Forgotten 1950s GMC Truck Backhoe Thing - Will it Ever Run Again?

howdy folks welcome back a lot of you have been itching for another will it run revival video series and i aim to please today's candidate is a 1950 something gmc 450 truck backhoe digging machine thing yeah let's get to it let's take a tour of this fine machine as far as i know it's been parked down here for around 20 years and i doubt very highly that it was running when they parked it here so i want you guys to keep your your hopes and expectations very low it's a gmc 450 cabin chassis truck and it's got this hopdow digger badger machine company kind of grave digging attachment on the back here i guess it's factory made but it's very crude looks like every single part of it's either been broken and patched or reinforced bucket looks pretty decent but yeah most the pins have been replaced with bolts the two long cylinders have been collapsed but that that short one for the bucket there that'll never work again the rams all rusted up it's got a crazy rack and pinion system for the swing i don't think i've ever seen anything quite like that before great big outriggers on it there's a pony motor here that runs the hydraulics looks to me like it was originally a continental red seal power unit and somebody swapped out the original flathead continental for this gm inline six cylinder engine i'm not sure what this is it's much newer than the rest of the truck it's got agi ignition and everything but it's been sitting outside with the carburetor uncovered for who knows 20 plus years radiator's been uncovered that whole time too i'm sure that's frozen and blown out so that will never run again hydraulic tank there there's the cylinders for those rack and pinion units for the swing and then your operator's controls here so i guess you sit on the hydraulic tank and run the levers and that one's free that one's free oh that one's frozen anyway i think the backhoe attachment is yeah probably not worth saving it's like the actual sheet metal isn't too bad of shape i mean it's not rusted it's just all dented real bad it says ray kerr finch machine shop clinton iowa which that's not far from here it's just across the mississippi river yeah fun fact about clinton iowa highest per capita population of men with ponytails based on my scientific observations yeah so definitely a red seal power unit see it even says continental right there looks like this door is has been replaced the latch is different see it had a little bit of a boo-boo there looks like somebody fixed that the right way bondo sheet metal screws looks good the interior could use some work there's the air cleaner i don't see any raccoons in here currently but they are definitely frequent visitors wow check out that windshield wiper motor i suppose you can't see it looks like it says 85 000 miles that's probably for a pto don't know what transmission it is i would assume four speed with a two speed axle something like that yeah pretty rough all the seat cover's still good over here [Music] oh what's all this stuff looks like a handbrake maybe and then wow heater controls that says warmer on it there's another pedal on the floor that must be a starter pedal pretty rough well it's got the old 20 inch tires with the widow maker snap ring rims i don't know if you can even get these tires anymore last i heard they were really hard to find and even if you can get them most shops won't won't touch these snap ring rims of course these have tubes in them too so yeah license plate from 1975 and it's special mobile equipment i'm pretty sure they still have these license plates sme plates there's just made for construction equipment and i'm pretty sure you're only allowed to drive within one county so maybe somebody from iowa can clear that up it's got one hood spring still another one's broken off so she's sporting the stove bolt straight six i don't know which one 235 maybe and spoiler alert this is not the first time i've looked at this truck actually came down here over a year ago to try to try to get it going and this engine is seized up tighter than a dutch wallet i just i couldn't do anything with it i took the spark plugs out filled the cylinders up with a concoction of diesel fuel and automatic transmission fluid so yeah let's not get our hopes up little two-barrel holly there and it's been open like that for 20 years last guy who worked on it he couldn't be bothered to put that back together so it's definitely not a good sign the wiring is unique let's say that right there appears to be a homemade ballast resistor so possibly somebody's done a 12 volt conversion or a 12 volt light conversion okay i got the plugs out unfortunately i broke one so for sure want to replace this one but they really don't look too bad so maybe they were replaced before they before they brought it in here i don't know kind of a good sign i think i want to get the valve cover off though and just make sure that we don't have any valves that are stuck okay yeah that doesn't look too bad i mean relatively speaking oh there's the stuck one right there there it goes now that one's stuck too all right hope you guys can see this this is the only one here right now that's sticking this one i think it's going to free up there it goes awesome okay we're looking good see if we can get the thing to bar over well it must be stuck a little bit worse than i thought so i think what i'm gonna do fill the cylinders up with some of this home brew here this is a mixture of automatic transmission fluid and diesel fuel and we'll let her sit for a couple days see what happens i brought along a borescope this one's pretty craptacular but should let us see down inside those cylinders get an idea of what we're working with well it's not looking good hopefully you guys can see this this is cylinder number six so this one's good what you're seeing right there is kind of the edge of the piston against the cylinder wall so the cylinder wall is rusty and there's just a little hint of that oil left in the cylinder so that one's okay but cylinder number five is a different story come on so there's a cylinder wall now let me try to bend my camera down ah yeah there's can you see it there's a pool of oil in the bottom of that cylinder or on top of the piston so that's not good to still have oil on top of the piston after over a year i don't think we're gonna get that one cracked loose but yes we can try all right i'm going in well i probably lost the footage from last year but when i took that inspection cover off the bottom of the bell housing it was completely packed with mouse nest and they've done a number on the ring gear i don't know if you guys can see but there's actually some teeth that are basically missing now just corroded out from all the mouse p anyway i put