Well, the trip went wonderfully well.
I left Ohio at 7am for Frankfort via I75 S. Besides a little traffic in Cincinatti, and an issue with the west bound ramp from I75 to I64 being closed, it was uneventful. We managed to beat the GL contact to the base by only a minute, and stood around with a bunch of other guys awaiting their pickup. One gentlemen from KY had 5 trucks to pickup on 3 semis!
We headed out with the GL contact, Marcus I believe, to find our truck. The line up of Deuces stretched for quite a ways, bumper to bumper along a nice curving two lane road back to the end of the base.
We found ours, near the end, with around 5 trucks in front of it. I crawled around doing my check. Everything underneath looked good, batteries dead of course, but not completely so, just not enough to turn her over. An inspection under the hood showed everything to be A-ok, then engine looking to be a very new rebuild, the turbo still had it's nice green paint on it!
After swapping the batteries, she started right up, in a quarter of a second. (How fast this one and my M109 start, amaze me still)
She built air pressure just fine, and was rumbling along nicely, now to figure out how to get her out of the lineup!
I spoke to the GL guy, he stated they had all been pushed more or less together a few months ago, and if I could get others in the lineup to start to use those to move the others. I found two in the line that would start, and using the low gear was able to move the few in front with ease. After clearing about 10 feet I was able to get mine out without trouble to complete the inspection.
Inspecting the rear show piles of trash, some rope, and a nice set of fiberglass troop seats on one side, and wood on the other. All the lights worked etc, CARC repainted in '07, lousy job underneath as always it seems, I'm guessing they never degrease these things!
Well, the trip home was uneventful. I did notice she would do 61, verified by radar and GPS at 2600 RPM, does this jive with what's know about these trucks? She ran a bit quicker than my M109, Im guessing the lower weight helps, but even up hills she pulled far better. It's not too hilly from Frankfort to Springfield, OH, but I never down shifted once from 5th climbing, and she held better than 50 at all times.
So, another successful recovery. Good people at GL to work with as well, and lot's of nice Deuces sitting around waiting for happy new owners.
Over the weekend I drove down to Winchester, VA to participate in the N-SSA nationals. (blackpowder shooting) I saw the final attachment on the way back. Looks to be based on the M60, but without a turret etc. What might it be?