CaptainCrutch

Gives me an idea... wonder what a real VW Microbus styled COE would've looked like back in the day. I've seen this little conversion into a "mini semi"... ... but I wonder what a real, full sized, VW cabover semi would've looked like... sounds like I've got an art project for the weekend...

The Mack Museum (out of Mack’s customer center) can give you a bunch of information on your truck if you give them the VIN. They even have maintenance manuals, and probably even have pictures of your truck when it rolled out of the factory. You can get all their contact information to send in a request for the stuff on their website here: https://www.macktruckshistoricalmuseum.org Also feel free to post pictures of the rig on this site... we certainly love pictures... Also by any chance is it the Blue and White one? I saw that one up for sale a little while back and have been wondering what came of it...

On the topic, this just triggered my memory. I remember a little while back on my travels, a bit of time before I got on the forum, a guy I met on my travels told me of a rumored W Mack. At the time I thought he was talking about some Superliner because a W Mack search on google turned up a lot of people but no trucks. Anyways he told me somewhere around Michigan (I believe) there’s a W locked away in an old building at some old heavy machine works because the company found out the value of the truck before they sold it, so they locked it away with the intentions of restoring it to use as a sort of company mascot, only for nothing to be done with it. If that story was true it’s probably still there for someone to find. Figured I’d mention it while it’s on my mind, I’d hate for it to be forgotten about if there’s any merit to the story, and I don’t exactly intend on going all the way out to Michigan looking for a truck that may or may not exist, but maybe one of y’all can.

It really would be, too bad I can count on my fingers (and maybe toes) the number of these that are still known to exist. Only 215 were ever built, and seeing as it’s a cabover, you can imagine how many actually made it. Only 2 guys on here own one, and when one of them, Superdog, put his up for sale he was asking $40,000 for it, and it’s not in the best shape... But hey, Dr. Bill found his in a gravel pit on a road trip... maybe there’s one sitting in a shed somewhere or hidden in the woods, and someone will get a really awesome and rare project...

Mack posted this picture today on their Twitter. This old girl ran for the Lang Company in Salt Lake City, Utah. Really makes me wish more of these survived... I love the look of the things and wish I had a hope in hell of ever owning one...

I wish I had that level of ambition and attention to detail... so much more would get done around here... But dear lord that cab looks factory new! I can't wait to see how amazing this truck looks once it's finished! Looks good already...

To be fair, we used to have a Passat and never had any issues. It sounds like you've just got a really crappy dealer, and for all VW knows it is your fault because that's what the dealer told them, and now you're just trying to scam them out of money to pay for your mistake. I know you're not but I'm just trying to give a different point of view. Still I'd much rather have an old VW, especially one of their mini-bus based pickups...

I hope all works out for you. Sounds like you're doing your due diligence on this deal. I've heard too many stories of someone getting scammed on deals like this. I'd be sure to really inspect that car before you buy it too, just to make sure it is what you've been told it is... This is either the one or it'll be the one you should avoid.

Unless you plan on doing heavy haul with it the amount of gears shouldn't make that much of a difference. Can’t wait to see more on this truck, and I wouldn’t mind if you added to that ever expanding lists of videos of old trucks getting going for the first time in a long time...

I was talking to my dad who had messed with that stuff a long time ago, he told me you basically have to open up the distributors and adjust their linkages, and make sure they’re both exactly the same, in order to adjust the timing. Hope that helps a little more than earlier... Still I’d get your manuals from the Mack Museum to tell you exactly how to adjust yours...

I know on my iphone there's an option to change how big the image is, usually I can set it to the biggest size available and it trims off all the useless info like dates and times and locations when uploading to cut down the size down from a few Megabytes to a few hundred kilobytes (about 10x smaller)...

Correct, dual distributors, and I don’t think they twist to adjust like on a normal car...

I'd surely contact the museum. They'll be able to provide to you manuals that will tell you everything you need to know when working on the engine. I'd send you the info from my engine but mine is a 707B which one of the things they changed is the timing to make it a little more fuel efficient.

I’m getting ready to try to convince a guy I know to let me piece back together his MH that used to be owned and operated by Mack.

I saw a fresh Argosy glider not too long ago for sale, I don’t remember what the price was exactly but I think it was just shy of $100,000...

Freightliner still makes cabovers as gliders. I saw a brand new one not all that long ago.

I see them at just about every time I go to a truck show, but a ton more conventionals than any cabover...

I took that picture at the Gerhart's show in 2018 on the second day I believe.

As far as I know these 4 doors were all tractors, I believe for farm work. Could be wrong about that but I was under the impression none of these versions of the 4 door B cab were used on firetrucks. The firetruck 4 doors have a big space in the middle of the doors for the fire pump and an extra window above it. Like this...

The black and red F in the background of these pics is for sale if that interests you, granted it’s been for sale for a really long time so my guess is $40,000 is way too much for it...

There were almost 60,000 F-series trucks built... if that answers your question at all...

I believe that NASA at one time owned atleast one Mack F model. I saw a picture a while ago of a blue(?) Mack F hauling the Enterprise (I believe) in a desert setting. Can't find the image anymore. I'm pretty sure it was being pulled off of the runway it landed on for one of the early glide tests of the shuttle, one of the tests where it was piggy backing on a 747 before being released to glide on it's own towards a run way. Just a hunch that this would've happened at White Sands New Mexico. Don't know if that info will help anyone find anything out about that truck.

That one has a 707 gas motor in it! It's a wonder these cabs weren't used on a few firetrucks. There were 4 door B cabs for firetrucks but they had a big space in the middle for the water pump. Now this truck has sparked my interest even more. I wonder if any L cabs were built like this instead of the fire 3 and 4 doors...

I think it looks pretty cool, like something some hunter would find a dead hippie in...

Another vehicle that I feel like I’d just get it working mechanically, clear coat it, and then run it around the way it is now...