Need to know the good/bad/ugly on mid-late 90s Volvo/Autocar trucks (ACL64). Whether the ones shipped from the factory as dump trucks were paid better attention to, as I learned from the '97 Ford L8000 I've owned for a few years now. I know the cabs are plastic, as was my '97 IH 2554. Looking at a very low miles model, good engine/tranny combo, price is decent but I'm getting nothing but curses or cheers..seems like there's not a good bottom line from either drivers or mechanics.
Those are a red headed step child. Greater difficulty locating parts, beyond the common stuff. All black wiring with an occasional number to throw you off. Popular with municipal and state fleets, so you do run across low mile/ high hour units occasionally.
Many dash parts are obsolete, If the instrument cluster takes a dump-it will be a SOL situation. Personally I would stay away from it. Electrical issues were common.
OK, thanks guys. I'm in the market for a transfer set, and found a decent looking late 90s ACL64 with a good engine/tranny combo. It will see steady use, but probably not week in/week out except for short stretches. I guess I always get puzzled when I hear two widely different sets of opinions on a specific piece of machinery or truck.
Good to see someone doing their homework. Best of luck with your search. Let us know what you find.
'98 ACL64, 350K, 3406E/475hp/18sp. Tri-axle, factory dump, 46K/14K, NW trailer config, recent suspension bushings/kingpins. General transfer trailer, clean boxes, I figure all new tires on the truck, trailer TBD, to start.
Built as tough as a Western Star IMO. Can't speak to how well they're doing 20+ years down the road though.
Not a bad looking rig.
If it was just a Autocar-Volvo no comment.
I hear ya, Brother. I had one of the most odd-ball, eclectic, b*****d-child, tanker fleets in the state and keeping it going was like burning buckets of cash. I cringe when my customers get stuck with these oddball rigs that bleed money & time. It’s hard enough to keep a truck on the road and profitable, don’t make it more difficult. Stick with the common rigs. I proved that PACCAR rigs had the least MX & ownership costs. Freightliner was a close 2nd and in the lower 48, a case could be made that Freightliner might be 1st. But, in my AO, Freightliner/DD warranty logistics is horrible for downtime. Consider residual value, re-sale, availability of parts & service information, yada, yada.
The seven we have are coming up on a year old. The W990's have been plagued with computer control modules causing a variety of issues-like the dash screens freezing up. I find the Freightliner side easier to round up parts for. As far as warranty downtime they both suck.
Well, it does have the right engine and transmission and rears. I don't imagine that there's a whole lot of used trucks close by to shop from either in SW montana. I guess if its a screaming deal, you might be able to live with the "volvo" issues, I keep some old ford9000's running and there's no dealer help for those. But I know nothing about Volvo issues, and truck shop has seen a lot more of those. If its the same money as a pete/ KW, you know that either of those would be much easier to find cab/truck specific parts for. Its getting harder all the time to find clean pre-2000's trucks by me. Everyone wants to stay away from emissions and e-log and have simpler engines. And in my area pre 2000 cost more than newer trucks.
T370’s and T880’s. Most in vocational service, a couple T880’s in line haul and oil field duty. I don’t have any experience with the W990’s. That sucks, though. Sorry to hear your having issues with them.
No kidding! Finding pre-ban rigs is like collecting hens teeth. Worth their weight in gold.
Thing is most emission trucks built after mid 2019 are having way less issues than previous years. Had enough time to narrow the problems. We don't have anywhere near the issues with the DEF and DPF than years before. Most all the bugs have been worked out of the AMT transmissions too. As far as a tough rear drive MB has Eaton and Rockwell beat, beat real bad like. So really buying old equipment at super premium prices is---starting to not make much sense. Depending on the mileage in a year plus the price of fuel, old stuff really isn't cost effective. Unless it only gets 40,000 miles a year, by then the tires will rot off. Besides mice need a home too.
I can attest to this. We have 2 Volvo trucks of the mid 90s era. One is a WCA with a 3406E Cat, 9 speed and the other is a WG64 with a D7 and an Allison auto. Both trucks have issues with the electronic dash. Tachometers randomly function. Speedometer has crapped out on both trucks. Random other gauges may or may not work. We had to put manual water temp and oil pressure gauges in both trucks and use a GPS speedometer to monitor speed while driving. As for the rest of the trucks, they've been dependable for low use trucks. They'll run pretty much daily for the next 2 months, and then not again until late spring, just the nature of farming. If it weren't for the dash issues, they would be just as good as any truck for a vocational, low annual hours use. Here's our trucks lined up, waiting on beans tonight:
For the little miles you run, those are ok Colson. You can afford to run them till the doors fall off.
Plus they have him around to fix all the little things that go wrong. A mechanic can afford to run a much junkier truck and keep it going than the average user.
Are these trucks can j1937 engines or the pre can protocol engines? I ask because I'm getting into engine controllers to fix that types of issues of old trucks
Still can't find leaf springs for my WIA Volvo that broke about 6 months ago, that should tell you how hard parts are to find. I use a Autometer GPS speedometer for when it did run to tell how fast I'm going since I changed rear axle ratios and the instrument cluster has it's own gear tooth sized to previous ratio that can't be changed out. Ready to scrap the truck out and just buy another military truck, tractor version this time.
