ATPTac has a new deuce

[SCSG-G4]

Member ATPTac just bought a new-to-him deuce this afternoon here in Lexington. Hopefully he'll be home in about an hour or so and will post more info. But in the meantime, for all the picture junkies, here he and his family are on the Wally World parking lot on the way home.

 

[ATPTac]

Well, I'm excited about the new truck. Its a 1967 M35A2 W/W, hard top, heater, non turbo. All in all mechanically it seems to be in good shape, minus the generator (see below), and I have a constant scraping noise coming from the front brakes. Needless to say one of the first things I'm going to do is pull all the wheels and check out the brakes. Has very little fluid leaks, the only 2 I saw was the transfer case and the PTO. It definitely needs some paint, has a good amount of surface rust but nothing that can't be taken care of. Needs an axle boot, new troop seats, and the drivers seat canvas is shredded.

So a pretty easy going recovery went south about half way home. We stopped at a gas station to take a bathroom break, turned the truck off and did our business. Went out to fire the truck back up and it turned not quite a whole revolution and quit. After that the starter just did the rapid click indicating dead batteries. We fired the truck up 5-6 different times before we left with no problem. I initially thought that the primary power lever had gone bad because it was a little floppy and when turning it the gauges would flutter and if you jiggled the switch they would come back to normal. So I called Mike (SCSG-G4) and he promptly got in his car to bring us another switch. While we were waiting something told me to check the batteries, so we pulled up our chase car and put some jumper cables on to see if giving it a little juice would help any. It got the starter to give us about 3/4 of a revolution out of the engine. Mike showed up a little bit later with the new switch, which wasn't the issue.

During all this I remembered that when I was checking the member map before our trip (which has been an EXTREMELY useful tool) I saw on there that wilfreeman lived close by. So I sent him a PM and he said he would head up there when he got off work. It turns out we broke down about 4 miles from his house (talk about convenient). In the mean time he called his buddy Matt (I think he said he's on the forum, not sure what his username is though) and he came up there about 20 minutes later so we were able to get 2 sets of jumper cables on the batteries in hopes the would get it started. After letting it charge for a while we tried to fire it up with no luck. At that point we decided to use Matt's truck to pull the Deuce up the hill we were at and then move around to the front of the truck to pull it down and pop the clutch. We did that and got it fired up finally. Luckily Matt is a diesel mechanic and had a multimeter and an amp clamp. We checked the generator and it was only putting out about 6 amps.

It was dark by this point, and thinking we had enough power to run the headlights to get home, we jumped in and pulled out of the gas station to head home. We made a U turn, got about 1 block down the road and the headlights got VERY bright, went blue, and then went out. So we had to pull over AGAIN, luckily we hadn't made it back on the interstate yet. I called the other Matt (wilfreeman) and he said we could follow him to his house and leave the truck there until we can get back down with some batteries to get her started and back home in daylight.

Another member on here, Thane (tstates), lives about 5 minutes from our house and I was telling him about the whole ordeal and it turns out he has 2 good batteries he's going to let me borrow to take down and get the truck fired up.

All in all, it wasn't the worst thing that could have happened, but it was still nerve racking. We're finally back home, I'm having a beer (or 6), and we're not stranded on the side of the road.

I would like to give a huge thanks to Mike (SCSG-G4), Matt (wilfreeman), Thane (tstates) and the other Matt for all their help in this endeavor. This is one of the many reasons I have come to absolutely love this forum over the past several months. The willingness of the guys on here to drop what they're doing and help someone out blows my mind.

Now for a few pictures seeing how my wife decided to snap some:

 

[Merc1973]

Great story and teamwork! I have been following your informative threads, your Deuce family is growing very RAPIDLY!

 

[EMD567]

When you start it back up, check the output on the generator. It may have gone north, and is charging at a very high voltage. The fix is to just undo the black wire, then you will be running off just the batteries.

 

[215Dave]

Congratulations! Truck looks like its in great shape. Enjoy!

