Hi Gang!
There are some things you just can't know about until you do them... Recovering a deuce is one of those things. I am sorry there are no recovery pictures, but I hope my story and your imagination will be enough. Having no time to shoot pictures is one of those things I just couldn't know.
I went through all of the preliminaries, rustled up insurance with Gulfway, got a trip tag from... well it was completely legal, but I will talk about that in PM's only. Gathered up fluids, filters, tools, and other supplies that I thought might be needed, and waited for my friend Gary to come and pick me up.
Gary is a night person, a disabled vet, mechanic, and a retired truck driver, so he picked me up exactly 16 hours before we were supposed to be at Ft McCoy, which is a 16 hour road trip!
We left Maryland at about 3:30pm, and arrived at Mike's gate at Ft McCoy at about 8:30am. I'd about had the stuffing beat out me from the trip, but Gary was still going strong...in a Gary sort of way. There was frost and ice all over Sprout, but to me, it seemed like the sun was out, and it was starting to melt away.
Mike was a treat! He met me with a warm smile, and a handshake. He had already started up his jump truck, and had it waiting, but we never needed it. The Group 31 sized batteries I brought went in snug (you have to unwarp the plastic battery case), but safe, and after complaining a couple of times about it being cold, Sprout started right up, and ran beautifully. Somehow, I think I remember being told that her diesel tank was empty, but either I am mistaken, or there is a diesel fairy that visits tired travelers, and fills deuce tanks while they sleep.... Sprout's tank was full! Diesel fairy's can't really exist, can they?
For the record, I am sure that I was mistaken about the tanks being empty.
The brakes responded well to a pressure bleeding using the SS patented garden sprayer bleeder, and very little of the 1/2 gallon of DOT5 I put in the sprayer tank. There were signs that one wheel cylinder had been peeing for a long, long time. We left the sprayer attached on the off chance that our brake system was going to be one of those non sealed hydraulic types.... It quit leaking before we left Ft McCoy.
The first scary disappointment was when I discovered that one tire had a torn valve stem (and wouldn't hold air), one tire had a split side, and one had a large chunk of tread that was missing down to the cord.... Not good! I was prepared to admit defeat, and leave, but my friend Gary, veteran of many a blown tire, was pretty sure that the worst that would happen is we would leave a little rubber trash on the side of the road, and have 8 spare wheels to finish the trip. "You won't even notice it! Let's go, we're burning daylight!" he kept saying.
As a concession to my fears, he drove Sprout out of Ft. McCoy... Gary is a true friend!
Mike at Ft. McCoy pointed us to the next treasure we were to find on our trip: Rod Feltz in Marshfield, Wisconsin.
Rod Feltz... What can I say? Those of you that know him, already know. His place is an oasis for MV'rs in Marshfield, Wisconsin... And we arrived there after Mike had called him, told him our problem, and asked him to please treat us really nicely. It doesn't get any better than that!
It turns out that Rod treats everyone really nicely! It is just his pleasant way.
He set us up with some used, but good enough tires(on rim) for $10 each, loaned us the space, and the tools to do the deed, and let my friend Gary browse his acres of MV scrap.
I, on the other hand, was about to get my first time at the wheel of a deuce. I was asked to move her onto the slab, a fairly easy task... or it should have been. Well, in my defense, I was about on my 30'th hour, having been up since 7 the previous morning, and I misjudged distances (a deuce does a lot to make you think it is just a pickup truck), and I drove off the edge of the driveway, and my front left wheel slipped over the edge and into the drainage ditch! Damn! I took one look, and realized that I was going to have to raise that wheel 18 inches, and not tear up Rod's driveway. Knowing that I was out of my league, I didn't even try. I went straight to Rod for help. He smiled, and said, "That happens all the time... We have plenty of stuff that can pull around here!" He took over, and with the help of a skid loader, and another driver, Sprout was out of the ditch in quick order.
Sprout must have been pretty scared by the ditch incident, because she peed in the ditch, and I spent the next hour removing all of the GL5 axle oil she left in the water. I was sure that she must have a really, really, bad axle seal... worse than I had ever seen before..., and I was about defeated! (remember no sleep for 30+ hours) I tried to sell her to Rod, but Rod is a businessman that sells MV parts, and has no use for running deuces, only scrap deuces... He was quick to offer a cash price, but a scrap dealer's price.... I was willing to take a loss, but not that big of a loss... Meanwhile, my friend Gary was stacking up things he just --had-- to have... about a ton and 1/2 of things he just had to have!
