A nice surprise

[cranetruck]

There are two instruction tags on the front engine cover of the xm757 and from day one, I have wondered about the possibility of reproducing them, they were blank.
Today I thought they were too blank, no sign of any residue from printing. Imagine my surprise, when I unscrewed them and checked the other side, they had been installed face down by somebody a long time ago!
They are nearly perfect, see image.

 

[OPCOM]

That's certainly a plus! The ability to start by towing shows that the transmission would have a rear pump, unlike modern civillian car or truck transmissions.

 

[gimpyrobb]

Thats awesome, almost perfect.

 

[maddawg308]

Damn, they had idiots at the depot fixing that truck. Installing the data plates face down, I can't believe it...

 

[Opie]

This goes one step beyond "here's your sign."

If there were a truck left in an Oklahoma field with nobody to read the data plates, would they actually say anything?

 

[steelsoldiers]

Fantastic! Their blundering mistake protected the plates from years of UV, rain, filth, etc... that could have seriously degraded them.

 

[hndrsonj]

Good find, almost hard to imagine someone did that!

 

[Ferroequinologist]

That worked out quite well. Wish all the depot guys mistakes worked in our favor....

 

[ARMYMAN30YearsPlus]

Is it possible the boot is on upside down and that one guy fastened them expecting the rubber to be cut out to show them on the other side and then some other guy installed the boot without regard to what he thought the plates were? At any point the good deal is your gain very nice to find them and not leave them there to sit useless.

 

[ida34]

Did you follow those towing instructions when you brought it home?

 

[cranetruck]

Chuck, actually we removed all drive shafts except the one between the transfer and transmission to keep the tires from "fighting". The rear one gave us a bit of trouble since it was frozen and only wiggling the bogie made it come loose (see avatar). The rearmost axle was also lifted and chained up to make it easier to turn with the steering frozen as well.

I presented the question about the face down instruction tags to the people on the Pershing missile group (yahoo), who actually drove these trucks and the best answer so far was... "because of spy satellites".