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Newbie with an M813A1

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madsam

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Just a quick note. I just saw a tv show on a tribe back in the jungle of Papua New Guinea. They were seeing how the tribe mummified their dead.

Anyway, It looked like a very green beautiful place. I just thought it was interesting that I had hardly ever herd of this place, and within a week, I hear about it 2 times.
 
JungleBiker

JungleBiker

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got the 5 ton into the container!!

Hey, just so that everybody knows, it is indeed possible to get an M813A1 into a 40 foot shipping container, BUT it's a lot of work. We decided that it ws worth it because we can ship a 40 foot container from the East Coast of the US to here in PNG for under $10,000. The other option was to load the truck into an open shipping rack and put it on the very top of the load of containers on a container ship, which could have led to corrosion problems during 12 weeks at sea between there and here, would have caused big problems in terms of security once it got here, (we might have found only pieces of am M813A1 when we went to pick it up), and on top of all that would have cost upwards of $35,000!! Anyway, here's a before and after photo--one of the truck as it was recieved and a couple more of how it looked by the time it got into the container.

By the way, when I contacted SECO and told them our truck didn't have a winch like I wanted it to, the guys there apologized and immediately sent one to us--they covered the shipping, etc., so I'm really happy about how they handled that. Everything is there to install it, so that's good. And madsam, I guess it must be the 25K winch--this being my first hands-on experience with MVs, I'm still learning what I am talking about, so thanks for the heads-up on winches.

I'll put additional photos in the photo gallery.
 

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madsam

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RE: got the 5 ton into the container!!

Man, take a deep breath and maybe it will fit.. That is tight. Did you have to take off the axles?
 
JungleBiker

JungleBiker

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RE: got the 5 ton into the container!!

No, we actually managed to get it in there without removing any axles--I asked for super single tires and also 6 skinny wheels/tires so that we could roll it into the container--with the super singles on, it really won't fit, but with one skinny wheel on each end of the rear axles it'll go in without having to remove anything. The bed, fuel tank, front fenders, frot bumper and a few other things all had to come off, as well as the top of the cab ad the exhaust stack. Basically, anything that was wider than 92 inches had to come off. I had a crazy idea to take the top of the cab off, tip the container on its side, drive the truck in, secure it, drain the fuel and remove the batteries then tip the container right side up again, but nobody else went for that one! :)

By far the biggest challenge was the front axle, which is 97 inches wide. By removing the front wheels and turning the hubs about 45 degrees, we managed to get the overall width down to 91.5 inches. When it gets here we need to come up with a creative way to get the front of the truck far enough out of the container to get the wheels on the front axle, then we can roll it out fairly easily from that point.

If we put the front axle on long wood beams, (set up like railroad tracks) and liberally grease the tops of said beams, would this truck be able to push itself out of the container? It has 4 11x20 tires on the back--providing that we can set up a temporary fuel tank, (pretty sure we can handle that), and get it started, could we concievably drive it out with the front axle sliding along on heavy wooden beams to a point where we can put the front wheels on? Or will the truck tend to weave from side to side without the steering wheels on? Funny question, but has anybody ever driven a 5 ton without the front wheels on?

I wanted to install the winch so that we could just winch it out of there, but 2 big problems--1.) nothing to attach the cable to where we plan to unload it, and 2.) how to get the heavy winch out from where it is packed behind the cab, over the cab and over the engine and then to a plce where we can unpack it and install it. I can see that there are going to be a lot of good photos when we unload and reassemble this thing!
 
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kungfu dave

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I just stumbled across this post researching 813s. Do we know what ever happened with this truck? Even though I am a green or tan guy, I really liked the white for some reason...
 
JungleBiker

JungleBiker

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kungfu dave said:
I just stumbled across this post researching 813s. Do we know what ever happened with this truck? Even though I am a green or tan guy, I really liked the white for some reason...
Click to expand...
Hey Kungfu Dave--I haven't checked on this thread in ages--I had the truck out today and was using the winch and thought I'd just get on here and see what's going on. The truck is still going strong, we don't use it a whole lot, but when we do, it's always nice to know that you'll probably get the job done. Today I was using the winch to pull a 20 foot container around, that was fun. Our winch is a little hard to use, really hard to find neutral, you really need somebody on the outside watching and telling you when you've finally managed to get the winch to stop moving.

It's still mostly white--we recently replaced the windscreens, since one ws cracked and the ones we got are OD green, we also replaced the rear view mirrors and the ones we got were for a 900 series truck and are desert tan, so we're gradually collecting all the colors... :)

Old truck doesn't give us too much trouble. Need to find a source of those big o-rings they use in the 2 piece combat wheels--out of 9 that we have a couple that leak. We replaced the hand throttle with a propeller pitch control knob out of a Cessna, it's much easier to use than the original hand throttle was, you can screw it slowly out to increase rpm's really slowly and really fine tune the engine speed, or you can hit the knob on the end and quickly pull it out or shove it in. We replaced all the parts in the hand brake (even the lever assembly) and it is still worthless. We had to add a way to put a padlock on the driver's door so that we could actually lock people out of the truck, that was a big improvement. We've had to replace the odd transmission mount or wheel seal. We recently replaced all the brake slave cylinders, but this was more because we had new ones on hand. We could have rebuilt the old ones. Still got the army seats in it, I made the foam on the back of the driver's seat thinner because I needed legroom. I made a new cover out of an old duffle bag, it looks good. It's still a tight fit for my 6'2" frame, but I manage. We modified the passenger seat so that it has a suspension system like the drivers, we put a couple of motorcycle shocks under it, it's less of a pain to ride on the passenger side now. Had to cut a notch in the passenger seat when we added the suspension to it so that it would clear the winch and transfer case controls while bouncing up and down.

Need to do something about the turn signals and brake lights--got a new signal relay and turn signal switch on their way here and I think we'll just add a mechanical brake light switch.
 
red

red

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Didn't know that a 5 ton could go into a shipping container without removing the axles, thats impressive.

For a better parking brake there are 2 options. Either install a pinion brake or convert the truck to air brakes.

Glad to hear that it's a good truck for your uses and has required little maintenance.
 
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