A view of the Past, Vintage Photos

Probably around 1980, I had a part time job loading mattresses on trucks. The fleet mechanic there was an old timer who used to drive OTR. He used to tell us about truckin' at night with a flame coming out the stack...

I think our old R Models had a metal tag on the turbo that called it a "turbocharger and muffling device"

 

I believe the blue flame was caused by propane injection. Some trucks had propane tanks on the running board. Not sure what propane did, but I've seen turbos that say"muffling device".

 

Did you ever hear of the trick of dropping a couple pieces of dry hardwood (we used hockey stick handles cut to 8 inches) dropped into the stack.
Scared the heck out of the driver when it caught fire on the first big pull.
Flames 2 to 3 feet out of the stack when the wood had been charred by sitting in the exhaust for a bit then superheated and the wood gas mixed with air as it came out of the stack.

 

Any of the natural aspirated Cummins that had the pump turned up a bit too high would put out some superheated unburned fuel that would burn when mixed with air above the exhaust stack if the exhaust was too hot on a long pull.
Normally you could see it at dusk or later when your pyro got to 1100 or so depending on where the sensor was mounted in the pipe. Most came from the factory at 11 inches from the manifold but the tips burned out too soon on tuned engines(hot pumps and timed a bit better) so Dad would move the sensor back to 20 inches to save the sensor and tell the driver/owner to add 300 degrees to his reading.
I helped in the shop on evenings and weekends until I was 16 when I was offered a local job driving all summer hauling asphalt across town 12 hours a day. Dad never taught me the timing or pump tricks he used on the o/o trucks he did on weekends and evenings but never on the company trucks during the days.by the time I got my chauffeurs licence almost everything was 290 or 335 Cummins in our except for a few backup old units or retired road trucks now used locally.

 

The Eisenhauer Freighter. These are very interesting. The things they experimented with in the early days is very cool.

 

I remember my Dad talking about Hall-Scotts. He drove for Asbury Tank Lines out of Eureka when I was a baby. That makes it over seventy years ago.
He drove a chain drive Mack with a Hall-Scott. Mostly he stayed local but every once in awhile he'd have to go to Crescent City. He said it took him all night to go up and back from Eureka.
He also said that that engine would get the floorboards so hot that it would melt the grease out of your boots. On real long pulls he'd set the hand throttle and stand on the running board. Some of the guys used to walk along side the truck but after a guy ran over himself they made them quit doing that.

 

No, doesn't surprise me. I heard of old timers dropping moth balls in the air cleaner because they were made of ether,, AND, may I take this opportunity to thank truckdad for probably the longest running, most interesting topic on TTR. Sure beats the old "drug test questions"