CaptainCrutch

Just food for thought; The Chinese are consistently behind the U.S. technology wise, always have been. They have a bad habit of borrowing from everyone else, Russian tech and stolen American tech. That being said, as we understand it “gravity manipulation” is not possible, as gravity is based upon the mass of objects, and an object massive enough to pull another object away from earth’s gravity would cause earth and said object to start orbiting eachother which would be very noticeable. The only other reasonable alternative explanation could be some manner of anti-matter usage where an object works somewhat like blimp, but what little we know about anti-matter is it does not interact well with regular matter, and if you think a nuclear explosion is bad anti-matter would likely actually set the whole world on fire, which likely would’ve happened if they did actually down these probably non-existent “Chinese drones”. One more piece of information for you; it’s generally regarded as a last ditch effort if you have to “take down” a satellite when you are not its operator. We have the technology to do it and it has been demonstrated but the real danger comes in the fact doing so leaves millions of what can only be described as little bullets flying around the earth at roughly 17,000mph which makes it dangerous to launch any payload in a large cloud of sky for months or even years until it cleans itself up. Launches have been uninterrupted since the incident. What’s more likely is that whatever satellite went down was deorbited by its operator or it was just old and its orbit had decayed to the point it deorbited itself. Chances of it still being over the U.S. when that happens if it were in a Geostationary orbit over the U.S. are close to none, and if it was Geostationary it definitely wasn’t orbital decay. I elect to believe it just wasn’t geostationary, because it’s very rare and difficult to deorbit one of those. Knowledge is power my friends, sometimes it pays to dig into things a little more than whatever some media talking heads are saying, because they’re just about as clueless as the average Joe, they only know what they read.

Electric drivetrains have been used in ships for over a century now, truthfully having water near electricity is no more dangerous than having metal near electricity, like the entire body of almost every vehicle built before the plastic nonsense filling our streets now. Both are only really detrimental if your insulation is compromised, take the same precautions you do when ensuring you don’t ground or short your wiring. Also helps to make sure you don’t leave anywhere for water too pool to further reduce the risk. Not saying I necessarily think an electric firetruck is smart but it’s for reasons unrelated to “water and electricity don’t mix”. A diesel firetruck is actually probably more efficient than an electric one. That being said, in case there were still any doubt, here’s what one of the fire departments that was supposedly not allowed in due to the emissions of their apparatus;

The one the truck is in is more of a documentary, although I may or may not have had a hand in a couple big westerns coming out soon…ish. Might yet be one more on the Horizons too but we’ll see. All of this afforded me the opportunity to finally make the trek out west to start setting up life away from the east like I always dreamed. The trucks are still in the care of my dad and brother until I get my dream shop put up, and the way things are going right now that might happen sooner than I expected, still atleast a couple years off though. Hasn't stopped me from messing with a few cool Macks since moving out here, and I’ve got something kinda cool I’ve been cooking up for myself that some members here should hopefully appreciate. But more on that when it’s actually finished, which should be very shortly. Been one of the things keeping me busy and more importantly without the need of a gym. I’m one of those people who always has to keep myself busy. More to come!

Everytime I think I’m finished with the movie making business it seems to come find me again no matter where I go. Luckily this time I got to drag an old Mack of mine into the deal! Not sure when this one will be public but I’m sure I’ll still say something when it does. 2024 was a pretty crazy year for me, here’s hoping 2025 is a little calmer for once!

CFs don’t have tilt cabs, just a doghouse rear of the cab (unless it’s a 4 door in which case it’s just in the cab). The whole drivetrain is located entirely between the axels.

It sounds to me like it’s losing prime in the fuel system. I’d try pumping that hand primer a bunch and if it starts with ease doing that then you have the answer to your problem. Alternatively it could be something up with your shut down linkage, either the linkage itself or the part inside that actually shuts off the injectors. But my money is on the fact it’s losing prime, I had a similar issue at one point on my CF, and that was it.

Most Mission BBQs have some great gathering for 9/11, so naturally the one in the town my trucks hail from asked to have them. It was only me available today so I only brought the CF, but she wasn’t the only one. Here’s just a couple pics I managed to snag before everyone ate and headed home, lol.

