thread about mechanics stories

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally posted by rob love
This is getting off topic from the original Iltis thread. If there were a thread about mechanics stories, I would tell you about Herby and the air cooled Jeep.

Rob, please entertain us - the floor is yours!

H.

[rob love]

So Craftsmen Herb R. is told by the Warrant to go out back, find Jeep 08XXX, and drive it back to Minto armouries (about 5 miles away from the second line workshop in Winnipeg). It had just had some welding completed.
So Herb goes out back and theres about 8 or so of the M38A1s here and there in the compound, but many are missing the front liscence plates, so he rewalks the line in the back and finds 08XXX. As he gets in to the Jeep, there is a pile of junk in the back, but this is normal for a Jeep and Herb thinks nothing of it. He starts the truck and drives off.
As he gets to the red light near the bridge over route 90 (about 2 miles) he can smell a bit of antifreeze. "No big deal" he thinks;"the guys must have spilled some when they did the job". As he goes by stadium Ford,(4 mile point) the Jeep is really starting to smoke now, and all the used car salesman are looking and pointing.
I'll tell the next part of the story in the words of my French Cdn Master Corporal, who watched it turn in to the road towards the compound:" It rounds de corner, and dere is smoke everywhere. You can see da fan going, and deres herby driving it in."

We had towed the jeep over to second line because it needed welding on the front crossmember where the bellcrank bracket would flex. For that job, we removed the grill and radiator, so that the welders could access the affected area. The pile of stuff in the back of the Jeep was the aforementioned rad and grill with headlights, with the liscence plate attached. The hood latches kept the hood closed for the trip. The engine (and it was a fairly new engine at that...back then the engines had a price tag of $2800 each, more than the jeeps cost new) suffered no serious effects..I think I changed the head gasket on it during it's next ATI.

As to Herby, while he was a nice guy, and fairly intelligent too, but he was not that mechanically inclined. It seems to me he released from the CF after 5 years, and headed back to Regina.