Good survivalist / prepper vehicle

[CamoDeafie]

All good. I prefer the large diameter single center wheel - someday I will buy/build one.

That said, my health is not such that I can walk far, with or without a load. Bicycling/two wheels powered or not, would be one backup option before having to walk. So I would want a trailer that could attach to such, and then be used while on foot.

That's why I'm saying a mule, or large goats

Actually. Good pack goats might be a boon.
Seems goat teams are being used for carts and carriages more often..

 

[The Heretic]

My TTR 230 will run almost all day on a couple of gallons and is quiet the CR 450R is another story

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[CamoDeafie]

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Inland waterways ya doof lol

 

[gmerkt]

What I wrote was about the inability of of almost all vehicular automatic transmissions to be bump/pushed/pull/roll started if the starter goes out, or the battery goes dead. This is an issue if you encounter electrical system problems. I don't believe I said anything about repairing a transmission in the field (which, even with my experience, I would not attempt).

Thanks for the clarification, my mistake for not accurately remembering what I read and not going back to review.

Yet there may be some value in mentioning the subject to the many who don't know much have how systems work. That is, thinking necessarily that manual is better than automatic in terms of reliability. Meaning, some people may think the contemporary manual shift is less complex, and therefore more apt to be better in emergency situations. Which in my mind isn't necessarily so.

BUT: The point about no push starting with electronic controlled automatics is a good one. Which I hadn't given a thought. It's been many years since I had to push start a vehicle with an automatic, and that was way before electronic controls.

Working on any kind of transmission "in the field" would be very problematic. No solvent washing basins, limited if any compressed air, etc. I mean, how many people would have a solvent washer in their survival kit. Much less repair parts.

 

[gmerkt]

The M88 tracked recovery vehicle

May not be the best survival vehicle, since they get less than one mile per gallon in fuel consumption.

It is possible to get these stuck. One of our companies was sent up to provide support in Lam Son 719, they got one stuck on "Highway" 9 on the way to Khe Sanh, they spent the night holding off snipers, bullets pinging off the hull at intervals.

 

[The Heretic]

BUT: The point about no push starting with electronic controlled automatics is a good one. Which I hadn't given a thought. It's been many years since I had to push start a vehicle with an automatic, and that was way before electronic controls.

Not just the electronic auto transmissions - almost anything with an auto transmission is not going to turn over the engine no matter how fast you push/pull/roll it. It just won't work. There used to be a few exceptions, but I doubt any are on the road today.

 

[MTpockets]

I was in a M.A.S.H. unit and we had some in the ambulance/patient transportation configuration and yes they are fun to drive !

"Home" being the operative word. These trucks with their armor weigh a ton, multiple multiple tons. Get them on snow or mud and they will get stuck, even if you convert it to 4x4. Weight is the Great Satan when it comes to driving/riding off-road.

Sometimes when we're stuck... Wheels deep in the muck....

 

[PORSCHE928S4]

Sometimes when we're stuck... Wheels deep in the muck....

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When you get something stuck in the ARMY it is next level !

 

[The Heretic]

Sometimes when we're stuck... Wheels deep in the muck....

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Yup.

And not just wheeled vehicles either. I have twice stuck tracked vehicles myself. Neighbor got a dozer stuck on my property by high centering it on a stump.

I am very careful about getting vehicles stuck anymore - it is such a PITA to get them unstuck and especially large heavy vehicles. I got my truck stuck in the mud 20' from my house trying to unload firewood onto my deck - it stayed there for a couple months until the ground dried out.

 

[PORSCHE928S4]

Yup.

And not just wheeled vehicles either. I have twice stuck tracked vehicles myself. Neighbor got a dozer stuck on my property by high centering it on a stump.

I am very careful about getting vehicles stuck anymore - it is such a PITA to get them unstuck and especially large heavy vehicles. I got my truck stuck in the mud 20' from my house trying to unload firewood onto my deck - it stayed there for a couple months until the ground dried out.

Did the same with a Jeep in 4 foot of snow had to wait till spring ! The wife asked where is the jeep had to say not here but I have it's location bout never heard the end of that lol

 

[The Heretic]

Did the same with a Jeep in 4 foot of snow had to wait till spring ! The wife asked where is the jeep had to say not here but I have it's location bout never heard the end of that lol

I was "fortunate" in that all I had to do was look out the window.

My pickup weighs less than half what my truck does, and doesn't get stuck near as easily - except in the snow.