[About the oil leak: I discovered that the leak was caused by a government change order on the deuce! The original front brake hoses are a touch short for their duty on a hyper extending suspension such as is on the deuce. That is why they were all being changed to 5 ton hoses. One of the interim change orders suggested removing the clamp that held the axle side of the hose to the axle housing. Guess what is on the other side of the bolt holes that held those clamps? A full load of GL5 differential oil is what! They removed the clamp bolts, but didn't put the bolts back, leaving a bolt hole into the top of the axle housing for oil to pee out of, if you ever happen to tilt the deuce more than 10 or 20 degrees.
The axle seals are probably just fine. I'll be changing that oil, though. An open hole allows oil out, and water in.
If your deuce has had those clamps removed CHECK THE BOLT HOLES!]
My friend Gary had been busy while I was messing with axles, cleaning up Sprout's indiscretion, and changing tires. He had made a big pile of truck tires on rims, deuce bumpers, hoists, and other stuff I dare not mention!
As far as Gary was concerned, Sprout WAS coming home with us! End of discussion! She was the only truck we had that could hold all the crap that Gary bought from Rod Feltz.
I continued to fall into my lack of sleep induced panic trip into the what if's, doom and gloom, when Gary took me aside and said, "look, if it stops somewhere, and won't go, we'll tow it to the side, or someplace safe, and I'll come back for you with my dump truck and tow bar... it'll be expensive, but we will be fine!"
"You're driving Chuck, get over it, we'll be fine!"
He was right.
Because of my worrying about breakdowns, and because Gary had filled the bed of MY truck with so much very heavy stuff, I decided to give up the idea of traveling further north (to Rhinelander), to pick up some of my stuff, and to start heading south towards home.
I drove Sprout about 1200 miles. Outside of a few light bulbs that wouldn't light some of the time, a speedometer that turns backwards, a heater blower that sometimes ran sometimes didn't, an air assist cylinder that wasn't...assisting, and a need for new wiper blades, Sprout behaved more perfectly than any truck I have ever owned. In a major mechanical systems sense, she was brand new. The engine really only had 115 hours on it when I left Ft McCoy. I could feel it breaking in on the trip.
When I couldn't safely drive anymore, I slept on the workbench in the back of Sprout's bed amongst all of Gary's tires, and awoke feeling creaky, but good, and continued driving. Surprisingly, I felt more refreshed, and felt physically and spiritually, better when I was behind the wheel of MY deuce, than when I stepped down onto the pavement. I have never felt that way in ANY vehicle that I have ever driven.
I arrived home, tired, but with a smile on my face that was every bit as goofy as the smile some GI painted on Sprout's bumper when she was christened with her name. That anonymous GI loved his truck, and I now know why! She has a good heart, and is happy to be driving again.
I hope I can do as well by Sprout as those that came before me did. I hope I can give her the life of luxury she deserves after 40 years in the service of our country.... A service, for which she received no recognition.
To Mike at GL, aka Mike at Ft McCoy: You are a treat! It is a great thing you are doing finding loving homes for these running deuces. You treat your customers like they really matter to you, and I want you to know that your flexibility, and grand treatment was appreciated by me! Keep up the good work, and I hope that GL comes to appreciate you, as much as your customers and I already do! Every single person I have talked to about their Ft McCoy experience has asked to be remembered to you. A few new to GL, are hoping they can buy something at Ft. McCoy just to meet you. Good job!
To DR GREG: Greg thank you for looking at Sprout for me. Your inspection, and pictures helped me to bring the right stuff. Your pleasant attitude helped me to go through with this trip. I am sorry about that little cloud burst I PM'd in your direction when everything on my side of this deal was going all wrong... It worked out in the end, and I am very happy I went through with this! I am a deuce sort of guy!
And finally, to all the folks that generously offered to help me out, if I needed help on the road: Thank you very much! I will do my best to pass your good will on to the next newbie that needs a hand. It turns out that Sprout didn't need much help to make this trip... I am sure that she has done much bigger things in her past, and this trip was just a tiny little side diversion.
My wife doesn't like Sprout. Not even a tiny little bit. On seeing Sprout for the first time, she announced that Sprout looks even worse than in the pictures...
Jealosy? Maybe... I have never witnessed a reaction anything like this in the 27 years she and I have been together. Sprout and I are going to have to do something really magnificent to win her over...
Chuck (aka Stumps)
PS, to anyone that feels the need to castigate me for my lack of load out pictures: Please remember your first time. If you had enough time, and energy, to shoot pictures, you probably were letting someone else do all of the work. I had the camera, but I had neither the energy, nor the time to use it. Sorry, but that is how it was with my trip.
