The recovery:
I bought the truck about 1000 miles away, perhaps not the smartest move but if I were smart I wouldn't be doing half the things I do.
The flight went well, though at security the TSA were rather perplexed by my positive-pressure hood and blower. I know I got a lot of looks and I'm sure some pictures were taken in the airport of a guy in full containment gear. If trying to be a responsible traveller and not spread anything around makes me a bit of a spectacle, it's a price I"m willing to pay, particularly since apparently only about 10% of the population knows how far 6' is. Anyway, taxi to the yard, do a little paperwork and there's my truck, big as life and twice as ugly.
There's a lot of little bends an crinkles but nothing that will detract from it's function. Hop in and go.
First impression: I LOVE the gearing in this thing! I'm 15.5K empty and with the 5+2 gearing setup it goes really well (empty) I'm sure it will be a pig full but oh well.
I know some folks hate the 2-speed axles as being trouble prone, but the extra gears and the lower engine RPM are a huge win. The noise level and feel in the cab dropping the couple hundred RPM over my single-speed axle rig is really noticeable. The shifter on the 5-speed is long, hard (sometimes uncomfortably so), and vague and I do miss a few shifts. Oil pressure is great and the motor runs well, not a lot of slobber evident from the road-draft tube.
3-hours later: What the [REDACTED], this [REDACTED] back axle is a huge [REDACTED]! Despite following the instructions, the back axle is very prone to wind up in neutral, pretty much requiring me to roll to a stop and fool with it at very low speeds for a minute to get it to shift. It does pretty well going into low, but high is much harder. I decide to get it in high and live with it. The truck is empty so this is actually a pretty viable strategy. I look down and see no oil pressure! Then it's back, then gone... OK, better check it out. I get pulled over and find turning the key won't kill the engine. Open the hood and find someone has replaced the solenoid with a stop-cable, fine but I feel dumb for not doing a better pre-flight check. Shut it down and verify there is plenty of clean oil. I decide from the behaviour it's almost certainly the gauge so... lovely... it makse the rest of the trip reading mostly really nicely but sometimes nothing at all, gotta be the gauge or the motor would have been toast long ago. I wish I could split gears on some of the grades but otherwise it's fine. It's also the case that with the truck empty, first gear is mostly only needed starting up a fair grade so functionally I'm driving it as a four-speed. Well, the automatic isn't much better so moving on. Motor revs fairly well until about 2200 but then stop shortly thereafter, note to self to adjust the governor.
Day 2: truck seems slower today, still cruising comfortably and about the slowest thing on the road. I'm worried about fuel filters being obstructed. Hmm, how I step on the accelerator pedal seems to matter....
Day 2, a couple hours after noticing the pedal angle matters to top speed, the truck seems even slower, then I loose pretty much all power. The accelerator pedal hinge at the bottom has come loose in it's mount. The mount is rotted through and the pivot pin has worn through on one side. Luckily there is a Dollar-Store just at the nearest exit. A pair of pliers and one of those hooks your wife buys to hang more clothes on the back of the door later and I'm back on the road. I used the pliers to break off the extra hook and the flat-bent plate that hang over the door, and the remaining hook is the same diameter as the old pin. I still have to be careful how I mash the pedal and it slips out sometimes, but it gets me the remaining ~600 miles. I still haven't sat down and figured fuel consumption but looks like it's in the 7-8MPG range I expect from these trucks. Mid-day I start to smell coolant. Yep, water-pump leak.
Refill and drive, at least the temperature gauge is reliable. :-\ After 40 miles of so the leak is worse, another 20 and if the gas-station water-fill is really slow I barely can put it in fast enough to ever get it full. My range is about 10 miles I think, never overheats and I'm always leaking when I stop so it never ran dry, but it's really slow-going and once in a while I hear belt slip which makes me suspect the pump might be ready to seize. At 2300 I have long since given up getting home that night. 100 miles from home I find a room and try to get some sleep. The next morning I call up a friend in the next town about 15 miles away, I can't even finish a sitrep before he tells me his tools are in the car and he'll be there in a half-hour. It's nice to be resourceful and take responsibility, but it's awesome and a little humbling to know you have friends who have your back! He turns up and call a friend back by his place who has a yard and a little calling around determines if you speak slowly and carefully, you can still get a water pump from the local New-Holland dealer. Unfortunately the one in town is out of stock, the one 80 miles away has two on the shelf though. Luckily a little more calling around and of all places, the O'Riely store in town near the yard can have one by lunchtime! Limping the 15 miles to the yard I hear more severe belt slip, I'm really glad I didn't try to go farther. The water pump belts don't drive the airbrake compressor or the power-steering and the fan is a remote-mount so it might not cost my radiator if it let go, but still... His buddy cleared a swath of driveway and brought out a box of tools. It's not that nasty a job and with the tilt-hood I neither had to stoop nor climb and hunch over the motor, some of the fasteners were uninterested in moving but otherwise an easy job. Get a ride over to the store to find the truck was late. My buddy takes me home and makes me lunch, go back and get the part. Luckily it was the right part, you never know with those guys. At $206 it was more money than a dealer part from Ford or New Holland and more than 2X the online price, but $100 convenience fee is better than another night in a hotel or a trip back later!
The pump casting and machining is pretty crude and it's a little hard to get lined-up, but it goes on and I'm back on the road. The rest of the trip home was uneventful, apart from getting to my shop and really realizing that it just won't really fit in my parking lot without moving cars around and taking three spaces and half the loading ramp diagonally.
I will note that, yes, the drop-axle has brakes and also that the 5-speed means I get useful engine braking so it's a much nicer truck than my #18000 pound service truck down the long steep hills, so I feel better about the purchase for the expected-use once I get some repairs and modifications taken care of.