 

[MTpockets]

When you get something stuck in the ARMY it is next level !

Don't underestimate the Marine Corp... and their tracked equipment KLLDZR...




Can't remember what they used to get the dozer out.

 

[PORSCHE928S4]

Don't underestimate the Marine Corp... and their tracked equipment KLLDZR...

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Can't remember what they used to get the dozer out.

Looks like they have met the standards ! If you are stuck do it like a man !

 

[The Heretic]

Don't underestimate the Marine Corp... and their tracked equipment KLLDZR...

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Can't remember what they used to get the dozer out.

It doesn't take much to get a really heavy vehicle stuck.

I always laugh at those people who say they can go anywhere with a 2WD vehicle (1WD actually - unless they have a locking diff) that you can go with a 4WD, and that they have never been stuck. They did not:

1) Try hard enough.
2) Go everywhere a 4WD vehicle went.

 

[gmerkt]

It doesn't take much to get a really heavy vehicle stuck.

The pictures posted above remind me of things I'd forgotten years ago. And I wish I had some pics of those events now, but we were so busy at the time that we weren't taking any. And of course, the small phones hadn't been invented yet.

After I was in the Regular Army, I spent some years in the Army National Guard. My last unit was TC. We sometimes would go on a MUTA 5 (that's all weekend from Friday night to Sunday evening) to a regional training site of one kind or another. One time, we went to an active base, out in the rolling hills, no real vegetation, just pretty bare. It was Winter, maybe Feb. and it had been raining. As a TC unit, we had lots of 5 ton trucks. When we got to the bivouac site, the trucks started leaving the road and fanning out into the hills. Uh oh. That's when we discovered that the soil was saturated, The "sod" layer on top was like a water bed. Between the topsoil and the subsoil was a lake of water over the parent material underneath. Once the truck wheels broke through the sod layer, they sunk right down about three feet into the water table. Lots of winch and cable action. We spent all weekend practicing "vehicle recovery operations." As battalion S3 NCO, I later revised the training schedule to reflect this realistic level of training. That year, we had the brand new Dodge M880 pickups, they got well broken in.

 

[gmerkt]

That year, we had the brand new Dodge M880 pickups, they got well broken in.

I've just been looking at pictures of the Dodge M880's. They were a pretty good truck, in my limited experience. There were many different versions in the series, like ambulance, maintenance truck, etc. Some were 4x2 but most were 4x4, as were the basic M880's that we had.




This is exactly how they came from the Mound Road Dodge factory. Flat olive green paint, no stars on the doors, no USA numbers on the front. Although they were basically a modified civilian truck, they were head and shoulders more comfortable and speedy than an M37 Dodge 3/4 ton. Pretty long wheelbase. Nice 318 V-8 gasoline engine, automatic trans. This was back when Dodge was owned by the original Chrysler Corp., and were still making some (but not all) decent vehicles.

Before they left service, most of these were repainted when the army went nuts over camouflage. Some of the pictures online show "restored" examples with big white stars on the doors (like an M37 usually had) but this wasn't original to the vehicle.

That long wheelbase was the cause of my scraping down the side of one of these when it was quite new. It drove the guy in charge of the OMS nuts trying to figure out who did it. Never did.

 

[Ura-Ki]

I've just been looking at pictures of the Dodge M880's. They were a pretty good truck, in my limited experience. There were many different versions in the series, like ambulance, maintenance truck, etc. Some were 4x2 but most were 4x4, as were the basic M880's that we had.


View attachment 1409443

This is exactly how they came from the Mound Road Dodge factory. Flat olive green paint, no stars on the doors, no USA numbers on the front. Although they were basically a modified civilian truck, they were head and shoulders more comfortable and speedy than an M37 Dodge 3/4 ton. Pretty long wheelbase. Nice 318 V-8 gasoline engine, automatic trans. This was back when Dodge was owned by the original Chrysler Corp., and were still making some (but not all) decent vehicles.

Before they left service, most of these were repainted when the army went nuts over camouflage. Some of the pictures online show "restored" examples with big white stars on the doors (like an M37 usually had) but this wasn't original to the vehicle.

That long wheelbase was the cause of my scraping down the side of one of these when it was quite new. It drove the guy in charge of the OMS nuts trying to figure out who did it. Never did.

