Crow tastes good when deep-fried in leaked oil....Just sayin........

[1958 F.W.D.]

Cool your jets everyone.....building is slated to be demolished but I do not see that happening until at LEAST 2018 sometime.

[yarnall]

That gives me two years to park my junk there.

[1958 F.W.D.]

UPDATE:

Not much has been done cosmetically. She desperately needs a good, thorough bath with a pressure washer (but not too hard) and a brush and soap....But since it done went and turned all winter on us we haven't had a chance to play with any water- as previously mentioned the water at the place we have her stored in has been turned off. No heat, either. So what we need to do is run her down to the (still open!) firehouse one day and back her in and go over her.

We have been looking at some of the rot. First thing I think I will take a whack at will be to fabricate a new battery box. Depending on how badly I screw that up do with that then maybe I will give the cab floor under the driver a whack. The body is going to have to wait.

Mechanically everything is fine with some minor crap here and there- she does lose prime in the fuel system after sitting for a week or two- bad check valve? But she does have an electric primer, so all we do is lean on that for 30 seconds and she lights right off. Also there's an air valve bad somewhere that I think Dad may have fixed already.

[1958 F.W.D.]

My wife just found this picture of Dad and I and the Hahn, I am thinking this is around 1995 or so at one of the Glasstown Musters.

[1958 F.W.D.]

Hey looky here.....These appeared in the US Mail today, sent by a former member of the Company who was on the Committee that spec'd the Hahn!!!

[1958 F.W.D.]

UPDATE: Due to winter, we still have not given her a good, thorough bath. We could run her down to the firehouse and wash her, but we don't want to risk water getting into rusted nooks and crannies, and freezing and pushing on the rot. So we wait patiently for warmer weather. In the meantime we have a punch list of stuff to do. The tach/speedometer sending units took a shit, so we're trying to find one or both. I have the Hahn part number for the tach sending unit, I need to see if theres a cross reference that I can find a DD number. It has a pink, a white and 5 or 6 gray wires I think? Ring a bell with anyone? In the meantime Dad bought a hubdometer and installed it to keep track of mileage. One roto beacon on the roof isn't spinning (lights up but no spinny spin.....) I think it may be a loose wire somewhere, I hope I don't have to pull the headliner......ugh......And we try to light off the truck every other week or so and run her for a half hour (keeping off the roads due to salt.....) fills that old fire station up with exhaust every time until air pressure is up enough to pull her outside...LOL.......

[Vladislav]

Randy,

I'm pretty shure Eskimo and Chukchi never have bath or any other kind of wash.

So I wouldn't worry about Hahn until it's cold. Every thing to its time.

Not shure either it's good to fire her up every week during a cold storage.

Cold start stresses batteries and provides poor oil supply.

So for a winter I'd go for maybe one start in a season. Or better neither of, just a first one after warming up.

All the rest sounds good

[1958 F.W.D.]

Randy,

I'm pretty shure Eskimo and Chukchi never have bath or any other kind of wash.

So I wouldn't worry about Hahn until it's cold. Every thing to its time.

Not shure either it's good to fire her up every week during a cold storage.

Cold start stresses batteries and provides poor oil supply.

So for a winter I'd go for maybe one start in a season. Or better neither of, just a first one after warming up.

All the rest sounds good

Vlad: The truck is equipped with a Kussmaul (2 amp) charger/conditioner which we keep plugged in at all times. And my father always taught me that its important to good battery health to excercise them regularly.....I have always started the FWD every 2-3 weeks and allow to run for a half hour- and the batteries that I bought in 2002 (two Dekas) just now took their final shit.

As for the low oil pressure- its a freaking Detroit. Who cares....Nevermind the fact that low oil pressure is enough oil pressure for them.

[fxfymn]

Is there a chart somewhere that shows the correlation between the the thicker viscosity of cold oil and the amount that leaks out from a DD when compared to starting it in warm weather?

[j hancock]

Sometimes looking at the oil pres. gauge in the 671 powered Brockway 359 at hot idle is scary.

[Vladislav]

Is there a chart somewhere that shows the correlation between the the thicker viscosity of cold oil and the amount that leaks out from a DD when compared to starting it in warm weather?

I'm not sure on where to find a chart like you've described but as I was learned cold start is a reason of up to 90% of wear of an engine.

And only the rest is from when it's rinning

[1958 F.W.D.]

UPDATE 02/28/2016: We took advantage of an extremely rare warm day here in Eastern Pa- temps got up into the low 60's and everyone had cabin fever because it seems like it has rained pretty much every day for the last 2 weeks. Wait, it HAS rained every day for the last 2 weeks. So Small and Large and I got up at 0600 this morning and went and got the Hahn this morning from the double-secret probation storage place and brought it home. I borrowed the neighbor's pressure washer, and we knocked off the tree sap, crap, grime, dirt and muck that caked on the truck as it sat outside for the last 5-plus years. We also took a scraper to a lot of rust cakes inside of the compartments, and then vacuumed all that out. Then we wire-brushed the cab floor (all the gray paint that I painted in there 15-20 years ago was flaking bad.....) and vacuumed that out. Then we removed the wood from the hosebeds, and stashed that in the garage for further evaluation- Sand and stain/varnish or total replacement????