 

[Scar59]

Nice truck, congratulations. Nothing like a hardtop on the truck and a smile on your significate other. Win! Win!
Have fun
JC

 

[wilfreeman]

Hey Jason,

Glad you got her home without too much more trouble. The other Matt's screen name is Matt444. I would like to thank him again for showing up so quickly after I texted him. Like you said, he brought the necessary equipment and vehicle to get the deuce going again! BTW, even though the truck is in awesome condition, if you lose your mind and decide to part her out, I call DIBBS on the winch!

Give me a call if you need help with anything (especially the alternator upgrade).

 

[ATPTac]

Well, we got her home yesterday. Threw 2 batteries in, and she fired right up. I promptly cut the power switch back off so the alternator couldn't do anymore damage than it had already done (although at this point I'm pretty confident that its completely dead, I have no power going to anything). I'll finish diagnosing that later. I do know that one of my batteries is still good, the other one when I put a multimeter on it only read about 9.2 volts. I put it on the charger at work literally all day and ended with about 10.5 volts. Pretty sure that one is gone. I had my wife run chase going down the highway seeing how I had no brake lights.

Great story and teamwork! I have been following your informative threads, your Deuce family is growing very RAPIDLY!

Thanks, I try to be as thorough as possible so maybe what I've gone through can help someone else out down the road. And yes, the MV family is growing. We're going back and forth on either an M37 or a 5 ton next...

When you start it back up, check the output on the generator. It may have gone north, and is charging at a very high voltage. The fix is to just undo the black wire, then you will be running off just the batteries.

I was able to get it running off 2 good batteries and just let the IP do its thing to keep it running and not have any other electricity going. Not something I would recommend unless you have a chase car so people don't get behind you with no brake lights.

Congratulations! Truck looks like its in great shape. Enjoy!

Thanks, it is in good shape, just has some rust that needs to be addressed (along with the electrical issues).

Nice truck, congratulations. Nothing like a hardtop on the truck and a smile on your significate other. Win! Win!
Have fun
JC

I'm definitely excited about the hard top, I was trying to find one for our first truck but at that point in time couldn't find one close enough to home that was in good shape. And I'm very lucky to have a wife who is understand of green fever, heck she's starting to get into them just as much as I am.

Hey Jason,

Glad you got her home without too much more trouble. The other Matt's screen name is Matt444. I would like to thank him again for showing up so quickly after I texted him. Like you said, he brought the necessary equipment and vehicle to get the deuce going again! BTW, even though the truck is in awesome condition, if you lose your mind and decide to part her out, I call DIBBS on the winch!

Give me a call if you need help with anything (especially the alternator upgrade).

It's Jeremy (no biggy), but yeah, Matt was definitely a very big help. If his truck wasn't out there the deuce would have more than likely spent the night at that gas station.

I don't foresee wanting to part the truck out. If it came down to that, I'd keep the winch, hard top, and heater and then sell the truck . And yeah, now that I know how close you are (we got to your place to pick the truck up in less than 30 min) we should definitely be in touch with helping each other out working on them. I didn't realize how many people are that close from the forum, its definitely good to know and network if anybody ever needs anything.

Now onto some more pictures of the new ride! (The custom towel on the drivers seat came with the truck)

 

[wilfreeman]

He he - shows you how good I am at names! I have a Josh coming to pick up my parts jeep this friday - hope I remember his name.

Yep, definitely need to keep in touch, and like I said, I didn't even know matt444 was right down the road from me - there are probably more of us crazies out there close by!

 

[ATPTac]

Well, I have a lead on a good take out alternator for a steal. No clue what condition it's in, but for the price he's offering I'll take it . The guy also has a blown LDT motor (the crank broke and it has a giant hole in the side of the block), and a bunch of other parts with the engine and other miscellaneous parts. I'm going to go look at everything this weekend hopefully, I might go ahead and pick up everything he has if the price is right. That way I'll have a lot of other spare parts, and I might end up selling off what I don't need/want and scrap the block.