There are some things you just can't know about until you do them... Recovering a deuce is one of those things. I am sorry there are no recovery pictures, but I hope my story and your imagination will be enough. Having no time to shoot pictures is one of those things I just couldn't know.
I went through all of the preliminaries, rustled up insurance with Gulfway, got a trip tag from... well it was completely legal, but I will talk about that in PM's only. Gathered up fluids, filters, tools, and other supplies that I thought might be needed, and waited for my friend Gary to come and pick me up.
Gary is a night person, a disabled vet, mechanic, and a retired truck driver, so he picked me up exactly 16 hours before we were supposed to be at Ft McCoy, which is a 16 hour road trip!
We left Maryland at about 3:30pm, and arrived at Mike's gate at Ft McCoy at about 8:30am. I'd about had the stuffing beat out me from the trip, but Gary was still going strong...in a Gary sort of way. There was frost and ice all over Sprout, but to me, it seemed like the sun was out, and it was starting to melt away.
Mike was a treat! He met me with a warm smile, and a handshake. He had already started up his jump truck, and had it waiting, but we never needed it. The Group 31 sized batteries I brought went in snug (you have to unwarp the plastic battery case), but safe, and after complaining a couple of times about it being cold, Sprout started right up, and ran beautifully. Somehow, I think I remember being told that her diesel tank was empty, but either I am mistaken, or there is a diesel fairy that visits tired travelers, and fills deuce tanks while they sleep.... Sprout's tank was full! Diesel fairy's can't really exist, can they?
For the record, I am sure that I was mistaken about the tanks being empty.
The brakes responded well to a pressure bleeding using the SS patented garden sprayer bleeder, and very little of the 1/2 gallon of DOT5 I put in the sprayer tank. There were signs that one wheel cylinder had been peeing for a long, long time. We left the sprayer attached on the off chance that our brake system was going to be one of those non sealed hydraulic types.... It quit leaking before we left Ft McCoy.
The first scary disappointment was when I discovered that one tire had a torn valve stem (and wouldn't hold air), one tire had a split side, and one had a large chunk of tread that was missing down to the cord.... Not good! I was prepared to admit defeat, and leave, but my friend Gary, veteran of many a blown tire, was pretty sure that the worst that would happen is we would leave a little rubber trash on the side of the road, and have 8 spare wheels to finish the trip. "You won't even notice it! Let's go, we're burning daylight!" he kept saying.
As a concession to my fears, he drove Sprout out of Ft. McCoy... Gary is a true friend!
Mike at Ft. McCoy pointed us to the next treasure we were to find on our trip: Rod Feltz in Marshfield, Wisconsin.
Rod Feltz... What can I say? Those of you that know him, already know. His place is an oasis for MV'rs in Marshfield, Wisconsin... And we arrived there after Mike had called him, told him our problem, and asked him to please treat us really nicely. It doesn't get any better than that!
It turns out that Rod treats everyone really nicely! It is just his pleasant way.
He set us up with some used, but good enough tires(on rim) for $10 each, loaned us the space, and the tools to do the deed, and let my friend Gary browse his acres of MV scrap.
I, on the other hand, was about to get my first time at the wheel of a deuce. I was asked to move her onto the slab, a fairly easy task... or it should have been. Well, in my defense, I was about on my 30'th hour, having been up since 7 the previous morning, and I misjudged distances (a deuce does a lot to make you think it is just a pickup truck), and I drove off the edge of the driveway, and my front left wheel slipped over the edge and into the drainage ditch! Damn! I took one look, and realized that I was going to have to raise that wheel 18 inches, and not tear up Rod's driveway. Knowing that I was out of my league, I didn't even try. I went straight to Rod for help. He smiled, and said, "That happens all the time... We have plenty of stuff that can pull around here!" He took over, and with the help of a skid loader, and another driver, Sprout was out of the ditch in quick order.
Sprout must have been pretty scared by the ditch incident, because she peed in the ditch, and I spent the next hour removing all of the GL5 axle oil she left in the water. I was sure that she must have a really, really, bad axle seal... worse than I had ever seen before..., and I was about defeated! (remember no sleep for 30+ hours) I tried to sell her to Rod, but Rod is a businessman that sells MV parts, and has no use for running deuces, only scrap deuces... He was quick to offer a cash price, but a scrap dealer's price.... I was willing to take a loss, but not that big of a loss... Meanwhile, my friend Gary was stacking up things he just --had-- to have... about a ton and 1/2 of things he just had to have!
