1980 Autocar “Construcktor” Hauls its First loads in Many Many Years!

Hey everybody! Welcome back to Diesel Creek. My name is Matt. Behind me, this big orange behemoth right here is my 1980 autocar constructor. Now there's been a few videos on this thing already on the channel. If you're interested in those, the link is down in the description. If you watch those, you'll have a better understanding of where we are today. That being said, in the last video on this truck, we got it pretty much ready for the road, and I attempted to hook up my Lowboy trailer to it for the first time. The fifth wheel hitch that we installed in this truck was not cutting the mustard. Something is wrong with it. The jaws were not closing around the kingpin. So in today's video, we're going to be taking a look at this fifth wheel plate, and we're going to try and figure out what the issue is, why it's not latching, and hopefully, fingers crossed, by the end of the video, we're going to be hooked up to the Lowboy trailer and we'll throw some piece of equipment I have floating around here. We'll throw something on the trailer and take it for a spin, just for a little joy ride and to see how the old rig does. Anyway, that's today. Let's get going. All right. Well, I've been studying this fifth wheel latch as best I can. There's a ton of different fifth wheel plates out there and different latch mechanisms. This one here is a, I would call it a three-part latch. This thing here, you push, or the kingpin pushes, and it swings this other arm in around out here, and then it swings past the safety bump out over here. And when you hit the safety trigger, this dog pops out here and would hold that arm latched up tight into this area. Now the trouble that we're having is that this arm isn't swinging all the way over here as it should. So if I hold the safety trap down there and push on this back part like the kingpin would, you can see the bottom part of the latch swinging out there. Now I don't have enough strength to just shove this thing like the kingpin would, but I can manually shove it up there like so. It's all hard to do one-handed. So right there is as far as this latch will go. Something is holding it from swinging all the way to the closed position. Now it kind of has some teeth over there, kind of like gear teeth almost, that mesh with the corresponding teeth on this part, and I don't know if something is in there jamming them up or what the case is here, but we're going to keep investigating and hopefully we find a smoking gun. Well after some more playing around here, I have come up with an official theory. Now it is just that, it's a theory and I'm sure some of you won't like it, but hopefully you guys can see the kind of gear cog system I'm talking about in there. It's just got a few teeth that mesh with those two parts right there, and it kind of seems like those teeth might be out of sync. Now I don't think that would be possible without damaging something, like crucially damaging something, unless somebody put it together wrong. And I think that might be our case. So to work on the back side of these plates, you have to pull the pivot pins off of each side. Now both of the pivot pins have studs welded on them like somebody had used a slide hammer to pull them out years ago. This fifth wheel plate did not come with this truck, it came off of another truck. I don't know the history of that truck, but I know that it had been off the road for quite a long time, but it may have been a truck that somebody had started to fix up a little bit and they tried repairing the fifth wheel and didn't do it correctly. If the teeth are out of sync on this thing, there's no way you could have ever used it or pulled anything with it. I don't see any excessive wear on any of the jaw components in here, in fact I don't see any wear at all. There's even still a little bit of blue paint showing through on this piece here. It is possible that somebody disassembled this thing and put it back together incorrectly, at least those two pieces, and then reassembled it and it never got used, or they had problems with it so they let it sit and never got back to fixing it. At least that's what I'm hoping for, my fingers are crossed. To check that tooth alignment on those two pieces, we're going to have to take the plate off and flip it over, and that seems like it might be a bit of a chore. I don't know if you guys can see it, but there's a roll pin right up here that we're going to have to drive out to be able to remove the pivot pins on the hitch. They're pretty rusted in there, this is going to be a treat. Well I figured I'd spare you guys the hammer swinging, I'd beat and beat and beat on these pins and they're not wanting to move, so yeah. I'm either going to have to get medieval on it or see if I can't cheat this pin that holds that swinging latch in there. I might be able to cheat it out without removing the plate. I know everything's pretty greasy, it's hard to make out anything, but there's a large pin that is the pivot for that swinging jaw that goes up and down through the plate right there, and then there's a cotter pin that retains it right there. If I can get the cotter pin out of there, I might be able to use the port-a-power to shove it back up through the fifth wheel, and then realign the jaws correctly. Aha! I was afraid of that! Aha! It's going! Look at that, we've got a pin protruding from the top. Look at that! Boy, I am not going to complain about this at all. Now I know what's going to happen here, I'm going to pull this pin, and all this stuff that's spring-loaded in this latch is going to try to kick out on me. So I've got to try to find a way to negate that. I think we're just kind of to the part now where you're going to get greasy and there's no ifs, ands, or nothing you can do about it. Here's the part where I trip the safety latch and it crushes my dang fingers. There we go. That's what it's supposed to look like when it's closed right there. I apologize for not getting more camera angles. Everything about this job is just super, super greasy. I'm covered now. I don't want to touch the camera. But I think we got it. Alright, I think we actually got this thing now. The first test here, well, I don't think I have enough force to do it on my own. Might have to try it on the trailer. But I think the gears and everything are timed