Good luck with that. I haven’t heard much good about the new Chevy/international trucks and haven’t been impressed at all with knapheide. Several people on FB have had the floor of the box behind the axle let go, they’re just spot welded in. The stellar cranes don’t seem to measure up to what they’re rated to lift either.

Ever drop a bolt in the belly pans and figure you'll just order one instead but dont have any in stock so now you have to drop a pan and dig through the mud to find it?

Nope. If I have to trim down a longer bolt I’ll make it work

Didn't have any. Even on our spare bolt cart. M6x60 so kind of an oddball.

I’m not saying that I’d say “fuck it,” and be a fastener shy, all I’m saying is I’m glad sometimes I’m the government.

Oh, yea, I never throw away any smaller bolts like that especially. I probably have a few in the tray in my truck. Best believe I’m going to be using the force and fishing with a magnet before dropping a pan. I guess one good thing about some of the sites that don’t drop pans like they should is that it’s not a far drop.

I was fishing for quite a while and even had my head jammed down between the engine and sheetmetal. I did find one that I dropped a couple days ago but had on hand.

If it wasnt an egr tube connection I probably would've said fuck it. Didnt want to run the chance of jacking up something emissions related.

I'm old enough to remember topkicks and the issues they had. International can only fubar it all worse than Isuzu did.

Unfortunately, we don't have very many options. Ford and Ram are not doing fleet builds this year and only offered a handful of spots next year. We have to buy 30 mechanics trucks and about 400 3/4 ton gas rigs out of those slots. Something has to get pushed to chevy or international, so these and about half of the 3/4 tons are going that way because we loose the money June 30th. We have one more year for the rest so I'm hoping to go back to ram/Ford then. Some of the 30 will be International MVs with cummins L9s, but not very many.

Imt did a big price hike on us and has a huge lead time. I wasn't involved in the body decision. I never liked knaphide. I was hoping they would go with Scelzi or Douglass. I would have been ok with Palfinger even. I really liked the IMTs, their hydraulic cranes are super nice, and the electric ones are not as bad as most of the others.

I believe I can fly!!

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Engine grenaded and they decided to sell it off to a dismantler. They loaded it with the crane and hauled it away.

I liked my old topkick. 3126 engine, 6 speed, IMT bed. 10,000 pound crane. It was a super long bed too. By the time I was done with it, it had 175,000 miles on it and 26,000 hours. They finally retired it. I never had much for issues with it.

Sad. They way things are I’d be trying to hang on to every pre t4 machine I had.

There were a whole slew of engine/transmission options, a couple different hydraulic brake options, air brakes, clusters, chassis widths and lengths,  ect. And then Isuzu would only support their end for a couple years before discontinuing parts, Chevy never carried much of parts inventory for them, and the places where Chevy and Isuzu met was a no man's land. Some of those interface boxes were not shown on any parts list, but it had a note in Every parts breakdown that it was the other guys gear.

The last fleet I worked at included a transit fleet (city busses) that had 27 top kicks built as busses, and the water/road Crews had another 15 of them. And we took in the other local fleets top kick work because no one local would touch them. Most were 1996-2008 MYs.

Cat/manual trans combos were ok, not to many big problems, the isuzu 8.4 gas/chevy auto trans combo worked until the cluster failed, then developed gremlins in the engine controls forever after. Isuzu gas/allison auto was ok, clusters and power steering problems but mostly runners. Isuzu diesel/allison was a turd, bad electrical, front suspension was to light and always flatten springs, comms boxes buried in odd places that no one could source half the time, lots of dash clusters on these that were discontinued 5.5 years after production. Isuzu diesel / chevy trans was an oddball, good luck getting anything electrical for it, trans was too light duty for that engine and would grenade torque converters and input shafts, both of which were special and non-stocked, call the mothership parts house 1000 miles away and have them build you one. Isuzu diesel / manual trans was a great runner, clutch was metric and not stocked on the west coast, hybrid air/hydraulic brake setup that reminded me of a metric lucas-gurling setup, master cylinder came from Japan every time, air lines and fittings were all metric and had to be ordered in, most different cluster internals of all of them, usually cold solder joints cracked causing issues, easy fix but very tedious and common. And then you had the Duramax/allison combos with emissions, they were all around bad, but most of the parts could be sourced easily. Injectors, glow plugs, and dpfs were a yearly replacement deal, power steering every 3-4 months, hydraboosts at the same time cause I never knew which one failed first but they would both be shit, clusters every few months (I was fixing them or taking them over to IT if I couldn't figure it out), rear axle housings every 18 months, and a slew of little electrical constantly.

I mention the gauge clusters so much because Chevy had the bright idea to share the ecm can line, clean power, ecm ground, fan, and most accessories switch power though them (there were variations with more or less crap pushed through there). And they were built very poorly with little to no circuit protections (fuses, relays, circuit breaker). A bad solder joint in the cluster could cause a no crank no start, crank no start, or start and die and everything under the hood that you would think could cause it test good, but a dash light doesn't work and thats causing a poor ground to the ecm reference circuit that is supposed to go straight to the chassis ground.

I didn’t read if the 550s were an option or not but my 550 and the three other sister trucks have all had to have new front driveshafts replaced as they hit the PTO during turns. We deal with curry supply and they are taking care of it but it’s annoying. I have a stellar 7630 for a crane and I think the body is a curry supply.

There’s an obvious clearance issue or something is moving more than it should and they just replace the part that got damaged?

My old dealer started buying trucks from curry I think and most are all of them are stellar beds and cranes with enpaks.

