1980 Autocar “Construcktor” Hauls its First loads in Many Many Years!

foreign [Music] hey everybody welcome back to diesel creek my name is matt behind me this big orange behemoth right here is my 1980 auto car constructor now there's been a few videos on this thing already on the channel if you're interested in those the link is down in the description uh if you watch those you'll have a better understanding of where we are today that being said in the last video on this truck we got it pretty much ready for the road and i attempted to hook up my lowboy trailer to it for the first time the fifth wheel hitch that we installed in this truck was not cut in the mustard something is wrong with it the jaws were not closing around the kingpin so in today's video we're going to be taking a look at this fifth wheel plate and we're gonna try and figure out what the issue is why it's not latching and hopefully fingers crossed by the end of the video we're gonna be hooked up to the lowboy trailer and uh we'll throw some piece of equipment i have floating around here we'll throw something on the trailer and take it for a spin just for a little joyride and to see how the old rig does anyway that's today let's get going all right well i've been studying this fifth wheel latch as best i can there's a ton of different fifth wheel plates out there and different latch mechanisms this one here is a i would call it a three part latch this thing here you push or the kingpin pushes and it swings this other arm in around out here and then it swings past the safety bump out over here and when you hit the safety trigger [Music] this dog pops out here and would hold that arm latched up tight into this area now the trouble that we're having is that this arm isn't swinging all the way over here as it should so if i hold the safety trap down there and push on this back part like the kingpin would you can see the bottom part of the latch swinging out there now i don't have enough strength to just shove this thing like the kingpin would but i can manually shove it up there like so it's all hard to do one-handed so right there is as far as this latch will go something is holding it from swinging all the way to the closed position now it kind of has some like teeth over there kind of like gear teeth almost that mesh with the corresponding teeth on this part and i don't know if something is in there jamming them up or what the case is here but we're gonna keep investigating and hopefully we find a smoking gun well after some more playing around here i have come up with an official theory now it is just that it's a theory and i'm sure some of you won't like it but hopefully you guys can see the kind of gear cog system i'm talking about in there it's just got a few teeth that mesh with those two parts right there and it kind of seems like those teeth might be out of sync now i don't think that would be possible without damaging something like crucially damaging something unless somebody put it together wrong and i think that might be our case so to work on the back side of these plates you have to pull the pivot pins off of each side now both of the pivot pins have studs welded on them like somebody had used a slide hammer to pull them out years ago this fifth wheel plate did not come with this truck it came off of another truck i don't know the history of that truck but i know that it had been off the road for quite a long time but it may have been a truck that somebody had started to fix up a little bit and they tried repairing the fifth wheel and didn't do it correctly if if the teeth are out of sync on this thing there's no way you could have ever used it or pulled anything with it i don't see any excessive wear on any of the jaw components in here in fact i don't see anywhere at all there's even still a little bit of blue paint showing through on this piece here it is possible that somebody disassembled this thing and put it back together incorrectly at least those two pieces and then reassembled it and it never got used or they had problems with it so they let it sit and never got back to fixing it at least that's what i'm hoping for my fingers are crossed to check that tooth alignment on those two pieces we're gonna have to take the plate off and flip it over and that seems like it might be a bit of a chore i don't know if you guys can see it but there's a roll pin right up here that we're gonna have to drive out to be able to remove the pivot pins on the hitch they're pretty rusted in there this is gonna be a treat well i figured i'd spare you guys the hammer swing and i beat and beat and beat on these pins and they're not wanting to move so yeah i'm either going to have to get medieval on it or see if i can't cheat this pin that holds that swinging latch in there i might be able to cheat it out without removing the plate i know everything's pretty greasy it's hard to make out or anything but there's a a large pin that is the pivot for that swinging jaw that goes up and down through the plate right there and then there's a cotter pin that retains it right there if i can get the cotter pin out of there i might be able to use the porta power to shove it back up through the fifth wheel and then realign the jaws correctly [Music] [Music] uh-huh [Music] i was afraid of that it's going look at that we got a pin protruding from the top look at that boy i am not going to complain about this at all now i know what's going to happen here i'm going to pull this pin and all this stuff that's spring-loaded in this latch is going to try to kick out on me so i got to try to find a way to negate that so think we're just kind of the part now where you're going to get greasy and there's no if ends or nothing you can do about it here's the part where i trip the safety latch and it crushes my dang fingers there we go that's what it's supposed to look like when it's closed right there i apologize for not getting more camera angles everything about this job is just super super greasy i'm covered now i don't want to touch the camera but i think we got it all right i think we actually got this thing now the first test here well i don't think i have enough force to do it on my own i might have to try it on the trailer but i think the gears and everything are timed correctly that brought this piece out further when i changed that spacing that setting and it seems it just seems a lot more correct now if that makes sense all i gotta do is throw that cotter pin back in down there and i think that we're ready to go