Originally Posted by 73F250Ranger
< < as I said it was dumb, stupid and highly illegal.
I'll never do that much again. > >
Ah yes. Proof of God's existence: any boy reaches the age of 21.
UTfball68
Very true...and as proof of that I just turned 22. My goal is just to make it to my next birthday...I'm one of those whose favorite phrase is "Hey y'all watch this"...haha.
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And amazing as it is I turn 40 this year, hell, Mom called on my 25th and said she was suprised I made it to the quarter century mark, much less after six yrs in the Corps..... of course, when we are in the Ex and I hammer it leaving the stop light to smack on a rice burner, my wife asks, "what are you 16?!?!?!" to which I smile back with a big SEG and say YES I AM!
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SEMPER FI
02 X Ultimate Limited/4x/7.3/5.5" Lift
77 F-150/4x/351M/4sp/SB
66 F-250/4sp/300/6cyl/4bbl/Offy
63 F-250/4x/292/4sp/Flatbed
77 VW Conv
01 KTM 520 EXC
I haven't hauled much with my '77, maybe a few loads of gravel for the yard and my quad..
My F350 has seen a lot of abuse. I pull started a dead flatbed with a load of lumber at 105K lbs.
I hauled a 30K lb log skidder 20 miles up I-5 on a 3 axle equipment trailer with the brakes backed off. Luckily I didn't get caught, or I would be typing this from prison .
I grossed a little over 19K lbs on one trip when I was moving this past summer. Had a 3/4 ton Chev on my car trailer full of garage stuff. And no, I don't have trailer brakes.
The most I've had in the bed was about 8K lbs of rock.
I have put 6200 pounds of hay on the bed of my 74 f-250 390 4spd 4x4 and had a trailer with another 3800 pounds of hay for a total of 10,000 pound and it didn't know it was there. I went about 25 miles with it and I sure got a lot of looks, probably because it was stacked about 6 feet above the cab. I have never seen a chevy thats capable of that.
This last winter we had a record total snowfall. I ended up having to bring the skidder home from work to move some snow piles. The skidder weighs 7500 and the trailer is 2400 and the truck trips the scales at aroung 5400. It's an early 77 highboy with a stock 400 and an np435 riding on 35's with 4.10 gears. The trailer tires were real close to the fenders with the skidder a bit forward of center, so I moved it ahead to put some more weight on the tongue. I was glad I put new rear springs on it a couple weeks before. I bought the biggest set the spring shop had in stock (10 leaves), and they didn't even squat with what I'm sure was over a thousand lbs on the tongue. I had the go pedal all the way to the floor for about a mile and a half climbing back up the hill and the temp guage stayed steady. I was more worried that a u-joint would let loose, but I made it. I amost forgot, I stopped at a gas station on the way home with the load to gas up, and a state boy came pulling in as I was lifting on the trailer fender trying to gain some clearance. He didn't give me a second look, but I got out of there before he saw that my trailer had expired tags.
I like your style 73...I always get ticked when people ask to borrow my truck or if I can haul something for them because they don't have a fullsize or because they don't want to "injure" their vehicle...I tell them get creative...just like you did. So now I make them pay for gas and my time...and after my 20 grand restore I make them sign a contract saying they will pay for any damage if anything happens and get it notarized.
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___'77 250 400 37 Boggers____'96 350 CC 460 35 SSR's_____'79 Bronco 351M 35 M/T's on 6/30/08 PO pic
Ben
I try not to haul much with the 73. I'm fixing up a utility trailer to make home depot runs versus beating up the bed. It is my daily driver but I'm trying to keep it looking pretty decent. I don't have 20 grand invested in my truck like you do so I can just imagine how upset you would be if someone messed up your truck moving something. When I did haul the 12 foot boards I was probably the hit of Home Depot parking lot loading it up. But it worked out pretty well. If I have to haul something I will, but I try to plan in a way to not ruin my truck doing so. I will probably use the utility trailer alot hauling stuff when it is done.
__________________ Sean
Tim's Minions - Resident BEEFCAKE!
1973 F100: 302, 3-speed, Hurst shifter, headers, dual exhaust Member of the New Jersey Chapter
I helped a friend move a year ago in my then bone-stock 76 F100. 300-6, T18, 3.70 gears, and some beefy looking overload springs in the rear. He wouldn't spring for a trailer, so we loaded all his worldly possessions, including a motorcycle, into my truck, tarped it, and tied it down with a half-dozen cargo straps. Bedrail to bedrail, cab to tailgate and 2ft above the roofline. The overload springs had the frame snubbers just above the axle housing, and the tops of the stock rear 235/75R15 tires were two inches above the wheel well trim. Low rider fo' sure, and it still swayed like a sailboat. I sure wish we'd found a weigh scale, but we were way behind schedule from packing and loading, and a little hung over.
