Maintenance time for #706!
Mostly doing the usual fluids. Oil change, filters, radiator flush, new belt, new thermostat, new radiator cap, grease the usual points then moving on to a few nagging issues the M880 has. I'll pick the story up with pictures from here.
Yee haw, engine cleaning time! Actually got this thing quite well cleaned out but of course the paint in there sucks. I wish I had time enough to fiddle with this one and could just yoink this one out like we do with the M151s and get this thing super cleaned up. Not gonna happen so I'll just tolerate the nappy paint...
This Dodge is an M882. Originally, the M882s were equipped with both a complete 12 volt system and a complete and separate 24 volt system as well. As such, it used to have both a giant 6TN starting battery for the truck itself as well as 2 more that were dedicated to radio use. In spite of the fact that we do a great deal of radio stuff, we really do not care enough to put together a specific radio set up on this truck and particularly are not interested in having to pay for and maintain that many batteries. What does that have to do with the price of tea in Shanghai you ask? Well, the two spare batteries sat on this tray here in the engine bay:
We have always had the spare parts box here as well as the portable trouble light that I made up out of an extra cop car dome light but aside from that the tray was empty. Inside the truck, or more specifically behind the seat we had tons of stupid crap stuffed here there and everywhere. As you may have noticed, there are quite a few required items for trucks at East Wind and with the Dodges not being particularly tactical trucks there never really were racks for any of that stuff included. Being somewhat sick of all that crap crap kicking around in the cab I decided it was well past time to do something about it.
Step one:
I have zero tolerance for stupid jacks. The Dodges original jack was crap and got binned promptly after failing inspection. It was replaced by an old but very solid 12 ton blackhawk jack. The jack has always been a menace to society parked back behind the rear seat so I made up a mount for it, and bolted it solidly to the tray tucked back under the fender.
Is next, Pioneer tools!
The Dodge has a Max Ax set donated by Norris. It's a wicked good pioneer tool kit that is quite compact for a full sized ax and a bag of accessories but there is no getting around the fact that it is still a fill sized axe with a big bag of accessories. I made up a mount that goes to the front panel of the truck that has a pin that the Max Ax head clips onto. It holds the tool VERY securely and again, gets it completely out of the cab.
What about the tow strap?
The dodge uses the same coiled 2 inch snatch strap we use in all the M151 series trucks. We keep it coiled up in an old canvas document pouch. Happens that the document pouches have sturdy metal clips on the top and a snap at the bottom so I just made a place for the clips to clip to and added a stud for it to snap to at the back and voila! Secure as can be.
What about the tools?
We had a bit more room on the tray so I added a .30 cal can and then moved the spares over to it (Spares = Fan belt, ballast resistor, ignition module, cap, rotor, some bulbs, zip ties, tape etc) The regular tools got moved to the .50 cal can with has ample space and also has the added advantage of being bolted to the truck so people can no longer just go snatch the entire tool kit out of the Dodge and walk off to work on something.
Look at how much more room the cab has now! Well, probably not this much extra room long term, I just have the seat out for the time being while I do some repairs to other stuff as well as renew the truck bed liner/paint on the floors.
More to come as more gets done.
