I use this just for fun, to push snow banks back in the neighborhood. It belonged to my hometown, they had another one identical, but a year newer. I just wanted to save this one from the scrap heap. I used to pedal my bike to the town barn as a kid and sit in it and pretend I was plowing snow.
when you see stuff like that in your home town, you have to follow intuition and get it and save it
there was a little diner in our town, that was there since the early 1900's, sometime in the 1960's they got a new lit sign with a heavy plastic body, with 7-Up soda name and logo on it, and their name on it.
the diner owner retired, and the place was sold, the contents were then sold at a flea market, and the building torn down. but the sign stood there like new. it still lit up and had no holes or cracks in it. it had long neon bulbs in it several feet long and about the diameter of a soda can.
the sign was really cool, and I was going to call the new owners and ask them if they wanted to sell it. it hung from chains on an upside down L shaped pole
since the ill fated housing boom and bust, our area was inundated with fast living city folk, and they drive as fast and recklessly as they live- well last winter some @$%&(#! went off the highway and hit the darn thing, bent the pole almost flat, and smashed the sign to pieces. it was laying in the parking lot bashed up, and even got snowed on and still laid there for months. whatever they hit it with must have been totaled.
anything neat and old is chewed up by this modern day throwaway reckless society. either by intention or accidentally, they save NOTHING. these people would knock down the Egyptian Pyramids and Empire State Building and Statue of Liberty, if you gave them a chance...and think nothing of it.
The truck is not much to look at. The dump body was taken off. It was toast from having sand/salt left in it sitting outside all summer year after year. The engine is an IH RD-450 backed by a 5 speed main and a two speed aux. I don't know what the axle ratios are, the top speed according to the door tag is 43.5 m.p.h. I've never had it over 35. The truck has Frink plows, a good sized V and two 11 foot wings. I wanted to save it so folks could see how snow removal was done in years past.
The IH RD-450 is a big six cylinder gas engine. The cab and some of the hood sheet metal for this model were supplied by IH. Here is what I'm currently using for my screensaver:
I don't think it could go fast enought to send one flying. The fastest I've had it up to was 37 m.p.h. I asked the mechanic at the town garage about the truck and its' twin. He said "Those things were slow!"
For now as you wrote, I'm saving it from the scrappers. I just have fun with it around the 'hood. This winter I didn't even put the plows on it. Here is the first picture I took of it. It was a little over ten years old at the time.
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