MLVW M36 Crane Trucks

[Lynn Eades]

Blue smoke = oil
Black smoke = fuel
White smoke = no fuel.

[rob love]

No need at this point to pull the heads. Just pull the valve covers and check the pushrods on the injectors. If one is bent it will be loose. One stuck injector holds al the racks to zero on these motors, as opposed to the runaway situation you get with other jimmys.

To operate the high idle, you have to have the truck running and in neutral, and flip the switch beside the PTO knob. That will kick it in to 1200 rpm. If you shift the tranny, or turn of the master, the rpm will drop back down to idle.

For fuel line just use hydraulic hose with reusable fittings. That will outlast you. Just check as not all hydraulic hose is recommended for diesel. But if you go to a hose place, you won't be the first guy to go there looking for this purpose.

[FrankJames]

Will do that, thank you Rob.
F./

[rob love]

One more problem I have run into with these (and other military ) trucks. The primary filters were originally a fram PCS1144. I forget the secondary number, but I seem to recall it was a Detroit filter. I have seen where people go to NAPA (including a certain museum I am familiar with) and they cross over to their filters. The gaskets are not always a good fit and with the variance between the two, you end up sucking air on the primary, or else leaking fuel off the secondary.

[FrankJames]

Yup, been there done that.

We cross matched the number and ended up with a filter where the filter looked righ,b but the gasket was no where close (way more off than just a bad fit).

We eventually found that a Baldwin BF915 seems to have the same gasket location. at least it looks close by eye.

[rob love]

That number seems to ring a bell. I could check at work, we have a few different brands that came through the supply system.



The other day I actually had a pair of the oil filters leak on me. Same deal...a different brand of filter had the gasket of a slightly different diameter, and it leaked. I guess that explains why the other filters were so tight I had to bring a heavy duty strap wrench in from home to get the old ones loose. This was on a crane truck as well. We managed to secure two crane M36Cs for the museum. I don't particularly like that long wheelbase, but the heavy lift capability more than makes up for that.


I had some of the NAPA match-ups dump fuel into the hull of a 548 last winter. The gasket was almost completely off the mating surface. I stick to the originals now.

[Robin Craig]

Dear All,

the NAPA equivalent filters for many brand name do not stack up, period. in the development of a spin on oil filter adapter I learned that even not all the threads are the same quality and when you use a filter cutter you find the construction is not the same by any means so gaskets issues are bound to follow.

The experiences stated by others is not surprising, despite the counter person's utterance of "ours is the same as XYZ but cheaper".

[FrankJames]

Ya, didn't seem it was taking much. But it seemed like we could smell diesel in the white smoke. More investigation to do.

But the advice we've received on injectors will come in handy as we have a few of them....

Tks.