Well I was low bidder on a municipality owned L9000 tandem dump with L10 Cummins and Allison Auto. The truck has 56k miles and looks in good shape. I was bottom feeding the auction and snagged it for $15K..actually didn't think I would win the bid that low but here we are. Original thought was it would make a great site truck as the L series Ford's are tough as nails but if it's in good enough shape I may insure and tag it. Not a big Cummins fan but the money was right. Thoughts on what I should be looking out for?
Have it inspected. Pictures look like it needs freshened up and more road.
You can't do better than an L10. I've had 3 in spreader trucks, and I defy anyone to tell me a harder life for a truck than that. It was amazing what it took to kill the only one we did.
4 sets of tires, 3 truck drivers, 2 more trucks and a DOT number in a pear tree.
I will second that opinion, taken care of an L10 will out do most any other engine of its size. clean oil clean air clean fuel
Service the transmission if your going to license it use transynd , if it has the big spin on filter like i think change filter at every engine oil change. Looks like you got a steal of a truck , tell anyone driving it be easy on stuff in the cab kinda hard to get some of the parts now a days , rest of the truck is just components.
Almost forgot steer spring pins and bushings at shackle side if they are still good and tight keep them greased well and often
That damn spin on is one expensive filter. I swapped out Allison's on my dump last fall and was shocked at the $100 tag for that one filter. It cost almost as much as the synthetic fluid I filled the trans with.
LOL. At the moment I am the only CDL driver..but I have a two veterans that can easily get theirs Class A's. Yeah I'm going to have to get a DOT number too. I'll ask Santa for the other truck later this year. Thanks Walker. We had two of the newer Allison transmissions (04 and 07), I'm not sure if this is a 4570 or 740. Either way transynd is the only fluid we used before. Also listing says the trans was recently rebuilt. Don't know what to think about that with the low miles on the clock. We'll find out. Thank you all for the info. This should be an interesting project truck good thing I've got a good mechanic on staff because I'm not one.
Yeah those older allisons especially the ht740 didnt like garbage truck duty well . About 3 years is all we got out of them in a front load and 4-5 in a rearload resi truck. If its the ht 740 the big spin on isnt that bad from baldwin, alot of people dont like them think they are cheap ect ect but while i was in waste we never had a filter related issue from them, and no lost engines. The plus side of the ht740 not lasting long is the fact remans are cheap dump truck should be alot easier on them though. The newer allison trannys we usually got 6 years out of them so they werent really all that much better thats one were the application and the severe duty cycle make a difference .
Garbage duty is rough on a truck and it's components. I would've bet the res. rear loader trans would've crapped out before the front load just due to the duty cycle of start/stop at every driveway.
Rearload rruck now that i think about was just doing bulky and overflow trash 2 days a week and yard waste the other 3 prolly why it lasted longer all of the normal resi route trucks had the electronic trans
Does the odometer only have 6 digits? Probably has 1,056,000 miles on it. Set the overhead on the engine. You will be surprised at how much better they run when the injectors are nice and tight. It looks like it has a Hendrickson. Hopefully the bushings aren't fagged out. Looks like a nice, solid truck. $15k was a steal.
Looks like the cummins might have a jake or pac brake installed, with the jake and the transmission holding you back, it shouldn't need brake shoes very often. That's not a very common option on a l10, be glad you have it. Maybe the A/C compressor is more important. Its probably double frame, looks like spring over walking beam, heavy front axle, drive tires look pretty good. There used to be a lot of $15,000 dump trucks by me, but in the last year or two, it seems like they are now all $25,000 trucks. There's a ford dump just about like the one you bought, for sale right now by me. Its been used pretty hard, and they are wanting $26,000 for it.
No the odometer has six digits - This truck was owned by the city of Rainsville, AL. Rainsville is a little city in northeast AL on I-59. Probably never left the city limits. Good catch on the Jake brake, I hope it does have one. Yes the A/C compressor is very important as well, I did pick that up before I bid. I just hope it works. If the A/C doesn't work it will either get repaired or put a Reddot unit on it. I couldn't find anyone to drive the truck if it didn't have it - including myself. Same here on the price of used/wore out trucks. The floor on pricing is $25K and that's for rode hard and put up wet trucks. Then it jumps to $50-70K for a decent 10-15 year old truck and then jumps to new prices. If anyone has a decent used truck around here they are putting it to work. I've heard that some are charging $100 and hour for tri-axles here, the going rate has been $85 for the last several years. Supply and demand I guess, with the cost associated with dump trucks I don't see how they are making anything at $85.
Insurance cost alone, convinced me to get rid of all my big trucks. It is hard to make a profit with insurance running up the cost of ownership, let alone repairs and fuel.
Our insurance has skyrocketed as well. I'll have to make the decision either to tag this one or just use it as a site truck which would still make money. At the moment we are renting a little Hydrema 912 dumper on a job for some onsite dirt and shot rock shifting. Nice little truck that will go all sorts of places but the rent is $2900 a week. We could've used this truck to do the same thing.
