford blocks in those Mercury I/O's -- a lot of our customers had them and they seemed to be good engines. We hardly ever had to service them. The 1stGen OMC I/O's on the other hand ... were basically the 90 HP outboard power head turned 90 degrees and mated to an outdrive. They didn't seem to age gracefully ...

And if you ever have an hour to kill and want to hear about 1920's and 1930's vintage Chris-Craft's and those glorious-sounding straight-6 inboards (all flatheads)... well, I won't get started here.

I think I'm straying off topic ...

Just a heads-up on those boats that are getting scrapped out- - - - -if any of them are sailboats, there's normally a lifetime's worth of bullet casting lead onboard, in the keel. Don't let that stuff get away. I also have a use for a 4-53 Detroit, I'm pretty sure, to power an emergency generator. The price Generac just quoted me for a generator and an automatic transfer switch ($15K) should qualify them for a Robin Hood award, but I think they rob from the poor, and give to the rich! Chris-Craft and Graymarine- - - - -good memories of time spent on Old Hickory lake near Nashville, servicing rich boys' toys back in the 1960s!
Jerry

Jerry -- Roger all.

We haven't heard back on the estimate yet. It was an interesting job that both the boss and I were very interested in doing so we low balled it. But ... with what we all have to bid these days so as to not take a massive loss on a job ... Moving a 40-ton excavator to a job site, keeping it there and operating it for a couple of weeks is not a trivial matter, cost wise -- even at a low ball price. I'm guessing some people who aren't used to what such things cost anymore may choke on the estimate.

I have told the boss that just hitting the starter button on the 359 Pete (with the tri-axle RGN trailer) should start the dollar gun at $600 and go up from there... Baby needs new shoes and all that -- I have a driver tire I have to air up as part of my daily pretrip.

Moving this big stuff around and working with it involves a whole lot (oversize load permits, insurance, fuel, driver ;), maintenance, etc) that isn't free and us small business operators cannot afford to take out of overhead. Just loading and unloading the machine is an hour of my time (not to brag, but we RGN drivers come at a higher premium than your run of the mill, fresh out of CDL school OTR newbies do ... ) , unless the tightness of the job site requires a whole bunch of "truck rodeo" time...The clock's tickin'

Ask Peggy about my "Late Day Fridays

Try managing a heavy truck wrecker/recovery service sometime! Getting an overturned 18 wheeler back on its wheels and towing it home, plus dealing with cleaning up wreck debris and dealing with several guys with badges, blue lights, and an attutide case can make the job worth at least twice what we were usually able to charge. Insurance on those heavy haul rigs alone ran over $1K a month, and that was 30-smething years ago- - - - -$2 million worth of liability coverage for every rig in the fleet! I'm pretty sure the minimum coverage (and the premuim) has gone up since then.
Jerry

It has, Jerry. But ... a buddy of mine just rolled a heavy 379 Pete wrecker (steer tire blow out). The company gladly took the insurance company payout. Hard to imagine those premiums.... Still, just makes me shake my head when potential customers question our estimates/bids.

And oh by the way, Jerry -- when my boss and I went over to he marina to talk to the owner about the job, my first question was if any of them were sailboats -- primarily about the keels, secondarily about the rigging -- a real pain in the neck for the excavator ...

Nowadays they start a YouTube site and do the job for free.

Steer axle tires are the spawn of the devil- - - -dang near impossible to keep the rig under control when one lets go at highway speed. One of the trucks in a fleet I maintained had something called "center line steering" where the spindle was designed so the middle of the tire tread ended up almost directly over the king pins. There was virtually no caster return to straight ahead after a turn, but it almost felt like the rig had power steering, and a flat tire at speed was easy to control. As I seem to recall, a couple of big coil springs, one on each side of the spindle, kept the rig tracking straight ahead on a flat, level road surface.
Jerry