This is my old 51 Diamond T wrecker we bought this in 1971 these pics were taken around 1973. And yep that's me in those pics I've always loved these old trucks and heavy equipment even as a kid. Any way it's got about 130 HP 6cyl Hercules gas burner engine 5 speed gear box plus a transfer case for engaging the frot wheels and going into extra extra low gear. Put this baby in 1st gear and the transfer case in low ease out the clutch and watch the ants pass you. It's got a front mounted winch and dual drum winches on the rear. Rear booms will swing out well beond 90 degrees. If you look just behind the cab you can see the out riggers that stable it while the boom/s are swung around.We added an extra front bumper under the factory one so we could push stuff around and not run over everything. The rear bumper is a 14 inch I beam lips & web are 1" thick this is for snatch blocks to be attatched to. This ole gal has retreived many a stuck Dozer,Back Hoe,and large trucks and lifted quite a few heavy loads. Only had it almost stuck one time pulling a mobile home up an old red mud drive. The drive was at a very steep incline had not been used in quite a few years and covered in pine needels and it was raining. Had to put the old gal in low range,low gear engage the front wheels and hook the front winch cable to a tree at the top of the hill. This really had the pucker factor up cause that road bed was slick as glass and at the bottom of the hill was about 30' of water. There has been many times while pulling equipment out that you could look up at the bottom of the front wheels.Well maybe some of you are still here after all this rambling if so here are the pics.
Thanks wrench. I also have a passion for them old workhorses. Oh and might I say I like.:notworthy
AWESOME, quite an old beast!!
That's about how much hair I had in 73 too. Great looking old workhorse... :thumbsup
Great truck! I like the bell bottoms! I wonder if they will come back in style. :cool2
Thanks guys, well I still have the truck and the bell bottoms but the hair is about gone as is the six pack abbs. Or should I say I'm twice the man I was then.
Cool I had the hair and bell bottems back then also. My uncle use to call them my go to He77 pants. I got my REO a little later in life. when I started our business it was my first piece of equipment back in 1982. Here is a shot of it about 15 years ago. It still runs but the aircompresure needs replaced. I would like to repower it with something other then the 180HP supercharged cummins that is in it.
Tough looking truck and you already got me beat by at least 50 HP and probly a few gears in the tranny. Thanks for the pic I never get tired of looking at older trucks and equipment.
My thoughts also.:yup Great pics. I got the chance to drive an old Diamond REO once. An friend of a friend was shut down at a scale in Wisconsin because he didn't have a CDL They contacted me to see if I could drive it out for them. I figured out how to get the motor lit up alright, but when it came time to release the air brakes I couldn't find the buttons. I looked all over the dash for them. Eventually I found them, they were mounted up through the floor right next to the seat.:Banghead I'd never seen them mounted there before.
Jeff, mine still has a lever with a cable going to a drum on the rear of the transfer case for the parking brake. I intend to put spring brakes on the front tandem before putting it back in service. A guy I once pulled out of a mud hole said the inside looked like a porcupine with all the sticks coming up out of the floor.
The manufacturers seemed to do things their own way in those old one's didn't they? Not alot of regulations on the way controls had to work or their locations like today. I know a driver who told me about his first truck. It was an old Mack semi that had air brakes, but unlike todays systems where the springs lock down the brakes, this one didn't have the springs. He said the air was supplied to "set" the parking brake, and eventually when the air all leaked out the truck could roll away if parked on an incline. He said he had to chock the tires overnight when parked. I guess it had a little flag that dropped down out of the ceiling infront of your face to alert you when the air system was low on air too. :beatsme A guy needed to learn each truck pretty well before operating back then, I supose.
great picture, got all your hair and a nice truck, what more could a fellow ask for, LOL thansk
:exactly :iagree KoO, Plans are to rework the old gal in the near future. When done I'll get another pic with the same pose. You won't be able to tell the diffrence between the two.lol
yes those old beast never gotten woren out, they got sent to pasture because of age. now days if the CD player quits the truck is scrapped, LOL will be waiting for the updated picture, LOL thansk
I'm still in shock....you mean flares have gone out?????? ointhead
we still use the term, GET WITH THE TIMES BELL-BOTTOMS, LOL http://kingofobsolete.ca/KING'S_LINGO_WEBPAGE.html thansk
Squizzy a guy of your fashion expertise should be on top of these things. KoO lives like out in the middle of no mans land and he is up on his fashion. Glad to see that KoO.
my fashion has not changed in 40 years except for the jeans, i will not pay $45.00 for a pair of jeans to wear in the shop. so 10 years ago i went to work pants which i can get on ebay for $10.00 a pair brand new. other then that it is the same tee shirts (don't need the pockets on them any more for the smokes) sweat shirts, underwear (except when driving monster truck, special underwear is needed) http://kingofobsolete.ca/monster_truck_runs_reindeer_lake_WEBPAGE.htm as i wore all my life, even the dark sunglasses i have had for 25 years. now you see why i'm the KING. i hate change, LOL question, why do women move the furniture around in the house???? thansk
(you guys keep leading me astray) I thought the hardhat would go well with my Mauve Flares...especially after I got the Paisley pattern embroided on the bottom of the flares I wore long pants to work the other day and some of my clients didn't recognise me......they thought I had my work shorts painted on ..Lol Whats the chance of this thread getting back on the tracks?
