N.O.S.

I expect at one time she was hoping you'd grow out of it Your continued attachment to it at your age certainly gives me optimism for the future :laugh:

Signed, although tbh I think there is far more chance of finding a decent recipe for 12.00 x 20 bar tread casserole than the current exemption being extended.

:wow: Is that a Steyr in USA markings? Lovely photo!

Going a bit off topic, but over here in UK it seems very difficult to find correct automotive air brake spec. rubber hose for the bigger air -braked trucks. Not wanting to use non- automotive - approved hose (although who's to say it's not as good) I eventually tracked some down through a local offshore oil industry supplier, and it wasn't expensive. Needless to say it comes from Uncle Sam!

Trade plates? Reckon it's going to docks for export, possibly one of the Snowy River units? Silly boy, the Snowy River trailkers were massive things...

Your mate Ergma, he say - Cylinder dia. 1 to 6 = 96.01mm (= 3 25/32 = std size) Crank Conn. rod journal dia. 1 to 6 = 58.72mm (= 2.311" = std size) Crank Main bearings 1 to 4 (see manual for engine spec. - all 4 are different from new)

Good point Gordon and yes, the trucks have that tap too. Vulture - you're in deep with the GMC now, no going back, so I would urge you to bite the bullet and change all the brake hoses - they could all be in similar condition, and just think of the cost as buying safety and peace of mind Ask Rex about engine oil when you order the hoses (and all the other stuff you'll need :wow:). And get some O.D. top coat on that grey primer

Should do, as would this Morris one I know of quite a few running on 15w40. I would probably still be too if I hadn't started thinking about filtration aspects. I've come to the conclusion you can get a bit paranoid about oil. But it would be interesting to know what other folk run on!

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That Morris oil is a SAE 10 oil. Far too thin (when hot). I think it is generally accepted that you need SAE 30 oil in a Jimmy. There is also a debate as to using either a straight (mongrade) oil like SAE 30 or a mutligrade (e.g. 15W40). If you want to get into this, start on the basis that the engine is designed for straight oil with a BYPASS filter - in this arrangement the oil dumps the big bits of crap in the sump and the finer bits are carried around, being caught by the filter on approx 6th circuit. Compare this with a modern set-up using multigrade oil and FULL FLOW filtration - the multigrade oil carries all particles around with it in suspension and passes through the filter each circuit. You can appreciate the difference I'm sure. But whether your engine will is another question altogether :cool2: I'd always run my Jimmy on 15W40 with no problems - after a bit of tlc and thinking about filtration aspects (which someone posted on here a while back) I decided to go to SAE 30. It didn't seem to like the change (glazed up, but may just have been coincidence through change of use pattern), so after a top end rebuild and advice from those who've run them for donkeys years I've gone to 20W50. Bet that's confused you hasn't it? :cool2: That makes two of us then :banana: Be interesting to see what others use and why :coffee:

If it is high tensile steel you can use either a MIG welder (which uses CO2 as the shielding gas) and I'm sure just ordinary mild steel wire? (at least I do ), or a Low Hydrogen electrode if using a stick welder.

Wow - if I'm not mistaken that's a Mk 4 bed frame isn't it? :coffee:

Some great photos! Quite strange to see the Allied star on the Explorers. Was that the only time I wonder? That little Muirhill dumper - is that one of the very rare batch of left hand drive models supplied to the Americans? :cool2: Reckon the negative was printed wrong way round, going by the SDY UC 2 on the body. Even the dumpoer seems to have a name (on the radiator top tank), but I can't make out what it is.

At last - bovine evidence.

Well done - a great initiation! Don't worry too much about that long list of jobs - even after 20 years with the GMC you'll probably have a few left to do (having done several of them at least twice :-D). Enjoy.

I'm telling you there was a cow in it - and there were two girls holding it by the legs to make sure it didn't jump out. :trustme:

Well not strictly true - at one point on Thursday or Friday a man' truck (GMC) was to be seen driving around with a load of Land Girls and a Friesian cow in the back :readpaper: Someone please post a photo or Jack's going to think I'm loopy.

That was an early view of Nick John's yard before he worked out a way to fit them all in 6 lock-ups.

Two of us were doing our day job in a huge field of carrots (not field of huge carrots) which was being harvested. Come 4pm the old boys on the harvester and trailer tractors locked up their mounts next to us and wandered 100 yds down the field. They then proceeded to fill a carrier bag each with carrots and wandered back past us and on to the farmyard. I turned to my colleague who was well versed in country ways and asked 'Now why do you suppose they walked all the way back there to fill their bags?" He replied " Well I guess if you've lived on nothing but carrots for two weeks, you'd get a bit fussy too" :-X

I was trying to choose my words carefully, Sean :-D You may be right, but my example (which was a real life one until I sold the truck) shows how complicated it can become: If my truck was used for winching work I could use red diesel and did not need to MOT it. But if I was using it for private use as a Historic Large Vehicle I would need to use white diesel and MOT it. This suggests it is the USE which alters things. Comes back to the concept of using a vehicle for two purposes - I guess the Authorities would regard the more stringent testing requirement to apply. To further complicate matters, had my vehicle been taxed as Special Vehicle (i.e. winch vehicle) then I'm not sure I could legitimately have used it for recreational purposes - I never got round to resolving that one :cool2:. Granted there are not many vehicles which could legitimately claim a dual use - the use is usually governed by the design and so MOT requirements / exemptions are straightforward to determine. Unfortunately it always seems to be the range of vehicles falling under the category of 'large' and post 1960 / pre 1973 which seem to give us the headaches in deciding what legislation should apply. :nut: I suppose we have a responsibility to try not to bend the rules. I don't claim to know the answers, I'm just trying to illustrate how difficult it is to get one's head around it all :saluting: After all, if you can drive a Historic agricultural tractor around the roads for recreational purposes, surely you can drive a Historic forklift around too?

The new rings we just put in after a very light cylinder hone were 15 gap You can get rings which are not gapped - you have to grind a little of to gap them correctly. This could be a way of taking up any wear, but would not have thought it was worth the trouble. Just out of interest (I'm not qualified to comment further :-D), what is your biggest gap in the working area of the cylinder?

That's a very good point Richard. In the case of my GMC I knew it was rebuilt and straight into French storage and then out to preservation and then to me, so I could be confident about the Ergma plate. If it has been bored + 10 thou this would add (10 x 3.142) thou to the circumference, so if ring gap is 30 odd thou greater than you were expecting R3, this would indicate + 10 oversize. 60 thou greater and it is bored + 20 thou.

So you did clean the piston tops and check piston size stamped on top face - didn't you? It would still be worth checking for rebuid plate just in case someone usd std pistons in a bored out block (you'd probably get away with +10 ). Just out of interest and to show what you can get away with: We had a 200hp engine rebuild by a John Deere main dealer. They had ground crank - 40, but put -20 shells in! It was worked very hard but sounded beautifully quiet until after 4 months a con rod cap bolt snapped and we discovered the error on strip down to investigate knocking. Not a mark on crank! set of correct shells and was fine.

They were dipping them as they arrived by road :cool2:

Oooh. It has not gone unnoticed that the R3 has got himself a set of standard rings. But is there a plate on the engine (maybe left hand side of block towards rear end?) which gives actual cylinder sizes? Might be in metric so you will need to convert. In all probability you have an engine that's been bored out - the plate should show by how much. I blame that ERGMA bloke.....