LFSW Lanova

[paulbrook]

First run up for a number of years. just over 300 hours run since 1949....

Fire It Up Friday - delayed till Sunday!

I was going to do this on friday but the combination of rotten weather and work for clients kept me inside the workshop rather than outside working on one of my own projects.

Which in this case is an unusual Mack LFSW , super rare on this side of the Atlantic and one of 8 built in 1949 for the newly-formed Central Intelligence Agency. Four of the 8 made it to UK where, painted in USAF colours, and fitted with generating sets, they prov...ided power for communications trailers.

They were eventually sold off and 3 of the 4 ended up on the Dalmeny estate near Queensferry destined to provide power for rock concerts, although this was short lived. This one had a crane mounted on it and was used in the somewhat more modest role shifting timber. Even so it has only 300 hours on the clock.

It was dragged off the estate a number of years ago by a chap who got it running but then decided that as a project it was a little ambitious so it has come to live with us here in Cumbria. It has taken me a further number of years to get to grips with it, let alone get it running.

So with everything cleaned repaired re- plumbed and generally tidied, and with what was probably its first oil change since 1949 it was time to see if it would strike gallop.

Anyway, apply 24 volts and see what happens.....

[1977vega]

Very cool

[terry]

Noisey engine, did the cab rust off or was cut off?     terry

[j hancock]

Keep going!

[paulbrook]

50 minutes ago, terry said:

Noisey engine, did the cab rust off or was cut off?     terry

A lot of the first and a bit of the second...I have most of the parts for it bar the drivers door. We restore quite a few timber framed truck cabs and car  bodies so it is not beyond repair. It is a sleeper cab

I also have a second LFSW from the same batch with a slightly better cab so that will help too.

Oh and I must admit I thought that it was relatively quiet - it had no exhaust system on at all. Plus my recovery truck was running alongside it with the jump leads attached because I thought that I was going to have to spend a while bleeding air from the system, which proved not to be required as it started pretty much straight away having primed up the lift pump and filled the fuel filter bleeding off the air as I did so.

 

 

Edited May 12, 2019 by paulbrook

[h67st]

There was a fellow from the UK or thereabouts on here a few years back that had one with a tree growing through the front bumper, it looked similar to this truck. His cab was severely rusted also. He was trying to save the truck, but he stopped posting.

[RRJordan]

Mack, LF, and Lanova caught my attention as I drove that type of ten wheeler for a construction materials company one summer in the mid-1950s.  That dumper, probably a 1950 model, looker okay, but had been wrecked and rebuilt and had a bad reputation, so it was assigned to the junior kid who didn't know better.  It tracked like a crab, smoked a lot, and was generally poorly maintained, but it pulled well.  On hills it would stay with or pass the yard's new B-63s even when everybody was overloaded by ten tons as was usual.  On long flats the LF would show 52 MPH when the new trucks could not break 50. Senior drivers made it very clear they were not to be passed, so those contests ended quickly.  The Lanova must have been a big one, whether it was original or not. The main 5-speed box was called "backwards" because first and reverse were in the far right slot and second and third in the near left.  The 2-speed behind it was a very low "pit stick"-no splitting.  If you started in first high uphill, you stayed there until flat or downhill because by the time you got out of first and across the gate to second you were rolling backwards.  At least the clutch was not needed except to start.  Its a wonder the kid and the truck survived the summer and it is good to know there is another LF Lanova out there.

[paulbrook]

20 hours ago, h67st said:

There was a fellow from the UK or thereabouts on here a few years back that had one with a tree growing through the front bumper, it looked similar to this truck. His cab was severely rusted also. He was trying to save the truck, but he stopped posting.

This is that one - he posted here as Stephenellis. He did some good work on the engine - just in time too, any longer and I think it would have been beyond redemption. Since buying this one from him I acquired a second and parts from the third (which was broken for scrap). He posted a bunch of pictures in the gallery - worth a look through if you have a moment.