Slim to none and I'm betting on none.:lmao
what back on topic, what is the topic again, LOL that is what BBs are for, learning. we find out in the land of OZ you guys wear shorts everywhere, in canada, you get fired for wearing shorts on a hot day. thansk
Rightfully so I might add!:cool2
Thanks Digger for removing my previous post! As much as I do like to rattle Squizzy's cage, I'm going to try and tone down the number of my off-topic post in the regular forum sections, and keep my goofing around mostly in the TGIF section. After I posted it I thought about Steve's thread yesterday and what he mentioned, and if anyone needed to ease up on off topic posts, it's me.:Banghead Thanks again.
Back On Track - at least to Diamond T's Hi, Folks. Here are some photos of a rather sad old Diamond T that had been burnt out. Somewhere in her wanderings, she had been fitted with a Leyland 680 diesel engine. Now, unless I'm mistaken, this thread is back on track with more photos of another Diamond T wrecker. Pay up, Wrenchbender. Lashlander, you can do what you like with your personal apparel in YOUR rather user-UN-friendly climate. I'll be wearing my shorts summer and winter where I live - 'cos I can. Where I live is one of the very few places on Earth that are actually fit for human habitation. LOL.
Roger that! You may be right.
Deas Plant wrote ay up, Wrenchbender. :notworthy Ok next time I'm Down Under I'll buy you a cold Fosters.:drinkup Hey I ain't never been there the first time yet And you did get us back on topic, that old Diamond T sure has had it rough. They were never real popular around these parts except with the military and then loggers.
On paying up and getting back on topic Hi, Wrenchbender. I'll accept that deal. Diamond T's were not all that popular DownUnder either, except as loggers or as prime movers for road trains in the outback in the early days. They were one of the few trucks that had the 'tuff' built into them to handle the loads and the conditions. They were mostly either the straight 8 gas engines or the Hercules diesels and it didn't take long for a simple fact of life to sink in with those operating the straight 8gas engines - - - - that you had to carry a LOT of fuel to get that big gas banger over the distances that were involved. Back when road trains first started running just after WW 2, thanks to one Kurt Johannsen, there were not many regulations covering their use or their size and bigger was usually considered better. (Comments below are for the site above the comment in each case.) http://www.roadtrains.com.au/ You need to register as a member to see the photos on the site but registration is free. So far I have not been able to find anywhere to log in once you are a member but I have fired off an enquiry to them about this lack this morning. http://everything2.com/index.pl?node=Road train This site has some interesting - if partially incorrect (the longest road train record) - information about road trains. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_train This site is the Wikipedia version of what road trains are all about. Again the road train record information is out of date. I think the record now stands at 117 trailers and is held by Doug Gould Transport of Kalgoorlie, Western Australia. http://www.4wdonline.com/ClassicTrucks/AECroadTrain.html This one is about a specialised road train prime mover that didn't take off. http://www.ebroadcast.com.au/ecars/Places/Au/Road-Trains.html Advice for car drivers encountering a road train. http://www.4wdonline.com/ClassicTrucks/BigLizzie.html Big Lizzie. That'll do for now.
Big'uns and Little'uns http://www.ebroadcast.com.au/ecars/P...ad-Trains.html Advice for car drivers encountering a road train. This one reminded me of what my Dad always said " the biggest vehicle always has the right of way no matter what!" I've tried to live by this simple rule and so far I have not beed squashed by a large vehicle yet. I once as a kid asked why the bigger vehicles had the right of way his answer was also a simple one " you can see him but can he see you?" he took a marble and a bowling ball rolled them to me and said stop them. I did as he ask then he ask me was the marble harder to stop or the bowling ball? Of coarse you know the answer he then explained the marble was a car and the bowling ball was a semi. And at the age of about 8 I began to understand why the big'uns had the right of way. In short they can't see you and if they could they can't stop so stay out of thier way! And all of the above is directly related to the Diamond T (poor visabilty and even worse brakes) My old Diamond T has a gas guzzling inline six . She tops out at about 45-47 mph. Without anything hanging up behind it there is no emergency stopping at full speed with a good load you don't hit full speed not even if you could. Tried useing the Georgia overdrive (slip it in neutral going downhill ) once as I was in a big hurry well it was hitting close to 60 mph on this long steep hill. Those old GI tires were bouncing me up and down at about 90 mph when out of no where came a very large bore hog maybe 5-600 lbs. Yep I hit him felt as the old Diamond T was airborn for a split second or so. And the first thing I thought of was the marble and bowling ball that is after I checked my shorts. BTW if you throw a 1951 Diamond T into Georgia overdrive you can't get it back into gear untill it gets down to about 40 ish mph. Then with proper manipulation( grind scrape grind double clutch grind WOT clutch up/down grind clunk) you can force it back into high gear. And usually by the time you have it back in gear you don't need to slow down any more. I DON'T RECOMEND Georgia overdrive on these vehicles.
Jaw-ja O-drive. Hi, Wrenchbender. Nice story about how not to do it. Almost all of the old crash box rigs and those with slow-banger donks were pretty much impossible to get back into gear until they had slowed down to a road speed that was within the range of their top engine revs and still not easy at that. BTW, Jaw-ja O-drive is also sometimes known as Angel Gear or Sloppy Cog. I ran crash box 15 ton Euclids a bit and you could go from a standing start, loaded or empty, change all the way up to 5th gear and back again without touching the clutch. BUT, miss a change and that jigger would have your hand all black and blue quicker-n a flash. The gear lever in those suckers was about 4 feet long, 2" thick at the base and had about a 2" steel ball on top for a knob. I LOVE power-shift.
This should be required reading for any applicant of a driver's license. Good stuff!!
Steve, if my Dad was still around he would agree 110%!