[About the oil leak: I discovered that the leak was caused by a government change order on the deuce! The original front brake hoses are a touch short for their duty on a hyper extending suspension such as is on the deuce. That is why they were all being changed to 5 ton hoses. One of the interim change orders suggested removing the clamp that held the axle side of the hose to the axle housing. Guess what is on the other side of the bolt holes that held those clamps? A full load of GL5 differential oil is what! They removed the clamp bolts, but didn't put the bolts back, leaving a bolt hole into the top of the axle housing for oil to pee out of, if you ever happen to tilt the deuce more than 10 or 20 degrees.
The axle seals are probably just fine. I'll be changing that oil, though. An open hole allows oil out, and water in.
If your deuce has had those clamps removed CHECK THE BOLT HOLES!]
My friend Gary had been busy while I was messing with axles, cleaning up Sprout's indiscretion, and changing tires. He had made a big pile of truck tires on rims, deuce bumpers, hoists, and other stuff I dare not mention!
As far as Gary was concerned, Sprout WAS coming home with us! End of discussion! She was the only truck we had that could hold all the crap that Gary bought from Rod Feltz.
I continued to fall into my lack of sleep induced panic trip into the what if's, doom and gloom, when Gary took me aside and said, "look, if it stops somewhere, and won't go, we'll tow it to the side, or someplace safe, and I'll come back for you with my dump truck and tow bar... it'll be expensive, but we will be fine!"
"You're driving Chuck, get over it, we'll be fine!"
He was right.
Because of my worrying about breakdowns, and because Gary had filled the bed of MY truck with so much very heavy stuff, I decided to give up the idea of traveling further north (to Rhinelander), to pick up some of my stuff, and to start heading south towards home.
I drove Sprout about 1200 miles. Outside of a few light bulbs that wouldn't light some of the time, a speedometer that turns backwards, a heater blower that sometimes ran sometimes didn't, an air assist cylinder that wasn't...assisting, and a need for new wiper blades, Sprout behaved more perfectly than any truck I have ever owned. In a major mechanical systems sense, she was brand new. The engine really only had 115 hours on it when I left Ft McCoy. I could feel it breaking in on the trip.
When I couldn't safely drive anymore, I slept on the workbench in the back of Sprout's bed amongst all of Gary's tires, and awoke feeling creaky, but good, and continued driving. Surprisingly, I felt more refreshed, and felt physically and spiritually, better when I was behind the wheel of MY deuce, than when I stepped down onto the pavement. I have never felt that way in ANY vehicle that I have ever driven.
I arrived home, tired, but with a smile on my face that was every bit as goofy as the smile some GI painted on Sprout's bumper when she was christened with her name. That anonymous GI loved his truck, and I now know why! She has a good heart, and is happy to be driving again.
I hope I can do as well by Sprout as those that came before me did. I hope I can give her the life of luxury she deserves after 40 years in the service of our country.... A service, for which she received no recognition.
To Mike at GL, aka Mike at Ft McCoy: You are a treat! It is a great thing you are doing finding loving homes for these running deuces. You treat your customers like they really matter to you, and I want you to know that your flexibility, and grand treatment was appreciated by me! Keep up the good work, and I hope that GL comes to appreciate you, as much as your customers and I already do! Every single person I have talked to about their Ft McCoy experience has asked to be remembered to you. A few new to GL, are hoping they can buy something at Ft. McCoy just to meet you. Good job!
To DR GREG: Greg thank you for looking at Sprout for me. Your inspection, and pictures helped me to bring the right stuff. Your pleasant attitude helped me to go through with this trip. I am sorry about that little cloud burst I PM'd in your direction when everything on my side of this deal was going all wrong... It worked out in the end, and I am very happy I went through with this! I am a deuce sort of guy!
And finally, to all the folks that generously offered to help me out, if I needed help on the road: Thank you very much! I will do my best to pass your good will on to the next newbie that needs a hand. It turns out that Sprout didn't need much help to make this trip... I am sure that she has done much bigger things in her past, and this trip was just a tiny little side diversion.
My wife doesn't like Sprout. Not even a tiny little bit. On seeing Sprout for the first time, she announced that Sprout looks even worse than in the pictures...
Jealosy? Maybe... I have never witnessed a reaction anything like this in the 27 years she and I have been together. Sprout and I are going to have to do something really magnificent to win her over...
Chuck (aka Stumps)
PS, to anyone that feels the need to castigate me for my lack of load out pictures: Please remember your first time. If you had enough time, and energy, to shoot pictures, you probably were letting someone else do all of the work. I had the camera, but I had neither the energy, nor the time to use it. Sorry, but that is how it was with my trip.
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Are you going to leave the back on? I got 2 deuces like that from McCoy and removed the backs. Definately lots of screws.