try this thing out on the trailer [Music] so in the last video i had a lot of comments about how smoky this truck is and what i didn't show you was after i took it for a good drive and actually got the engine hot it quit smoking all together because this truck's been sitting most of its life i think the injectors are very gummed up i mean as soon as it comes off idle all the injectors kick in and it seems to run fine but sitting here idling especially after you let it idle for a while it's been sitting here idling for probably 20 minutes now and it it goes to missing like this you can probably hear it's not hitting quite right on all six so as soon as i give it some gas it clears right up and then once i take it down the road and actually get it hot it clears up i've probably only driven this truck about five miles so far so i'm hoping after i run it for a while it's gonna clear up and stay cleared up that's another reason i put a big gallon of atf in the fuel tank there not to mention the fuel in the tank is pretty old i'm actually going to the fuel station right now i'm going to put some fuel in it [Music] i don't know if the camera's picking it up but a lot of people in the last video also said you couldn't hear the turbo at all but you can hear it here in person oh what appear we actually caught us a trailer this time all right the old constructor's first successful trailer connection now this trailer has been sitting here for oh three or four years now i think so before i go taking it out on the road we need to go over it so i'm not going to throw a piece of equipment on it just yet i'm going to take it back to buy the building there and we're going to park it and go over so well i was planning on towing a piece of equipment around for my very first test with the old constructor but i just got a call from the auction they are ready to load out my big crane and uh that means we can go get that stuff hauled out of the auction yard and we're we're gonna do a little bit of baptism by fire here the first thing the old auto car is gonna haul is an oversized load apparently so here goes nothing [Music] [Music] so [Music] so [Music] so she's right oh [Applause] [Applause] mm-hmm let's have another block [Applause] [Applause] so well that's it guys eastbound and down got all my proper flagging on there got the plate on the trailer i don't know if it's actually legal to put the sign on the load versus the trailer but i couldn't get the sign to be legible if you put it on the trailer anywhere unless i covered up all the lights and the plate so i figured we'd just go this route let's hope for the best it is uh definitely a wide load let's billy big rig [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] well that was a bit of a nerve-wracking drive there that's my first oversized load or at least the first one this wide it's a little i think it's 12 foot 3 inches something like that so yeah good to be on what is essentially my own private driveway of a road again there's never any traffic on here but i'm about to go through the tight spot so i set my buddy up ahead there in my truck he's gonna block the road and give me a shot whenever the coast is clear and we'll make our way all the way to the farm my so [Music] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] so [Music] so [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Applause] [Music] [Music] well guys we made it got the old crane home here couldn't be happier with the way the auto car performed everything was pretty much flawless the trailer um the trailer performed fine as well the lights all worked amazingly the brakes seemed to work okay i did notice when the trailer was empty before we put the crane on it that the one set of tires on the driver's side there were kind of i wouldn't call it hanging up but unless they had full weight on them they weren't spinning they would skim the gravel a little bit and that could just be a break adjustment or just the the drums had rusted from sitting out at the auction for quite a while so once we put some weight on it and started pulling it it was all spinning fine it didn't seem like the brakes got hot or anything but it was a short drive back here to the farm i learned some things about the crane as well the guy that i ended up loading it on the truck for me was the guy that took it down out of its last location and put it for sale up in the auction he was uh telling me that it had a current safety inspection when they took it down a few months ago and it was still in use in a commercial setting so this thing should be pretty much ready to go if i had three-phase power now i don't and this crane is bigger than what i'm looking for so there's going to be quite a bit of extensive modifications going to be done to it to uh be used in my application but that's still good news that everything was in working order so happy about that even better news is he told me he still had all the beams for the trolley aspect of this machine i've read the comments on the auction video where i purchased the crane and everybody keeps telling me all will build the building to fit the crane well a bring your wallet with you i can't afford to go that much bigger b i think a lot of you guys are misunderstanding how this crane is used this is just the bridge of the crane okay so this piece goes the width ways of the building and then it travels back and forth the length so this whole thing would sit up on some rails that run the length of the building and travel back and forth and then the the actual hoist in the middle of the bridge runs back and forth in the bridge to cover side to side in the building so the bridge goes lengthwise and the hoist goes side to side and that way you can cover every square inch of the shop anyways this thing's blocking my driveway the auto car should be warmed up let's go ahead and try to back this thing off into the mud without burying it come on so all right well i think i'm pretty happy with that there should be off the driveway plenty man that's a big crane so i thought this was funny but i didn't show it when i connected the trailer in the auction yard look how rusted the handle is for this thing just snap it clean off these trailers had to have been running the salt for quite a while and then after that parked and let sit for quite a long time i'm trying to lower the landing gear without getting another tetanus shot i imagine that'll do it you guys ready pay attention i might pull this thing down off the blocks and uh cause the whole trailer