What's the biggest P.O.S you've had to drive?

Did you ever have it kick and run backward?

 

That's one thing I've noticed, a Mack can handle the rough stuff. They're great for dump trucks and stuff. The engines don't seem to hold up well, though. I've seen cam bearings wear out at 350k, and air systems full of oil that you can never drain out since it fills up so fast. The floors get super hot, too. I drove a CL for a while in 04 and was going to wrap the exhaust with header wrap to try to keep the inside cooler. They just don't seem to do well as road trucks.

 

My first truck WAS a 72 TransStar! 318, 13, bolted down seat, but it had A/C mounted on the roof! AND it worked for the first 2 years I drove it! I ran the Smokey Mountains all the time with it! Mounted 5th wheel but I never saw a scale ever or not where I ran! Now DOT cops yeah but not even a portable set. That truck was nice but that White FreightShaker I wrote about on page 1 was a POS! I wished for my TransStar back all the time and wished my old boss hadn't died! Now you couldn't get me back into a COE ever again holding a gun to my head but some of them actually weren't bad trucks! Even the '79 R Model Mack Dump I drove to help out a friend for a few weeks! Once I got it cleaned and what I thought was a spare oil tank on the rail back at the back of the truck which turned out to be an air tank drained of crud,that thing looked and drove nice! Mack Red does look so much better if you throw a coat of wax on it! LOL Heck any truck with color on the body looks great with wax! Black and white included!

 

The first truck I ever drove on my own was probably the worst P.O.S. I've ever driven, It was a '48 Autocar that had been repowered with a 4-71 Detroit (Not a typo I said 4-71) inline 4 banger with a straight stack, It had a 5X4 transmission and Hendrickson rubber buiscut suspension with No sleeper, No heater, No A/C, 22" steering wheel with no power steering, No seat suspension at all! It was painted a badly faded red with a badly faded white stripe and had a top speed of 45 MPH...I was happy just to be working and driving a truck so I kept it clean inside and out and pretty soon I got upgraded to a 1951 KW Bullnose with a 165 Cummins and a 5X3 with springs and a heater and a small sleeper....I drove the KW for a year and loved that old truck!

Those were the only two company trucks that I have ever driven...After the year in the KW I bought my first truck and have been in my own ever since then.

 

1981 Pete 362 cabover, 400 Cummins/13 speed. Sucker was drafty as all-get-out, had no heat OR a/c, and rode rough as a cob (springs, if I remember right). Sucker could pull, though. I hauled dairy feed (dried beet pulp, cottonseed, culls, etc) in a walking floor trailer, over most of New Mexico and West Texas.
If the truck had been more comfortable, I probably woulda stuck around longer, but nicer trucks called... even if they were relatively gutless.

 

Yeppers that is the same company, the Matiko Brothers own Expert Movers out of Virginia Beach, right down the road from the farm the truck started its hauling career at.

The truck is old, but only God Knows when it will die, That Mack has to be thr toughest truck I have ever driven, and with a 5&4 twin stick it would pull a train down the tracks, it is absolutely without a doubt, Mack knows how to make a truck that will pull like no tomorrow.

 

hell, when i climbed into my truck at my new company and saw that it had a non-air ride passenger seat, i was like wtf? didnt know they still made them...

anyhow, #### a 1948? 45 mph? gawd! how did you ever put up with that crap? Sounds like you were lucky it had a steering wheel..

 

Yes. I noticed a 671 was running a little strange and when I put it in first and let the clutch out, it started moving backwards.

I tried to explain how the old two cycle Detroit Engine worked to a modern day mechanic and he just looked at me like I was making it up as I went along. I think that may have been how the concept was created in the first place.

 

I had my 2 stroke dirtbike kick and run backwards once, just like you said. It hurt my foot too (kick start). I tried to push start it backwards but never could get it to kick over quite like that again.

2 strokes are odd like that... they dont care which direction they run in....the valves in 4 strokes keep it from happening.

Anyway, you know there's a reason they used those things, right? 2 strokes make approximately twice as much horsepower as a 4 stroke, because they have twice as many power strokes. I used to have a 200cc 4 stroke three wheeler and a 100cc 2 stroke dirtbike, both had the same power. In dirtbike racing the 2 strokes generally run with 4 strokes of twice the size and its considered perfectly fair.

 

interesting............they moved my sister-in-laws house then in Virginia Beach. She got a house for free that sat on a future devolpment site, and bought a lot a mile down the road, and those fellows moved it for her.

small world, eh?