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I've been a member for about a year and a half, I think. I think I joined last year when I bought this truck to get info on it, but never posted. I bought the truck in August of last year. It was originally a fire truck locally, with a pumper body on it. I bought it from the guy that bought it from the guy that bought it from the town. The guy that I got it from scrapped the body and the pump, so I got it as a cab and chassis with no driveshaft (the pump was part of the driveshaft). The guy was patient enough to let me get the truck running, get a driveshaft made, and fix the brakes on his property, so I could drive it home. Then, it sat for almost a year before I was able to get everything squared away to get it to pass inspection. But, it's now on the road and I use it as my pickup truck. I built a 8' x 12' bed for it and got a giant scissor assembly for it, so I could make it a dump bed, I still need to get a power unit for the dump to work.
It's a good truck with less than 28,000 original miles on it (which includes all the time the pump ran, since it was in the driveshaft) It runs pretty good, now that I got rid of the Holley carb with the governor on it, replacing it with a 600 cfm Edlebrock AFB. There's some rust on it that I need to fix, but it's not too bad. I'd like to clean up the body and paint it the original pale yellow/green color.
There are a few things that I would like to change on it to make it more useful to me. Right now, it has a 361 gasser in it (I think), a 4 speed Allison auto that doesn't have OD, and gearing that puts it at about (what I think is) redline at about 50 mph. It has juice brakes on it, which have a single master, so all the brakes are lost if there's one leak, plus there's nothing to proportion the rear brakes, which easily lock up as the truck sits right now. I'd like to get a diesel engine in the truck because I like diesel, personal preference, there's really nothing wrong with the gas engine. I'd like to figure out some fix that won't kill my ability to haul a decent load, but will let me run at highway speeds more comfortably. And, I need to figure out some fix for the brakes, because it's dangerous running around with the rear brakes locking up so easily. I've already had a few close calls because people don't allow me to maintain a safe distance behind the vehicle in front of me, and in the rain, it's really bad...
I'm open to suggestions, and here are some pictures of my truck.
NumberDummy - Thanks, that's very helpful info. There's a picture above that shows the rear axle, it's definitely a single speed center section. It looks like they put a single speed center section in a few different ratios... I see that there's a 17121 axle that has a 5.57/7.60 two speed center section, I wonder if it would be possible to put that center section into my existing axle housing. If it would be possible, that would take care of my desire to be able to run at highway speeds. And, if that is possible, I wonder how difficult it would be to find a center section with that two speed ratio setup.
12-16-2014, 11:06 AM
/ 18,500 lbs. Rear Axle Capacity.