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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...
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.
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.
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...
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...
The original OXCARTS (A-12) were a lot lighter than the SR-71 - half the human support systems, and smaller lower equipment bays. It's not surprising at all that they were faster/higher fliers.
Probably worth mentioning though that a) the J-58 engine works in a pretty tight 'box' of mach...
A saner choice of powerplant would probably be a Cummins 4BT. Probably doesn't weigh any more than the stock 6 cyl, is the right shape (long and narrow), and is shorter than the stock engine, so would allow some flexibility in transmission options.
Yes, Ethanol is hygroscopic. It's why the azeotrope is only about 98% pure. If you pour a pint of Everclear into a beaker during the Southern US summer, it will change from 190 proof (95%) to some lower value over the next couple of hours as it sucks water right out of the air. It'll also...
...or the Detroit diesel. The breakdown goes:
First effort (M4, M4A1): the Continental-built Wright R-975 9 cylinder air cooled radial (400 HP), as seen in Stuarts. But they couldn't build them fast enough, and they weren't as peppy as the Army wanted. Even so, a lot were built 1942-44...
My MEP-002A was my introduction to owning things painted in olive drab. We still have it eight years later. It still works, and still powers the house in outages. It does exactly what it is supposed to do, and has proved incredibly stout. Congratulations on a great find.