The Stovebolt Site Forums The Parking Lot Big Bolts 2 ton wrecker

Hello Newby here. I work for a small school district in Texas and we purchased a 1973 Chevy wrecker with a Holmes 600 wrecker body to pull our school buses out of ditches from time to time. I know this site is for pre 73 except i could not find another place like this and thought i would give it a try thanks.

Hy slimsteele, welcome, if you don't mention the year of your truck, then I won't.

I agree, welcome aboard. You are close enough in my opinion.

Thanks How do I attach pics to my posts I have some before and after shots

You need to post them on some other site like Photobucket and then post links here. look over to the left on this page and you should see the image posting policy

I am anxious to see the wrecker. I was negotiating on a 73 Chev with a 600 Holmes and I lost the guy's phone number and he never called me. I'm curious to see if its the same unit I was looking at.

I've worked for the local school bus garage for 28 1/2 years. Towed many school buses, with our Holmes 600 wreckers. I recently purchased the last Holmes 600, that we puchased back in 1988. It still only has 13000 miles on it.

well lets see if this works.stovebolt.com

I actually ran across this unit while looking for a winch for another project I was working on. I found this on Craigslist

It works. Nice Wrecker.

Thanks, did all the work in shop.It had a few problems but they were all easy fixes.I am looking for brackets to add compressed air to it now so I dont have to release the brakes by hand on our units and can change flats the easy way.

That is a very nice Wrecker. Someone has installed Heavy Duty Holmes 750, extendable square booms on it. It would have originally had the smaller round, webbed booms on it. That truck should be able to handle most any Medium duty bus, or truck, with no problem, as far as towing is concerned.

well I wasnt sure about the booms all of the 600 booms I saw on the web looked differant.like a shaft in the center a webbing on the outside. also is there a trick to extend the booms or do you have to extend them by hand

Nice Wrecker slimsteele!! I like those early 70's BigBolts!

Thanks it has been a fun project.Now if it can just set and look pretty .

Nice Wrecker Slimsteele! As for the booms,I have used a come along to extend them to the next pin hole after they are lowered to the horizontal position.To do it by hand is a real bear and unsafe.

so there is no real easy way to do it.another thought was to use a pulley block attached to something else and run the cable to it and back to the boom to pull it out. I guess I could chain it to the modified bus and pull it out ,but hopefully I will never have to extend them Thanks