correctly. That brought this piece out further when I changed that spacing, that setting, and it just seems a lot more correct now, if that makes sense. All I got to do is throw that cotter pin back in down there and I think that we're ready to go try this thing out on the trailer. So in the last video I had a lot of comments about how smoky this truck is. And what I didn't show you was after I took it for a good drive and actually got the engine hot, it quit smoking altogether. Because this truck's been sitting most of its life, I think the injectors are very gummed up. I mean, as soon as it comes off idle, all the injectors kick in and it seems to run fine. But sitting here idling, especially after you let it idle for a while, it's been sitting here idling for probably 20 minutes now, and it goes to missing like this. You can probably hear it's not hitting quite right on all six. So as soon as I give it some gas, it clears right up, and then once I take it down the road and actually get it hot, it clears up. I've probably only driven this truck about five miles so far, so I'm hoping after I run it for a while, it's going to clear up and stay cleared up. That's another reason I put a big gallon of ATF in the fuel tank there. Not to mention the fuel in the tank is pretty old. I'm actually going to the fuel station right now, I'm going to put some fuel in it. I don't know if the camera's picking it up, but a lot of people in the last video also said you couldn't hear the turbo at all, but you can hear it here in person. It would appear we actually caught us a trailer this time. Alright, the old constructor's first successful trailer connection. Now this trailer has been sitting here for, oh, three or four years now, I think. So, before I go taking it out on the road, we need to go over it. So I'm not going to throw a piece of equipment on it just yet, I'm going to take it back by the building there, and we're going to park it and go over it. Well, I was planning on towing a piece of equipment around for my very first test with the old constructor, but I just got a call from the auction, and they are ready to load out my big crane, and that means we can go get that stuff hauled out of the auction yard, and we're going to do a little bit of baptism by fire here. The first thing the old auto car is going to haul is an oversized load, apparently. So, here goes nothing. She's light. Well, that's it, guys. Eastbound and down. Got all my proper flagging on there. Got the plate on the trailer. I don't know if it's actually legal to put the sign on the load versus the trailer, but I couldn't get the sign to be legible if you put it on the trailer anywhere unless I covered up all the lights and a plate, so I figured we'd just go this route. Let's hope for the best. It is definitely a wide load. Let's Billy Big Rig. Well, that was a bit of a nerve-wracking drive there. That's my first oversized load, or at least first one this wide. I think it's 12 foot 3 inches, something like that. So, yeah. Good to be on what is essentially my own private driveway of a road again. There's never any traffic on here, but I'm about to go through the tight spot. So, I set my buddy up ahead there in my truck. He's going to block the road and give me a shout whenever the coast is clear, and we'll make our way all the way to the farm. Well, guys, we made it. Got the old crane home here. Couldn't be happier with the way the auto car performed. Everything was pretty much flawless. The trailer performed fine as well. The lights all worked amazingly. The brakes seemed to work okay. I did notice when the trailer was empty before we put the crane on it that the one set of tires on the driver's side there were kind of, I wouldn't call it hanging up, but unless they had full weight on them, they weren't spinning. They would skim the gravel a little bit, and that could just be a brake adjustment or just the drums had rusted from sitting out at the auction for quite a while. So, once we put some weight on it and started pulling it, it was all spinning fine. It didn't seem like the brakes got hot or anything, but it was a short drive back here to the farm. I learned some things about the crane as well. The guy that I ended up loading it on the truck for me was the guy that took it down out of its last location and put it for sale up in the auction. He was telling me that it had a current safety inspection when they took it down a few months ago, and it was still in use in a commercial setting, so this thing should be pretty much ready to go if I had three-phase power. Now, I don't, and this crane is bigger than what I'm looking for, so there's going to be quite a bit of extensive modifications that are going to be done to it to be used in my application. But that's still good news that everything was in working order, so happy about that. Even better news is he told me he still had all the beams for the trolley aspect of this machine. I've read the comments on the auction video where I purchased the crane, and everybody keeps telling me, oh, well, build the building to fit the crane. Well, A, bring your wallet with you. I can't afford to go that much bigger. B, I think a lot of you guys are misunderstanding how this crane is used. This is just the bridge of the crane, okay? So this piece goes the widthways of the building, and then it travels back and forth the length. So this whole thing would sit up on some rails that run the length of the building and travel back and forth, and then the actual hoist in the middle of the bridge runs back and forth in the bridge to cover side to side in the building. So the bridge goes lengthwise, and the hoist goes side to side, and that way you can cover every square inch of the shop. Anyways, this thing's blocking my driveway. The auto car should be warmed up. Let's go ahead and try to back this thing off into the mud without burying it. All right, well, I think I'm pretty happy with that there. Should be off the driveway plenty. Man, that's a big crane. So I thought this was funny, but I didn't show it when I connected the trailer in the auction yard. Look how rusted the handle is for this thing. Just snap it clean off. These trailers had to have been running the salt for quite a while, and then after that, parked and let sit for quite a long time. Trying to lower the landing gear without getting another tetanus shot. I