I have no idea what controls they use. One is a 1993, the other is a 1997 or 1998.
I wouldn't have thought springs would be that hard to find for a heavy truck. Everytime we've had spring issues, we take the spring pack, or the truck, to State Spring in Grand Rapids and they fix em up in a day or two. Maybe ours were a more common spring type, I dunno. I've still got a lot to learn about heavy trucks.
I suspect that they use J1587 protocol. I had a 2007 Volvo VNL760 come to the shop with none of the engine gauges that get their data from the engine ECM working. The problem turned out to be a short between the J1587 data link wires going to the Qualcomm system. I was surprised that the gauges were not fed by the J1939 data link.
I'm surprised a 07 would use j1587 that's kind of a bummer but I'm gonna find a converter box because I have two j1587 engines and want to use the can communication
Probably have to find something like that in Billings MT, nothing like that around here and I don't know where to look.
What engines are they?
1992 N14 celect 1992 m11, I haven't looked this one over yet and I haven't started it
1992 N14 Celect, that doesn't sound right, I have a 94 and it's a N14 manual. Wasn't til 94 the Celect was rolled out.
N14 manual came out in 92, last manuals installed in early 94.
I replaced an early N14 Celect that had a catastrophic failure with a late run N14 Celect Plus in a Western star. The Western Star had a Cummins Road Relay which was connected to the ECM by a twisted pair of wires that were tagged J1922. I connected the Road Relay to the J1939 Data link during the engine replacement and functioned properly. I suspect J1922 was the predecessor of J1939. Here is a brief overview I just found: http://wanderlodgegurus.com/database/Theory/DDEC IV CAN bus J1587 J1922 J1939.pdf
I just looked, 6-92 date, n14-330e. I believe that makes it a celect or it might be written somewhere, either way it runs.
Appreciate the input from everybody, the Autocar's drivetrain was right and the price, too, but my inner voice won out and I passed. I went a little over budget on another rig that pretty much I felt good about from the beginning, and I can't say enough about the seller, really a great guy and I hope to have a continuing relationship with him post-sale. It has a two or three small holes for my use plans, but I feel the condition/spec/history of the set outweighs those. At any rate, I have a fair bit of work lined up when the snow melts next spring, gonna put it to work hauling aggregates and occasionally hook up my tilt-bed and move equipment on the weekends.
Looks like a former Lakeside Industries truck with the yellow stripe painted dark blue. Don't know anything about the way they are specced but at least you have something you can admire as you walk out of the convenience store.
I believe you are correct, there is another advertised that is very similar with the same paint scheme. This one has had considerable attention paid to it by the two previous owners, both of whom invested a lot of time and money on upkeep, improvements and a recent in-frame. Always like buying from O/Os, and prefer older but well kept trucks and equipment.
That's an interesting trailer. Never seen a wagon with a tridem/single arrangement like that before.
Looks nice, but I'm glad I don't have to polish all that aluminum.
Only thing I would have wanted was floats on the front.
Super common in Washington and Oregon. I've seen trailers with tandems on the front and wonder what a pain that might be to hook up if the truck isn't lined up very well and you have the push or pull the tongue to one side. There's one guy around that has tandems up front and a single on the back. I'd be curious to know what the idea was on that.
Crazy how trucks evolved differently around the world to suit the rules of the area. Out here for wagons its either single or tandem axles up front and tandem only at the back. Liftable axles on the trucks are also illegal. They can be on the truck but have to be in the lifted position so the truck operates as a tandem.
80 grand in California, when we haul there we only run our 3 axle tractors a 53' two axle trailers. Don't see very many transfer dumps around here, mainly 3 and 4 axle pups.
Transfers here in Ca are also 18 wheels, very conventional with no extra axles. Super singles on the wagon are most common now so it's a 14 wheeler. Super dumps have taken over, 1 extra tiny axle with tiny single wheels in front of the tandems, and I assume a monster front axle and it is all you see bringing rock to most big jobs these days and a lot of small ones too.
I was thinking that transfer set ups originated in California. I know I saw a lot of them out there in the late 70 as I remember. By the early 80's, they were using them in Texas. I don't see those transfer rigs much anywhere. Back in Texas, they disappeared mostly, by 2010 or so.
That's true, around in the late 60's IIRC.
For the most part even with all the traffic California's highways lasted longer too because of no extended weights. Washington's highways did well at 80 grand, when they extended the weight to 101,000 then 105,500 is when road beds started to have issues.
Pretty common here, about a 31T-32T payload. Several 2-axle transfer trailers around, and one rear tandem + steer. That would have been my preference, actually, but rarely seen for sale. One of the holes, and you can't find high school guys who want to earn some Saturday night $$ anymore. Some guys run them on trailers here, but most don't. Not my personal preference on slick roads (which we get a lot of), they tend not to tolerate chains on a regular basis and only running half the edges make them not follow thru snow and slush as well, especially unladen. Some canyon roads here are not friendly if you can't limp along on a single good tire to a safe pull-off. You plug the entire canyon up and there's no escape routes, no way to get traffic turned around. It happens now and then. Truck-wise, 14,600 on the front of this rig is all that's really needed, with 16T or 18T, you're going to overload the rear group before you even get near the front limit. Present truck is like that, but with good reason after they went to the 3-point "safety violation" thing years ago for being over on the steers.