to fall i don't know look at that it's like i almost know what i'm doing oh it stayed up on the blocks for a minute anyways dang it man that sucker sunk really far didn't it holy crap that thing sunk like a foot like right now i don't know if the loader's gonna lift that thing up to fix it or not uh [Music] all right well i decided i can't take this trailer out on the road because it uh it needs a new deck really bad see this i mean i can just pull the deck apart and the whole deck is that way you can see there's a hole over there and if that's not bad enough these bolts that hold the boards on are not like normal deck boards that drill through the steel and hold the deck on it has these clamp claws down underneath there that clamp the wood to the steel so you guys can see all these clamps up there that are holding the deck boards on and if you start going down the road and those things start falling out hey i need them to put a new deck on i don't know where i'd go to get those replaced and b that's a hazard i can't be dropping these things all over the road that could really damage somebody's tires or vehicle or whatever so uh as much as i want to take it out i can't but that's not stopping me from putting a machine on it and tugging it around here a little bit i really can't take it far but uh yeah i just want to say i hold a piece of equipment with this truck before the end of this video i guess the other issue with this trailer is the ramps so but there's two ramps like this which are super heavy and this one's nice and straight but the other one not so straight as i'm sure you guys can tell that ramp has got a pretty serious curve to it that's a pretty beefy ramp now i don't know if this machine is going to be able to bend it back or not but we're going to try [Music] [Music] [Music] wow that went a bit easier than i thought pretty close say just a little more when i bought this trailer and that ramp was bent i thought well i'll never have a machine big enough to bend this thing back glad i was wrong there we go i like it looks pretty straight from here uh [Music] so so so all right well the dozer looks a lot more appropriately sized up there on the trailer this dozer weighs roughly the same as fat alice the loader and i know i said i was going to put it up on there in the last video but decided since the deck was so spongy that anything with wheels would be a bad idea so the dozer crawled right up there and didn't manage to fall through the deck at all so we should be good to play around here a little bit like i said it's a shame i can't take this thing out on the road until we put a deck on it but people tell me all the time that i need to buy a sawmill so i can use up some of my logs and make some lumber well that pile of logs over there has been sitting there for a year now because i ordered a sawmill over a year ago and hopefully it comes in here within the next month and then we're going to cut up a bunch of deck boards and redo the decks on this trailer and my big red tag along trailer over there so we should be good to go after that but anyway let's fire this thing up and see how the old auto car handles this thing [Applause] [Music] [Music] so so so [Applause] ah well we didn't make it very far but uh i'm still happy with that sometimes it's fun to just play around with these big toys overall guys i am super pumped to have this auto car back on the road i think it's going to become a very very handy piece of equipment for me to have i have some of this bigger equipment that i have no way to move on my own this dozer any time it's ever left this farm has been on somebody else's truck i've had to pay to haul it to jobs so this kind of opens up the door makes me want to take on jobs that need the bigger equipment so that i can make some money with these things they're super nice to have here at the farm and i do use them a lot but you know really i could be making money with them at the same time so this thing kind of unlocks the door to that so there's still some final details that going to need to be done to this auto car i did notice during the course of this video that there's a little bit of slop in the fifth wheel plate so i'm gonna have to figure out how to adjust the jaws and tighten that up i know that that's definitely possible to do i saw it in the paperwork i was looking at when i found the diagram for the breakdown of the fifth wheel plate the rear tires um they got some weather checking going on they are 100 20 size tires and i'd like to upgrade them to 11r 22.5 tires which are a lot easier to come across and more readily available all right well i guess that's about the end of this video overall i am super happy with the auto car it seems to be running much much better now uh running it down the road getting the crane and just driving it around in general seems to be cleared out the fuel system a lot i think the injectors were gummed up pretty bad from setting for all these years uh there was quite a few comments in the last video on the truck about how smoky it was and it and it was but it's it's really cleared up now it's not smoking nearly as much it's starting up a lot easier after it sits before the injectors were leaking down and when you first started up it was pinging and kind of knocking a little bit because it had too much fuel in a couple of the cylinders it's not doing that at all anymore it runs good it shifts good all the lights work as always if you like the video do me a big favor hit that thumbs up button down below it really helps out the channel doesn't cost you guys a thing i get comments about the music on the channel all the time if you guys like the music all the music on the channel is done by my buddy vinnie over at the semi super villains the link to his channel is down in the description so if you like his tunes you can go check them out over there if you guys like the channel and you want to help support it and do so in style you can head over to dieselcreek.com there's a link down in the description you can go over there get yourself some sweet hats t-shirts stickers beer koozies what have you and you'll be helping support the channel at the same time but anyways that's all i got as always thanks for watching and i will see you guys on the next one later [Music] you

Channel: Diesel Creek

Views: 656,608

Keywords: autocar, semi, big, rig, largecar, diesel, cam, cummins, detroit, caterpillar, construcktor, small cam, 855, ntc

Id: UyvR9vrlEZA

Length: 49min 11sec (2951 seconds)

Published: Sat Jul 30 2022