imagine that'll do it. You guys ready? Pay attention. I might pull this thing down off the blocks and cause the whole trailer to fall. I don't know. Look at that. It's like I almost know what I'm doing. Oh, it stayed up on the blocks for a minute anyways. Dang it. Man, that sucker sunk really far, didn't it? Holy crap. That thing sunk like a foot, like, right now. I don't know if the loader's going to lift that thing up to fix it or not. All right, well, I decided I can't take this trailer out on the road because it needs a new deck really bad. See this? I mean, I can just pull the deck apart, and the whole deck is that way. You can see there's a hole over there, and if that's not bad enough, these bolts that hold the boards on are not like normal deck boards that drill through the steel and hold the deck on. It has these clamp claws down underneath there that clamp the wood to the steel. So you guys can see all these clamps up there that are holding the deck boards on, and if you start going down the road and those things start falling out, A, I need them to put a new deck on. I don't know where I'd go to get those replaced, and B, that's a hazard. I can't be dropping these things all over the road. That could really damage somebody's tires or vehicle or whatever. As much as I want to take it out, I can't. But that's not stopping me from putting a machine on it and tugging it around here a little bit. I really can't take it far, but... Yeah, I just want to say I hauled a piece of equipment with this truck before the end of this video, I guess. The other issue with this trailer is the ramps. But there's two ramps like this, which are super heavy, and this one's nice and straight, but the other one, not so straight. As I'm sure you guys can tell, that ramp has got a pretty serious curve to it. That's a pretty beefy ramp now. I don't know if this machine's going to be able to bend it back or not, but we're going to try. It's been a bit easier than I thought. I bought this trailer, and that ramp was bent. I thought, well, I'll never have a machine big enough to bend this thing back. Heh heh. Glad I was wrong. There we go. Looks pretty straight from here. All right, well, the dozer looks a lot more appropriately sized up there on the trailer. This dozer weighs roughly the same as Fat Alice the loader, and I know I said I was going to put it up on there in the last video, but I decided since the deck was so spongy that anything with wheels would be a bad idea. The dozer crawled right up there and didn't manage to fall through the deck at all, so we should be good to play around here a little bit. Like I said, it's a shame I can't take this thing out on the road until we put a deck on it, but people tell me all the time that I need to buy a sawmill so I can use up some of my logs and make some lumber. Well, that pile of logs over there has been sitting there for a year now because I ordered a sawmill over a year ago, and hopefully it comes in here within the next month. And then we're going to cut up a bunch of deck boards and redo the decks on this trailer and my big red tag-along trailer over there. So we should be good to go after that. But anyway, let's fire this thing up and see how the old auto car handles this thing. Well, we didn't make it very far, but I'm still happy with that. Sometimes it's fun to just play around with these big toys. Overall, guys, I am super pumped to have this auto car back on the road. I think it's going to become a very, very handy piece of equipment for me to have. I have some of this bigger equipment that I have no way to move on my own. This dozer, anytime it's ever left this farm, has been on somebody else's truck. I've had to pay to haul it to jobs, so this kind of opens up the door, makes me want to take on jobs that need the bigger equipment so that I can make some money with these things. They're super nice to have here at the farm, and I do use them a lot, but, you know, really, I could be making money with them at the same time. So this thing kind of unlocks the door to that. So there's still some final details that are going to need to be done to this auto car. I did notice during the course of this video that there's a little bit of slop in the fifth-wheel plate, so I'm going to have to figure out how to adjust the jaws and tighten that up. I know that that's definitely possible to do. I saw it in the paperwork I was looking at when I found the diagram for the breakdown of the fifth-wheel plate. The rear tires, they got some weather checking going on. They are 1020 size tires, and I'd like to upgrade them to 11R 22.5 tires, which are a lot easier to come across and more readily available. All right, well, I guess that's about the end of this video. Overall, I am super happy with the auto car. It seems to be running much, much better now. Running it down the road, getting the crane and just driving it around in general seems to be cleared out the fuel system a lot. I think the injectors were gummed up pretty bad from sitting for all these years. There was quite a few comments in the last video on the truck about how smoky it was, and it was, but it's really cleared up now. It's not smoking nearly as much. It's starting up a lot easier after it sits, before the injectors were leaking down, and when you first started up, it was pinging and kind of knocking a little bit because it had too much fuel in a couple of the cylinders. It's not doing that at all anymore. It runs good. It shifts good. All the lights work. As always, if you like the video, do me a big favor. Hit that thumbs up button down below. It really helps out the channel. It doesn't cost you guys a thing. I get comments about the music on the channel all the time. If you guys like the music, all the music on the channel is done by my buddy, Vinny, over at the Semi Super Villains. The link to his channel is down in the description, so if you like his tunes, you can go check them out over there. If you guys like the channel and you want to help support it and do so in style, you can head over to DieselCreek.com. There's a link down in the description. You can go over there and get yourself some sweet hats, T-shirts, stickers, beer koozies, what have you, and you'll be helping support the channel at the same time. But anyways, that's all I got. As always, thanks for watching, and I will see you guys on the next one. Later.