 

[ATPTac]

Something else I forgot to add in the initial post... Being that the truck is a non-turbo it has a muffler installed. For those curious, it really cuts down on the exhaust noise. While driving back my wife and I were able to have a "conversation" without screaming at the top of our lungs. The engine and drive line noise was still enough to have my ears "muffled" sounding after we got out, not ringing though. But that will more than likely be going away once we put the turbo on it .

 

[wilfreeman]

I was wondering about that 2" stack and how smokey she was - makes sense now!

 

[ATPTac]

Yeah, I didn't realize the non-turbo's had smaller stacks until we went and looked at the truck. I haven't really been able to see how smokey it is seeing how I've been in the drivers seat.

 

[wilfreeman]

It's not as bad as I thought the non turbos were. Mine has the fuel turned up and it blows alot of smoke, but not while idling.

 

[ATPTac]

So we went to take a look at some deuce parts and get 2 used alternators and ended up leaving with this:



I'm a little dumbfounded at the moment, we got the deal of a lifetime. And those pictures aren't even everything, I'll get a list up of everything once we pick it all up and I get it inventoried. The truck's engine has two giant holes in the side of the block, and the other take out motor I put up also has a hole in the block. So I need to source an engine at this point, but for what we paid for everything it was WELL worth it. Its a 68 Kaiser W/W, heater, hard top, bobbed obviously, has air steering, etc... More info to come...

 

[w3azel]

AWWW come on this isn't even fair. I constantly search craigslist and the area for deuce and deuce parts and I can't find anything close to this. This guy hits jackpot by accident. Looks like someone is going to be busy with their new toys.

 

[dslucas]

Wish I could get that lucky ATPTac and I need to head to Vegas

 

[wilfreeman]

Yeah, really! **** Jeremy, you gonna start your own used HMV lot/dealership? Looks like a nice one - good job!

 

[ATPTac]

AWWW come on this isn't even fair. I constantly search craigslist and the area for deuce and deuce parts and I can't find anything close to this. This guy hits jackpot by accident. Looks like someone is going to be busy with their new toys.

Well, its sort of a long story, but I more or less ran into the guy and found out he had MV's and was telling him about our recovery of our truck and the alternator taking a crap on us. He told me that he had a couple used alternators and some other misc parts from a blown engine and I should stop by to take a look at everything and see if I wanted any of it. So we went to get the alternators, saw everything else he had (and its a TON of stuff), we asked what he wanted for everything he had and he threw out a number (including the truck) that was, in all sense of the words, entirely too good to pass up.

Yeah, really! **** Jeremy, you gonna start your own used HMV lot/dealership? Looks like a nice one - good job!

Haha, I am toying around with the idea of getting into making this a small side project to make some extra cash (at least to fund the green iron addiction).

Something else I forgot to throw in the original post is that we also got a trailer with all this. I'm not 100% sure what it is (it was behind a fence that he didn't have the keys to open it on him) but I'm pretty sure its a M101. There are quite a few parts that we got that I need to figure out exactly what they are, namely the 5 extra seats we got. But to give you guys a little preview to what all was included in the lot:

M101(?) trailer
Cab reinforcement plate
Tow bar
NIB Solargizer
3 C turbo's
2 new fuel pumps
NOS winter front cover
Synthetic winch cable
Pioneer tool kit
AVM locking hubs (on the truck)
7 bucket seats (2 are in the truck) I'm not really sure, but I think they're HMMWV seats

Those are the most notable things off the top of my head without going through everything (there is a LOT more stuff). I'm still in "shock" from the whole thing, it hits me in waves and I'll blurt out something in excitement and startle my wife.

 

[ATPTac]

Ok, now that I'm looking at some pictures online, it looks like the trailer is actually either a M1101 or M1102... I'll get a better look at it when we pick it up obviously and hopefully can figure out for sure what it is. But I'm pretty sure he said its an all aluminum trailer and from what I could see of it when we were looking through the fence I'm pretty sure its one of those two.