Another old Dumptroit

Now I figure I must have some sort of natural attraction to oddball projects. Along with the daily dose of broken diesels I get the odd request to resuscitate yet another compression ignited dinosaur.

The latest ? An early 70's Kenworth K100 cabover that has been sitting since '01. Under the cab resides a big, bad 12V-71 Detroit. The truck was last used on the local truck pulling circuit so the 12V has some serious injectors and a big arse turbo on top of it's original blowers. After several mornings working at replacing battery cables, a couple of switches, freeing up stuck injector racks, flushing the fuel system and of course making damn sure the emergency shutdown works perfectly it was time to give it a try.

After several attempts and a half a can of ether the chimneys emitted a mini mushroom cloud of blue smog and the 'ol Detroit screamed alive. Much to my amazement, no leaks.

Truck needs a bunch of work but in time it will have it's issues addressed, the engine returned to near stock and be returned to limited service.

I drove a V12. Not too bad of a horse for it's time.... but only a 400, and plenty heavy. They like fuel too, but they do sound nice....especially for a Detroit! We wound up putting temp and pressure gauges on both water rails to keep an eye on the cooling, as that's a real common problem with the V12.

Oh I do like the sound and with 6" straight pipes it is LOUD !!!!!!!


It was originally a heavy haul unit for Dallas & Mavis so it has a 13 under trans with 4.11's. For the pull circuit the Rockwells were equipped with " Lincoln lockers ". It got parked after the rear screw took a dump. Sending all 8 drives up in smoke on a tarmac side road was a major contributing factor.

Game plan is to detune the Detroit, swap the 13 under for a 13 over and the 4.11's for 3.73's. He has the big stuff so it won't be a major financial strain just a bunch of work.

A V12 Detroit is the only old school big hammer I've never driven.

This was the one I drove....  17yrs old, '74KW, v-12 and a 15 speed... tall cotton to say the least! I spent all summer hauling on a private road with BIG loads of logs...this was taken at home when I brought a load of firewood home.....

Nice.

Cool beans dude, love those old heavy haulers! Now you need to find a A/C purple people eater to resurrect. Or a little more easy to find a good 1693.

old iron rules good work AC

Made a little more progress on this one. Over the weekend it got 10 used tires ( that actually hold air ) on 10 matching Alcoa budd wheels. Then it got moved via tow truck to a corner of the lot where it won't get run into. It drops right into gear and the brakes release but I won't chance moving it under it's own power until I've had time to go over the brakes and other essentials. For right now I've got several other projects demanding my attention but if things go somewhat according to game plan shortly after the holidays it will dragged into the shop for a good going over.

Nice find AC!!