a bar on that flywheel teeth she ain't gonna budge so we need a different plan i scrounged up this flat plate of steel here and i've got a bottle jack you guys thinking what i'm thinking all right here's the janky setup i got the pry bar jammed in the teeth of the ring gear and then i ran that down to the bottle jack and i just pumped this thing up until the pry bar assumed a nice kind of recurve shape and my plan is just to leave that thing like that with some tension on it go home maybe come back in a couple days see if we've made any progress all right folks it's been a little while came back to check on our setup here see the pry bars laying on the ground so what do you think i give it a one percent chance that the engine broke loose and a 99 chance that the bottle jack just settled down and that pry bar fell out yeah i set the jack back up but she hasn't even tried to move so i don't know about this one let's stay way back on this one let's see what happens careful careful careful uh something's happening because i'm not getting any more resistance is it turning something's going on yeah it's definitely not turning oh that's gonna come flying out of there all right guys much like this tree that's growing through the step we're pretty limited on what we can do down here and it's not looking good so there's a better look at the damage on the teeth of the flywheel i can't do my same trick with the jack over here on the other side because the exhaust pipe's in the way so i don't have enough room to weasel the pry bar in there ah yeah there's just yeah not much we can do here lots of other problems too looks like we've got wedge brakes on the front hydraulic wedge brakes those will probably never work again they didn't work when they were new uh that i think is the master cylinder right there and it looks like the seals are all hanging out the front of it so of course we wouldn't have any kind of breaks it does have some kind of a pto on the transmission doesn't seem to be used for anything uh that big thing right there is a vacuum brake booster mounted on the frame rail it's the way they used to do it i'm not a driveline expert but i'm thinking she might need a carrier bearing and then i don't know if it shows up on the camera but the drive shafts either twisted or bent there's definitely like a dog leg shape right about there so that's not good now amazingly the floors are pretty good on this truck a little bit of a problem right there but the actual floor pans are fine better than the truck i drive every day looks like somebody went ahead and fixed that cab mount that would be fine of course there's plenty more challenges under the hood sketchy doesn't quite cover what's going on with the wiring and then we've got lots of problems with the carburetor the choke is frozen and there's a bunch of trash on top of it the choke cable is broken the throttle linkage is kind of there but i see we've got baling wire here to the generator bracket holding the return spring and then i guess that's an old six volt generator it's probably not even hooked up there's the old voltage regulator the clutch and brake linkages are both frozen and i don't know if any footage survives but the starter also has a mechanical linkage so there's a pedal kind of in the middle right there behind the valve cover that you push to engage the starter the switch works so electrically it'll spin but it doesn't engage the the drive gear so even if we got the engine to break loose we'd probably have to put a starter in it or at least investigate that linkage looks like the last guy used our tv instead of a bowl gasket so yeah i'm thinking we just do what the last guy did and uh yeah yep yep and we slowly walk away well i'd like to find the guy who worked on this thing and maybe buy him a beer obviously the suspension is shot and then the backhoe attachment must be way way too heavy for this 450 chassis because it's well on to the overloads already and hopefully you guys can see this either the original u-bolts broke or they put a spacer underneath the spring or added a leaf or several leafs or something's going on i guess instead of getting new u-bolts made up they just drilled some holes through some angle iron and then used some hardware store grade threaded rod and i like the part where the angle iron rubs right against the frame so the other side's the same way except they actually used smaller diameter threaded rod over here the other side was 5 8 this is only half inch yiha well folks you can't win them all i know some of you guys get really upset when i throw in the towel but i think that's as far as i'm willing to go with this truck at least for the time being it's just it's not practical to come out here and take the engine apart and try to get it you know freed up and spend a lot of time and money i'm 30 minutes from my shop there's no facilities here no water no electricity so you know it'll be an uphill battle i'm sure if we spend enough time money we could get it running but you know what are we going to have when we do get it running this thing's a long way from ever driving again so yeah we'll see what happens i guess maybe if we can get it drug out of this spot and you know back to the shop we can tinker with it i don't know i i use some old school tricks to try to get the engine freed up and i just wasn't successful and you know that concoction that i poured in there didn't do the trick after a calendar year i don't think anything is going to of course i'm sure i'll get countless recommendations about you know granddad's special secret sauce for freeing up stuck engines whatever it is rendered skunk fat or eye of newt or something that i don't have anyway i want to thank you guys for hanging out with me hopefully we have better luck next time well the body's really not too bad on this old truck especially for our area might make a good donor for somebody's project this fender's caved in the hood's caved in a little bit i think those could both probably be fixed a little bit of rust at the bottom of this door but the rest of the cab is pretty decent the floors are good glass is all shot i think the cab on these is the same as the pickup trucks don't quote me on that i don't know gm's that well but on the fords the cab is the same so yeah it might live on as a donor for somebody's project

Channel: Watch Wes Work

Views: 279,452

Rating: 4.8481069 out of 5

Keywords: gmc, truck, abandoned, forgotten, old, will it run, will it start, stovebolt, gm, engine, stuck, siezed, locked, backhoe, digger, hopto, badger machine works, brakes, raccoon, antique, mechanic, fix, repair, revive, revival, oil

Id: tP-BGG4t84I

Length: 20min 29sec (1229 seconds)

Published: Sat Nov 21 2020

Reddit Comments

[u/GenericModerator2020]

Spoiler: It won't. She fucked.