Do you know how many service letter repairs I see that say "there is no known resolution at this time" and to just replace the damaged part?

They have a solution for it but it puts me out of service for a week and right now we can’t really afford it to go down manpower wise.

Watching Whistlin diesels latest vid about monster max 2.  Wishing I could be a part of that, I'm watching him list out problems and I'm solving them as he goes.  

Looks like larger fan relays are needed.  

For the transmission I'd look at maybe using one controller for both, but having the output of the controller trigger relays to then in turn run the solenoids for both transmissions at the same time.  Eliminate the self adaptation for shift timing through software, and try to build transmissions with tolerances as close to each other as possible.  This is me brainstorming because I don't know allisons.  

It seems like he is learning a lot, and getting better as he goes.  I thought he would be farther along with this build, but it seems like he just hasn't run in to the right folks to make this all work out.  It surprises me that these issues are unresolved.  I do like the idea of air brakes, seems like a very smart move.  Its almost like he needs a guy that has experience in automotive, heavy equipment and trucks in order to tie all that together for this project.  

The differential locks look like another issue altogether.  I'm assuming they don't do diff locks for axles that large?  Or perhaps he used the wrong axles for the build?  

I'm glad to see it again, and happy he is forthcoming with the issues he is having.  I've brainstormed many projects in my head and run in to one roadblock after another.  For the most part, everything you do is a compromise.  There is always some limiting factor, and budget is a big one.

That dude is so weird, but big props on him doing things his way.

That guy annoys the hell out of me, but he does occasionally do something cool.

The twin transmission issue is not too bad on the surface, one set of inputs from primary engine, 2 sets of outputs, 1 set of inputs from primary transmission. Disable lockup on both transmissions so that the hydraulic coupling can act as an over run clutch in turns and wheel spin.

Personally, I would move up to 3000 series transmissions vs the 1000s he has. Lower gear ratios, bigger shafts, stronger clutches, and more programming abilities.

Better yet would be a couple hydrostats bolted to the engines and be done with all of the extra bullshit.

This. Would simplify things.

Many gallons through this tuthill meter.
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Disregard

I see an 836 coming in. I wonder what that's for?

Probably just an oil change and tire rotation.

It'll definitely be getting the oil changed.

Saw this and had to break the truth to my wife.
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We're gonna need pics to confirm.

Use your imagination.

My wife wouldn't get the joke, I might have to do this to her just to see her reaction lol

I got home and my wife just rolled her eyes and asked me what kind of car it was.

My google-fu is failing me. Anyone have a lead on a band-style filter wrench that will work on a 3-1/2" filter? I can (and have) find the ones with a handle all day long but I'm looking for the style you can put your ratchet/breaker bar on. Seems most of that style only go down to 3-3/4". I've had back-to-back machines that required using a 36" pipe wrench to get the fuel filters off. One I had to remove the entire base and put it in a vise. I'm about to beat our field lube tech with it if he doesn't stop Hulking the damn things on there.

Cat has a part number for one. Don’t know it off the top of my head.


Edit: if that field tech is putting filters on with anything but his hands, take the round side of a ball-pean to his left testicle.

The cat strap wrench won’t get them?

I didn't even think to look there.

I'll see what I can find.

All of my steel band ones are just too big. I have a Snap On nylon one, but it just crushes the filters. I tried using a cheater on the one that I have that fits but I could hear it crying for mercy and was afraid I was about to get summer teeth.

When you find it, order two.

The last one I got was made out of chinesium.

Posted before you edited. I don't know if he's actually putting them on that tight or if something has changed with these filters. I was doing a service on a 980 today and the engine oil filter came off super easy and the hydraulic filters in the canisters popped off super easy as well and those usually end up needing a cheater or a hammer to break them loose. I even tried my air hammer and all it did was peel the filter open.

What filter number?

1R-0749

Any chance he’s not putting a little grease on the o-ring?  I’ve done probably a thousand of those and they’ve only been hard as hell to take off when the o-ring was dry or they’d been put on with a strap wrench and hate.

Possibly, but who knows. I've never had any issues until this one and the D6 I was working on prior to this, so you'd think I would've run into this issue by now. He's been our lube tech for close to 3 years, so it's not like he's green.

First year out of high school I ran a Jiffy Lube in central Virginia. All the dumb shit we did only one guy ever went to the hospital. Strap wrench broke with a healthy cheater pipe and a big dude propped up on the railing in the pit, the walkway in the pit was all metal and a few steps up off the concrete floor. He went down hard with cheater pipe, breaker bar and who knows what on top of him.

I don't mess with those things anymore, even the nice SnapOn ones.

@SecretSquirell
Try this:

Have one. There's isn't space to get the chain between them (dual filter setup).

Fuck engineers. I hate when they do that. I'd just pull the damn filter base then if it won't come free with something reasonable.

On the one previous to this one I did but mainly because I had to take it off to get to other things. Theres no real good way to put it in the vise. It popped out when I was trying to get the filter off and cracked the housing.

In one of my previous jobs we had a chunk of 1/2 plate with a bunch of random holes in it, I would rebolt filter bases it it to fight them apart. We had a ton of aftermarket hydraulic filter bases on some of the home made garbage they called equipment, it was a 50/50 shot at braking whatever the base was mounted to or the filter coming off. I put jic fittings on every one of them and just started pulling them off and doing them on the bench. I dont ever want to work on ag equipment again.

I'll have to remember that. Damn filter base cost $800 so the shop had to eat it.