M920 made it home!!

[hairba11]

As of saturday morning the M920 has made its way home.

couldn't get it to jump start with the slave cable but we had brought 4 truck batteries along just in case. The, uhm, technically challenged had apparently hooked up the last batteries in the truck, they had two extra short jumpers installed so one side of the pack was 36v and the other side was 12v I'm just glad nothing blew up. after hooking up the fresh charged truck batteries in the correct fashion, it fired right up and Andy1234 drove it home while I followed in the other truck. I finally got a chance to get some pictures today.

i know it is redundant to say it but this thing is massive!, the roof of the deuce barely clears the front edge of the engine hood! the last pic is of the 5-ton, the deuce, the tenner, and the 920.

 

[fuzzytoaster]

Nice recovery, where was this at?

 

[davidkroberts]

awesome recovery.... i really like these trucks I just have absoluely no reason to have a truck that massive.

how did it drive and how was the top end road speed

 

[area52]

Man that would make a perfect vehicle to do recoveries with! Looks nice.

 

[hairba11]

we had it trucked in from georgia to st. louis, fired it up and drove it off the trailer and home.
With the truck batteries being retained by a ratchet strap, and two of the tires being flat, we didn't get it up to any speed, just unloaded it and drove it the half mile to the house from the middle school parking lot

Drive wise it has plenty of power, even for a 30K lbs truck. the transmission is going to take some getting used to as is the complete lack of feel from the 1.5" of travel in the air brake pedal.

in the video Andy was backing it in front of the expando trailer to park it. The expando trailer was put in position by the 818, and there is a full 12" difference between the height of the kingpin on the trailer, and the height of the 5th wheel on the 920. we'd have to ditch the 3.5" hitch, and the ramps and risers, and put a standard low profile hitch on the truck to get it to haul anything.

Although we do have a 5th wheel wrecker with a 3.5" kingpin....

 

[wreckerman893]

i really like these trucks I just have absoluely no reason to have a truck that massive.

And this has stopped many of us how??????

 

[whyme]

i have thought about one but i dont have the money for fuel, i mean 10mpg is one thing but that beast is halfing that at best. not to mention i dont know what the **** i would do with it... Ooo, maybe toss a bed on it and bob it. hahaha!!!!!!!!!!! i think im going mad.....

 

[mcmullag]

collecting

Nice collection of trucks. Have seen your recovery posts before about having stuff dropped off in the parking lot and driving 'em short way home. Are you starting a museum, or going to use them for business, or just lawn ornaments? I grew up in south st. louis. Just curious. Keep going, more power to ya!

 

[hairba11]

yeah, pretty much looking at them, driving down to the gas station to pick up a 30 pack of refreshing beverages, heading to downtown StL to get some lunch and waving at the mayor while the news is interviewing him in front of city hall. The neighbor kids convinced us to go to mudfest in the 818 with the 1600x20's on it. stuff like that.
they all run, I've had to prove that to the county inspectors

 

[broman78]

your batteries are secured like mine.

 

[hairba11]

your batteries are secured like mine.

just for the next day or so, when i got the practically brand new batteries that came with the 920 home, I checked voltages, 2 were at 12.3v, one was at 1.6v, and the other at 0.6v.

i got the completely dead batteries on the trickle charger over night to try and bring them back up easy. in the morning they were sitting at 11.5v so i put them on the standard charger with automatic trickle. the 0.6v one was sitting at 12.6 yesterday. I'm going to get them all topped off then reinstall them.
the 920 doesn't have conventional battery boxes, just a one piece frame that clamps the 4 6tl sized batteries to the running board. so trying to use the group 27 batteries would be a lot more difficult.

 

[Monty]

yeah, pretty much looking at them, driving down to the gas station to pick up a 30 pack of refreshing beverages, heading to downtown StL to get some lunch and waving at the mayor while the news is interviewing him in front of city hall. The neighbor kids convinced us to go to mudfest in the 818 with the 1600x20's on it. stuff like that.
they all run, I've had to prove that to the county inspectors

County inspectors what a pain in the ARSE

 

[Floridianson]

Welcome to the 920 club. Good recovery. Check the drive line joints careful as two of mine were in bad shape. Someone also had the drop box pump rotated 180 out and all it was doing was blowing bubbles. When looking at the pump it is square and the tab should be pointing down. Did you get the BC3j motor?

 

[hairba11]

Welcome to the 920 club. Good recovery. Check the drive line joints careful as two of mine were in bad shape. Someone also had the drop box pump rotated 180 out and all it was doing was blowing bubbles. When looking at the pump it is square and the tab should be pointing down. Did you get the BC3j motor?

i'll have to check that. so far the tag axle had a broken link that caused it to bind on the way up so i had to pull the ends off and weld it back together.

don't know if it is for sure big cam 3, but seeing as how it was brand spankin' new in december 2004...

i had to throw a can in there just to show the scale of the thing.

 

[mcmullag]

head for the mountains

Image 3, I would prefer to see a Busch can on there, and for gosh sakes wash that dust and dirt off the engine. A clean engine is a happy engine.

 

[Bighurt]

Wish one would find its way in my backyard...

Looks great!

 

[StreetbikeDepot]

Something I noticed about the driveshafts on 2 of the 3 915's that we picked up from Saginaw that you may want to check on yours.....the yokes where out of phase......one just a little and the other 90 degrees out. That will wear out u-joints and cause driveline vibrations. Driveshaft yokes have to be phased exactly the same for the vibrations caused by each joint to be cancelled by the other.

Simply clock the slip yoke so that they are lined up together.

 

[hairba11]

Image 3, I would prefer to see a Busch can on there, and for gosh sakes wash that dust and dirt off the engine. A clean engine is a happy engine.

Busch?! what kind of hooligans do you think you are dealing with? Only reason the bud is up there is the local distributor quit carrying Old Style.

and seriously, who washes their trucks? that's what rain is for.

 

[hairba11]

Welcome to the 920 club. Good recovery. Check the drive line joints careful as two of mine were in bad shape. Someone also had the drop box pump rotated 180 out and all it was doing was blowing bubbles. When looking at the pump it is square and the tab should be pointing down. Did you get the BC3j motor?

ok, thanks, it looks like the drivelines were in place when it was rebuilt in 2005 seeing as it got a fresh coat of carc then and none is chipped off the bolt heads. Now what is a drop box pump?

 

[mcmullag]

clean green iron

Old Style is good stuff too, also check out Schaffer if one is on a budget. My truck gets sprayed off a lot at the carwash up the block, even use the
Spot Free Rinse mode. Mine is just used for parades and displays.