Surprisingly the heat loss really isn’t that significant, and on their first prototype they were getting a 50% fuel reduction to do the same work, because when the diesel motor is running its running at a constant throttle right at the peak of its horsepower curve, which is way more fuel efficient than having the diesel mechanical driveline we all know and love. And you can actually use a smaller diesel motor to do more work than most conventional trucks. Hybridizing a truck in the manner you mention would negate a lot of that efficiency, but it could definitely get you a little more fuel mileage. There’s a reason trains don’t get driven directly off the prime mover, instead they just have electric motors on every axel that are powered by the diesel generator… exactly like this truck. There’s really no new technology here, it’s just a new application of something that worked for Mack back in 1927, and pretty much every train since before 1964.

Indeed, the blue logger is their retrofit prototype. My understanding is it uses half the fuel of a conventional truck while having so much power they kept snapping the driveline on it. And unlike if it was full electric it actually weighs less than it did before the conversion.

Finally after the technology has existed for about 100 years, and used regularly on train locomotives for about the past 90, someone has built a Diesel Electric truck. Not a fully electric truck that requires as much power as a whole neighborhood to charge, but a really sensible application. Edison Motors is a Canadian company who are huge proponents of Right To Repair, and built this truck using mostly American made parts in a tent in just 6 months, using lessons learned when testing their prototype that was built off a 1962 Kenworth. They intend on producing off-highway trucks like this new prototype, retrofit kits so you can take any truck and convert it to their drive train, and in the future highway trucks styled more after the classics we’re all used to over the “aerodynamic” style that all the manufacturers seem to keep trying to push us towards. Finally I’m comfortable saying this is the future of trucking.

Well the show was today and tomorrow, so I’m a little late in sharing its existence, but it seems like there were a fair few to pick from this weekend. Either way I got the CF out again and took some pictures of the other trucks that showed up. Cool little event with the farm tractors having their “Spudfest” there was plenty of good food too!

Oh believe me, I know that all too well…

I’ve just been real busy. I could probably count on my fingers the number of times in the last year and some change that I’ve even been home to look at the trucks. Luckily my dad and younger brother have been having their fun with them while I was away. I’m likely to drop off again, but that’s just how life goes sometimes.

It’s always nice to leave the CF for a while, and come back to find it starts like it ran yesterday. Decided to take her to a little local show today, and she was joined by other trucks in her own colors.

The 707a & 707b are pretty interchangeable across the board, just a few minor differences of which I can’t remember. The 707c sort of has the head turned around so the exhaust manifold is on the other side. I don’t know what other changes there might be associated with that.

All my life people have looked at my name and read it wrong. My name has the word crutch in it but it fairly regularly gets turned into crunch. So some number of years ago a group of kids thought to call me Captain Crunch and I guess the corrected version stuck. Doesn’t bother me none considering my family history in the fire service, although somewhat strangely my ancestors seem to always miss the rank of Captain…

I don’t think that’s a 707 motor but I guess I could be wrong. Probably one of the smaller Mack gassers.

As nice as that would be, for these first few runs we’re letting the most experienced ones take over, until they can get a handle on it. This engine hasn’t run in almost 70 years, nobody alive has ever driven it, it’s like a new car you’ve got to get used to it. Point being my time in the cab isn’t here quite yet. Maybe sometime next year…

Well, we ran the locomotive up the line today. What a beast!

I’ve heard of this project, I believe I was talking a year or two ago to one of the guys working on that engine. It is incredible to see all the huge steamers take to the rails again! It was just a few years ago many thought that Strasburg’s 2-10-0 locomotive would be one of the biggest that could still run, now here we are with Berkshires and Big Boys and locomotives in between pulling trains again. I know there’s an old engine in a park in my town I’d love to see fired up at the old station… In the meantime I suppose I have our Beast of the East to scratch that itch.

Luckily with 1309 we don’t have to worry about many corners being too tight, despite what some news sources and former railroad employees said… She was built for the mountains, and larger engines ran on our road anyways. Just shy of 100ft long, barely fits on our turntable!

I don’t know the torque numbers, I’m sure it can be calculated, but railroads use Tractive Effort for that sort of measurement, and this one has a little more than 70,000 lbs. For comparison the other diesels we have can only do about 50,000 lbs and 40,000 lbs, but a lot of the big freight diesels you see on the big railroads have around 80,000 lbs. Regardless I’m pretty sure the earth itself turns under 1309 when it starts off, you can certainly feel it…

They’re a pair of steam powered air compressors. Rail cars and the engine use air brakes, and this particular engine was designed for hills, so it got plenty of air to hold the train back without locking up or running away.