Here goes my first post on Steel Soldiers for the story/update on the P4. If you dont care for the story, skip to the bottom for pictures of the head when we got it pulled off.
Picking up where plowboy left the story, The wife fell in love with the P4 the first time she saw it 4 years ago while loading up the command center deuce. Almost 4 years later to the day, we were back to pickup another deuce for my father, and she made her way down into the grassy bowl to checkout the P4... she fell even more in love. During our 8 hour drive home the next day, we obviously had time to talk and she told me she wanted it... there are not many women out there that tell their husbands that they want an Oshkosh crash rescue truck. I immediately I started work on plans with plowboy to pick it up. Quite frankly I think he did most of the hard work getting it rolling and towed out of the hole.
The first problem was lining up a way to haul it. Most shipping places wanted $4000+ to haul it from Edmonton to central Saskatchewan. Fortunately, the place I work happens to have a single axle Freight liner and a trailer and they let me use it. So that problem was solved.
The second problem was sourcing a tire. I didn't want to buy a new tire as we still didn't know the state of the engine. After some searching I found a used 445-65R22.5 and after some metric conversions, I was pretty sure it would fit.
The next move was to make the trip out to get it. After a long rotation at work, I made the trip from site to go pickup the truck around 8pm and drive it home for the night. While driving the truck to my place, it was starting to get dark, so I turned on the headlights. The trailer brakes immediately locked up on the hwy. Remembering something a flight instructor once told me "If you flip a switch and something undesirable happens, flip it back", I turned off the lights and the brakes released. This is a good time to mention the trailer has electric brakes. I made it back to my place around 930pm and decided I wanted to mythbust the brake/headlight issue and after diagnosing a rats nest of an electrical issue with the truck, I decided to just pull the fuse for the electric brake controller as I would only be driving in the dark first thing in the morning while unloaded. After loading all the tools and gear we would need, The wife and I finally made it to bed around 1130. When the alarm went off the next morning at 315am I contemplated my life choices up to that point, woke up the wife, and off we went, headed west.
We made our way to the location of the used tire on the East side of Edmonton and picked it up without any issue, then headed to the farm. When we got there, we immediately went to work. We got the tire off the ground and I thought it was worth a try to get the tire to set on the bead in hopes that maybe the cracks were not all the way through and there was a chance it would hold air and save us a lot of work. half a can of ether later, the choice was made to swap out the tire. I made a few attempts with the bare to get the bead off when Dave came over and hinted that there is a tire shop not far away and it might be a good choice for them to change it for us. I was a bit reluctant as I had my mind set that I was going to change it... Dave pulled out a coin and said "If I flip it and it lands on heads, we take it to the tire shop" and it landed on heads. We drove to town and dropped off the wheel and tire and went for pizza. An hour later the tire was done, and after talking with the tech, it turned out that it was a struggle to set the bead on the "new" tire, and that's with the experience and tools. The bill came to 57 bucks and that was money well spent. We got the wheel on and loaded the truck without issue.
We said our good byes and headed back east. It was getting late in the evening and we decided we would get to Camrose and stay in a hotel for the night and start fresh the next day. We got to Camrose at around 930pm that night and I started contemplating life choices again after the 18hr day. The next day we hit the road in the morning after breakfast. At the next fuel stop, I checked the trailer tires and they were getting hot. So using boomers and a convenient hill at the cardlock, we were able to roll the truck ahead on the trailer and add some more weight on the pin and that seemed to help. The rest of the drive was uneventful until we took a wrong turn. While making our way through the prairies, we decided to take a road that we haven't been down for a few years as we head it had new pavement. after about 10 miles, the road had 8000kg weight restrictions, and we were way over that. We took a grid road to try to bypass the hwy and all was fine until we hit a large heave on the gravel road and the truck shifted slightly on the trailer. We pulled over to investigate, and it turns out that we ended up ripping off one of the tie down rings off of the frame of the truck when we hit the heave. we re-chained everything and made it home without any issue.
The Head:
While making our way to the head gasket, we pulled the valve cover and found signs of corrosion.
Once the head was off, this is what we found. Pitting in a few sleeves/pistons and corrosion in the water jackets. I believe they filled it with swamp water when it overheated.
I didnt get a picture but the head gasket was in good shape, which made me look at the head. All 6 combustion chambers had cracks. My guess is that it wouldn't start due to lack of compression.
So the plan is to attempt to repair the cracks unless someone has a good deal on a head for a 1693 CAT. I will keep you updated on the crack repair as I attempt to tig weld it with some high nickle rod and some pre/post heat. I am also going to fill the block with some CLR and try to flush out all the rusty schmoo that I see in the water jackets.
Thats all I have for now
Whenever I may get a 5-ton I'd consider a wheel-tire combination like that!