Is that an LTA10 or L10STC? STCs are pain to control smoke on unless you adjust them with OBC method. OBC works best for either. BTW nice truck. Usually you see them (around here anyway) with the set back front axle. Subsequently the front bumper and hood corners are usually trashed. Great find.
FunWF I'm not sure. Trucks and the mechanical side are not my forte'. I do know the truck doesn't smoke on the trip home and it has very little blow by. Yesterday we went to pick the truck up in north AL about 125 mile trip one way. The old truck ran good didn't overheat, rode well and no hiccups on the trip back home. Bless her heart she is low geared - all I could do was 60 MPH going down hill with the wind behind my back - got passed by the governed OTR trucks.. All in all the old truck is in great shape. We'll have to replace some sway bars on the rear end, 2 sets of brake shoes and seal up the ducts in the dash to stop the A/C leaks. In addition to a general fluid and filter change. The L10 does have a Jake - nice catch Crane Op! The dump cylinder has recently been replaced, the packing slip is still attached. However the bed has seen better days, The rear rubber is in good shape. Walking beam rear suspension. The dash and gauges are good shape, didn't expect that. For now we're going to bring up to road worthy see how she does.
Straight L10 300hp. (Good pic shows the engine tag) That's a good engine. Stay on top of your coolant. Maintain your DCA. Oil sampling will be your best defense. If you start showing coolant in the oil plan on a head gasket. They are simple and strong. You got a good one. Really glad for you.
Thank you for the info FunWF. We were discussing draining and flushing coolant system then replace with Cat ELC if nothing more than to keep one coolant on the yard - thoughts?
It was probably born with ethylene glycol and DCA. Those materials have coated the inside of the coolant passageways with their own chemical fingerprint. Its easier to shed heat through similar rather than dissimilar chemical coatings. Switching to ELC might be fine with a fresh overhaul, I'd be hesitant to switch mid life. Some folks claim there is no difference, I have changed out quite a few pitted liners where folks believed the "no difference " theory. Lastly, the early L series were not happy with any ELC, so much so that Cummins issued a bulletin to Navistar back then. If you continue to factory fill our engines with ELC, the warranty claims against cooling system failures will be yours to deal with. This was an across the board statement. It became part of the pre-delivery process, drain and fill with specified coolant and SCA charge. B,C,L,M,&N Series were all listed.
I decided to go all ELC some years ago anytime a complete coolant change was needed. Cause or not I was changing a lot of water pumps on older equipment. I discontinued that program. Thanks for the other info FWF.
Was Cummins just against ELC because it was a CAT thing? Just asking, Got a customer that runs Delo red in every thing after a good Cascade dishwasher flush. I've done several Big Cam overhauls for them and didn't see much in the way of liner pits , 0f course some of those engines had seen plenty of green too. Their theory is too much DCA is as bad as not enough. Better to just leave the ELC alone. I also recall the ISX engines in new Peterbilts came with red in them too. I don't mean to sound naïve about coolant, just going by what the customer wants. I do run red in my Diesel trucks too. 7.8 Ford, 5.9 Cummins, and my old dinosaur 6.5 Chevy. The Chevy is still on its original 1998 aluminum radiator.
Back in the 90s , they (Cummins) were claiming that the ELC was having an adverse reaction with the seals and gaskets. If there was any truth to that, I don't know. I am just sharing my personal experience. I have no problem with using ELC. I just don't recommend changing in the middle of a service life. After an overhaul, sure. Whatever you want. I have nothing in writing any longer, just what I remember.
If a person chooses to run ethylene glycol Green and checks the additive and maintains that, is that practice able to produce the result similar to ELC? This continued use of green coolant (plus additive and test strips and lab analysis) is what I do and make sure all the cans are labelled. Sidebar: Also built some nice shelves so everything is neat and tidy and no other items are allowed on those shelves in order to minimize risk of confusing something. Colored masking tape folded around the handle with adhesive on adhesive makes a nice "flag". Paint marker felt tip written on the container with correctly colored ink (I get these from welding supply or online store). "Kaizen" seen at other businesses is what sparked this idea, plus frustration of rooting around all those containers only to learn "Yep we out of that" then have to run to the parts store when we should be working on the Site. I ask this question about green coolant AND the additive because I have an older ex muni bobtail dump (low miles too!) and figure it was originally built with that green coolant so I don't want to rock the chemistry boat in the oil cooler and the heater and all those low flow passages. PS When I look at all the "chemicals" (lubes sprays ointments elixirs etc) needed to support equipment, I had to wonder why International (engine) stayed away from the DEF (diesel exhaust fluid) by saying 'we dont want you to have to buy another jug of something'. AND we are supposed to have the MSDS etc on file blah blah.
Thanks FunWF! That's what we were thinking simply due to the age. Temp stayed between 175-200 on the 120 mile trip home, sometimes it's best not to mess with it. We're going to test the coolant to see the quality and back with spec'd fluid. Like ocean bob we're just trying to limit how many jugs and buckets of stuff in the storage shed.