Recent content by steelypip

The good news is that the MEP-002A and -003A are air cooled engines, so there's no water jacket to warm up. They get up to temperature pretty quickly under full load. Start it, let it calm down a minute or so, then put full load on it. I usually run mine at full load about another five...

Wow, all that for 2.5 KW. Magneto ignition and a hand crank - must have been meant for operating somewhere very unimproved. How big is the fuel tank?

Ghost115's reminds me of the Gradall trucks Norfolk Southern RR uses for right of way maintenance.

You should run it monthly, ideally. That'll guarantee it's always ready to go. Mine has proven reliable when ignored for months at a time, but I do put a lot of biocide in the fuel tank, keep it full and tarped so there's not much water intrusion or condensation into the tank.

Nah, prop wash.

Pretty sure I read about Viet Nam era infantry type people (don't remember which branch) buying their own 12ga pump shotguns before deploying because uncle sugar didn't believe in their tactical utility but the troops did.

I've bought stuff from SurplusCenter before - it was always exactly as described.

Always cool to see any MV with its original historical markings. I have to say the A1 is my favorite variant of the 151 as well...

If HEMTTs were rare war artifacts (like, say the lend-lease Studebaker trucks), and you had hacked one up you might get some grief from somebody here. As it is, I think you took (part of) something common that's mostly impractical for civilian use and made something cool and interesting out...

Trailer balance: for stable towing you want 10% of trailer weight on the tongue with a single axle trailer. An MEP-802a weighs about 800 lb. The trailer's probably 500. So that's 1300 lb. Fuel's about 6 lb/gallon, so about 450 lbs of fuel in that tank. Call the whole thing 500 lbs with the...

Mailed mine in the day before yesterday...

Ah, drip. Yeah, folks have burnt 'drip' in vehicles for a long time. As the vehicles get more highly engineered, it gets to be a worse and worse idea. A multifuel will burn it, but do be careful - the surprises can be deadly. It's also illegal in some places. Because of the smell, it's not...

I did a test run and PMCS last month and the old 002 did its usual fine job. Today we had a little ice, Dominion Power managed to drop a tree across the megavolt feeder to 1400+ customers (maybe they should consider some ROW maintenance? Nah!) and we had no power for 6 hours. The 002 fired up...

A little thread necropost here because I just saw your reply. Everything I've ever heard/read about the B-36 was that it was barely an airplane. If you take WWII recip technology and design it to carry 2-3 Fat Man sized bombs to Europe (the design was initially an XBLR paper airplane...

It was a common procedure to put unit markings on the rear of the vehicle, just as in the army. As an example, on the SAC base where I spent most of my childhood, the maintenance squadrons all had strata blue six cylinder short wheelbase no-dually (half ton?) Chevrolet Step Vans with rear barn...