The truck is far from it's former glory but she is beginning to look respectable once again. She looks 1000% better than she did at 0800 this morning.

Large worked his balls off today.






Extra Small even joined in on the action


The wood slats from the hosebed and compartments


And finally, a split image that a buddy put together- top pic is actually seen farther back in this thread, from around Thanksgiving- sitting at the former owner's place in the exact spot she sat for 5+ years looking forgotten and sad. Bottom pic is this afternoon. The pic does no justice- she looks 1000% better.

[Vladislav]

Cool family day!

Hmm..., I just meant it was cool with all the water drops.

Now I see that yellow thingy is big!

Looks great wet washed

[1958 F.W.D.]

UPDATE 04/17/2016: Now that it looks like Mother Nature has made up her mind that it' spring and we are finally getting warm weather, we took advantage of a beautiful weekend and I brought the Hahn home on Friday. I have a friend who is a retired Chief from Marlborough, Mass. who details cars on the side, and I called him and explained very carefully about the single-stage paint and the sitting outside for 5 years, sun-bleached, pine sap/tar all over it, blah blah. He sent me an email an hour later with a list of Meguiars products to buy and a detailed procedure of how and when to use them. So we started Saturday afternoon, and wow is it labor intensive but the results- my god I never thought the paint was going to come back as nicely as it did. Large is in a few pictures either painting the cab floor or he is removing rust and crap from some of the grab handles and other misc hardware that we took off. What a bitch to get the rust-bleed drips off. When I re-assembled the hardware, I used stainless when possible. Why Hahn didn't I will never know. 

You can see where I stopped buffing halfway up the windows. What a difference. 

Large re-attaches the air intake grill using stainless hardware. Note Extra Small in the cab. She was perfectly content to just sit there for long periods of time, taking pulls from her "baba." No lie she would sit there for an hour just watching the world go by, or us working. In fact several times when I went to get her out, she got pissed!!! 

Large trying to score a spokesperson spot for Meguiars. 

When we dissassembled all  the hardware. 

Large paints the cab floor. Yes he made a mess in a few spots. If you have never worked with Rustoleum "aluminum" the stuff is like water and flings around as the bristles of the brush snap. Had to show him how to do it gently a few times. But I make sure I remind myself to counter his sloppyness with his enthusiasm. 

Edited April 18, 2016 by 1958 F.W.D.

[Vladislav]

The color-back effect looks nice.

Good work having such the crue! Hope the youngsters will enjoy this game for a while.

As for stainless hardwear (and other SS parts) they give extreme corrosion effect when in contact with common steel parts.

It was surprize to me once I heard that but after figuring out some circumstances of my practice I found it true wery much.

That's why people don't use SS patches welding rusty car bodies. SS doesn't rust itself. But ruins the serrounding iron.

If you use any SS part or bolt/nut/washer in contact with iron use any gasket and some grease to separate the parts.

And it seems to me the same thing goes between chrome-plated parts and iron. Sometimes you can see rust where chrome bumper touches steel body part wearing the paint off.

[Loadstar]

Wow what a big difference between the "new" and the old.....nice job!!! 

[1958 F.W.D.]

Since the Hahn's double-secret location is an hour away, I brought it home for the long holiday weekend to hopefully get some more paint restoration done. It's a very long, labor-intense four-step process. The truck desperately needed a good thorough washing with soap and water, so what better to do on a swamp-ass hot day than to have a Hahn Washing-Water Fight??? 

Even EXTRA SMALL got in on the action. 

[JumperAndSon]

Maybe I could bring the other #11 over for a similar treatment ! Tim

 

[yarnall]

It looks great.  My Elizabethville Hahn could use a spa day like that.  It sat out for the first two years I had it and that was real hard on it.  Mike. 

[1958 F.W.D.]

9 hours ago, JumperAndSon said:

Maybe I could bring the other #11 over for a similar treatment ! Tim

 

I know for a fact that I am the first person to ever have washed that truck- when it arrived (about 6pm on a crappy February day back in 1990) it had driven up 95 from Talladega, Al where the Quality plant was located at the time. It had all kinds of crap all over it including road salt. So they backed it into the firehouse and approximately 15.8 seconds later I was up on that roof with a hose and a small bucket of soapy water and a sponge. And over the years I have waxed that thing probably a dozen or so times....and  washed it more times than I care to remember...lol

 

[1958 F.W.D.]

Monday was spent completing some more of the paint restoration. "Large" has really taken a liking to the truck and did a lot of the Monday work. My father had him on a creeper last week replacing air hoses and pancakes in the front brakes. They're going to do the parking valve together when Dad can find an American made one. Yarnall said to send Large over to his house but I told him he couldn't afford to feed him. 

Edited June 1, 2016 by 1958 F.W.D.