Oh, did I mention squishy manual brakes of unknown vintage and broken power steering? At least I'd put a set of Monroe Gas Magnums on the weekend before...
So we drove this rig from Cleveland to Annapolis, via the PA turnpike. At night. In the rain. Thank goodness for the granny low 1st; that truck would have never gotten anywhere. Steering on the road felt like driving in a parking lot at any other time. If I'd had a tachometer, we'd have seen it climb to four grand and then some between every shift. And the brakes...this rig did not like to stop. It required severe patience and planning and driving 10-15 mph slower than normal any time there might be an intersection or a turn. I had time and good reason to double clutch and downshift. But that old motor...bone stock 300 from 1976 with a 1BBL carburetor and a blown out glasspack muffler made 86MPH on the flat land, fully loaded when my friend drove it (and 97+ empty on the way there).. 86MPH, it said right on the GPS. We nearly died because he wouldn't slow down in the mountains. We were doing 80 or so coming down a mountain in PA, fully loaded with who knows how much, in the dark and rain, and we hit a curve. Those cheap front tires started to chatter and SLIDE and jerk the steering wheel until my friend stood on the brakes. No more driving fast.
Coming up that last Eastbound hill into Breezewood, that long, long, steep hill, I was driving. This load had gotten a little loose as the trip had progressed, and halfway up that hill the speedo started dropping, and the temp gauge nudged upwards. At 40 MPH I started seriously thinking about upshifting to 3rd, but I knew it'd be fast and hard to keep from loosing speed,and we'd never get that pile of stuff back together. So I left it in 4th and kept pressing harder on the gas. 30MPH is the bottom end of 4th gear in that truck. That's about 1500RPM. 3/4 of the way up the speedo stopped dropping at 35MPH, with the pedal flat on the floor. For 5 minutes, I prayed the truck would hold together, as I saw the temperature and gas gauges creep in the opposite directions. And the smell. The smell of a damn hot engine. We rolled down the windows in the cold and rain when the heater got so hot to make us pant and sweat. And then the engine started to sound a little different and struggle some, we dropped another MPH or two, and the smell got a little worse. Just then the hill leveled off and we crested, but the truck wouldn't pick up speed. 35MPH, floored on near level ground. An hour ago, it roared along above 80. It took 10 minutes feathering the throttle down the grade on the other side before the engine started to really run again. I suppose I probably should have slowed and downshifted at the bottom of the hill, but it was dark and rainy, and I just couldn't see what I was up against until I was in it. The toll booth attendant at Breezewood had quite a spectacle. Two pale, sweaty guys in the dead of night, idling up in the Beverly Hillbillies truck, grinning from ear to ear, shaking their heads, and looking very relieved.
We did loose some cargo anyway. At least we think we did. There was a microwave sized gap in the deposition of stuff at the back of the bed when we stopped after Breezewood. If you found a garbage bag of broken up stuff on I-76 back in last January, that fell off my truck. We got into Annapolis around 3AM. My friend's poor mom nearly had a heart attack when she woke up and saw the mountain of stuff in her driveway, buried under which was a Ford pickup.
So I left it in 4th and kept pressing harder on the gas. 30MPH is the bottom end of 4th gear in that truck. That's about 1500RPM. 3/4 of the way up the speedo stopped dropping at 35MPH, with the pedal flat on the floor. For 5 minutes, I prayed the truck would hold together, as I saw the temperature and gas gauges creep in the opposite directions. And the smell. The smell of a damn hot engine.
Yes, BigBlue, it's straight amazing that your engine not only didn't blow or seize up, but that it actually recovered from that trauma.
Today I hauled 3600 lbs of dairy mineral about twenty miles. The new springs were just touching the overload. 35's were a bit squishy, to say the least. Here are some crappy cell phone camera pics.
I almost woke up my sleeping 3 year old laughing at the image of an F-150 pulling a school bus 10 miles...you guys are killing me.
My biggest load was a whole 8 foot bedfull of cedar 8x4 siding when I re-did my old house in my wheezing old 351M '78 F-150. The guy at Lowes winced as he eased the last stack in with his forklift, then sped away as if it were going to collapse any minute. Dumba$$ that I am, I backed the load up into my yard to get it as close as possible to where it was to be hung and got the truck stuck 10 feet from the driveway and 9 feet from my front door...my neighbors were at work so I had to call AAA. Probably better that way since they'd have laughed at me!
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