These were the very best pickups EVER built for the military, and I owned one, bought is as surplus out in Enterprise Or. at a GSA auction and re built it from the ground up! What made them so damn good was they were actually built to POWER WAGON Specs, in a different factory then the civilian trucks, and while they used the civilian truck bodies, nothing else interchanged, Which causes all sorts of problems when trying to source parts, or repairing the electrical system, as it's all Mill Spec, so your local NAPA or Dodge dealer is of no help at all!
Mine was the HD version 1 ton 4X4 so it had the bigger 7.2L (440) V-8 2 bbl and automatic, divorced NP-205 skip tooth, and 4/11 final drives, drum brakes on all four corners and 16.5 inch steel wheels. the front axle was a weird Dana 60 high pinion, high steer closed knuckle with CV joints internal, and what we would today call a soft locker that used clutches like a posi, but there were no gears, the rear was also a weird Dana, this one a Mod 70 semi floater with old school Detroit locker. What made that rear end so good was you could pull the drive flanges and the axle shaft stayed in place, you ran a bolt down the center which was threaded and could then pull it out, and it used cone wedge lock bolts to hold the drive flange on, like the much larger Eaton or Rockwell's you see in commercial trucks, that rear was bomb proof tough, and could handle any load you could get in the bed, or pull behind it, the only limits were the engines power output, and it's drum brakes, which while HUGE, were still not as good as later disks! I really miss that Old Dodge, it was super cool and fun to drive, and boy could it work! I sold it to fund my first Old School Dodge WC series truck, the 1946 I built from the ground up and ran for years, it to is gone, but replaced by an even cooler 42 WC Half Cab Truck which is a resto-mod only in that it has a 4 banger Cummins and 5 speed, and the bud wheels are a lot wider then stock and lost their split rings, swapped for a new custom set of barrels with Bead-Locks which cost more then the truck did!

 

[coop44]

May not be the best survival vehicle, since they get less than one mile per gallon in fuel consumption.

It is possible to get these stuck. One of our companies was sent up to provide support in Lam Son 719, they got one stuck on "Highway" 9 on the way to Khe Sanh, they spent the night holding off snipers, bullets pinging off the hull at intervals.

Yeah but they hold 500 gallons in three tanks. Anything can get stuck, more worried about throwing a track.

 

[DeanMk]

No motor, just hook up to a mule, or some strong goats, or yourself.... View attachment 1408849View attachment 1408850View attachment 1408851View attachment 1408852View attachment 1408853View attachment 1408854View attachment 1408855⁹View attachment 1408856View attachment 1408857View attachment 1408858View attachment 1408859

PUT A MOTOR ON IT!

...they build civilian versions in Italy as the Fresia F18...

 

[gmerkt]

Reference data for M880 series:

https://www.militarytrader.com/military-vehicles/m880-a-tactical-mv-sort-of

16.5 inch steel wheel

The off-the-shelf Dodge D200's of the 1960's that the army bought, those had 19.5 inch wheels, also Ford, Chev. and IHC offered optional 19.5's to the military. A motor sergeant once told me, the half size was to deter theft of military tires. May be apocryphal, but that's what he said.

Mine was the HD version 1 ton 4X4 so it had the bigger 7.2L (440) V-8 2 bbl

I've never heard of an M880 with the 440 engine as original but what do I know. The reference data I've cited above doesn't show one. The USAF was known to have bought odd-ball, one-offs of many vehicle models. Maybe it was something special. And the US Navy was on a completely different procurement path from the army and air force when it comes to vehicles.

Yeah but they hold 500 gallons in three tanks.

Having more of it doesn't decrease fuel consumption. Well, maybe a tiny bit as the fuel is used up and the weight goes down. But with a vehicle that heavy to begin with, I doubt that marginal gain would be noticed.

We used to pull up behind M88's in a jeep; sometimes I thought I was going to get my eyebrows singed from the exhaust.



This picture was taken circa 1970. In the driver's cupola is one of the company commanders in our battalion, CPT Ted Hess. We had several of these in our battalion, some in the HEM company, some in the CC&S company (like the one above), and some in another company (the one that went to Khe Sahn). A second M88 has just a corner showing in the left edge of the picture. Note the lucky horseshoe hanging on the left front corner of the hull. Everything about those machines is grunt heavy. Around this time, I think they were carried on the books at about $265K. I'd hate to think what they cost now. The M88 is classified as a Medium Tank Recovery Vehicle. There also was a Heavy version, with a derrick crane on the back; maybe they had those in Europe at one time but I never saw one in RVN. I believe they were built on a different hull. Maybe the USMC had some.