Survival, bugout, work, daily Vehicles

I have one that is all and the goto truck for everything. The BIG Red Thunder Chicken

I bought Red Brand New with 160 miles on him off the dealer lot in 2001. I wanted my forever truck that would perform and serve every purpose I could envision. I had the full intention of making serious modifications to the engine, transmission, rear end, height, fuel system and chipset as soon as Red was out of factory warranty. Here we are 21 years later and Red is still my primary vehicle. I have a new diesel mechanic that is not afraid to dig in and make modifications and upgrades I want and integrate them in without breaking 5 things in the process. And for the last year we have been rebuilding Reds critical systems from the ground up.

One of things I have always worked toward with Red is keeping him looking like a plain Jane work truck. I failed in one area and that was the lift blocks. I had to left Red 8" higher than factory or the additional weight I added alone would have had the wheel wells sitting on the tires.... and then there is the matter of the oversize tires, extra wide 20s were a must


The tires and the lifted suspension are the only real clues that there is a lot more to Red than meets the eye that are easily visible.


A few notice the rear bumper, the big spring hitch and a standard receive under it. LOL a little Nissan SUV rear ended me a couple of years ago at 40mph. The collision totally destroyed the Nissan, it scratched my ball and left a little scratch on the bumper. The spring hitch caught probably the only solid piece in the Nissan and the 6 big springs absorbed almost all of the impact. Felt like hitting a speed bump in the drivers seat and pushed Red forward about 6". Oh and the hood of the Nissan flew over the cab and landed on Red hood.


A heavy duty GN is in the bed. It also has a adapter that you can remover the GN Ball and Block and put a 5th Wheel adapter into with a support frame you can bolt to the bed. That is what the holes in the bed in front of the GN are for. I have never put it in but it is there if I ever need or want to.


The new mechanic took Red for a drive to see what he was going to be working with and get a feel for Reds performance. LOL he now knows Red has a top speed of 168mph when the warp engine kicks in......... not that it is a real good idea to run Red at that speed often or for long, he just does not have the aerodynamics for it. A week later he calls me and list off everything I know and finishes with I have never seen a 5.9LB Cummins that can do what yours will!!! And did you know you have like a 5500 worth of f frame and suspension add ons under this 2500! And that Chipset and injectors are CRAZY! And I have heard of those Turbos but thought they were a myth!!! And how in the Hell does this truck get 24-26mpg hwy!!! And Why do you have 1/4" armor plating and kevlar in the doors and all around the cab!!! This is like customized Batman Truck that looks like a dented dinged old piece of turd! And that REAR END, everyone loves Red's Rear End LOL I have to admit I Love the Big Red Thunder Chicken and am probably too proud of what I turned him into under the surface. But Red is my everything including Survivalist War Buggy.

I should note that......... I really should change my rear axle U bolts more than every 15 years They were not far from failure That would not have been purdy if they failed. Had A LOT of problems finding the right size replacement U bolts and finally had to have a custom fabricator make them for me. One of the problems I run into on a couple of the custom things I have done.


Red Can handle 16,000 pounds in the bed, probably a bit more but that is all I wanted to push it with. I have pulled 40,000 pounds on the former tri axle GN and had plenty of engine left for more. LOL Did bog down pretty hard on hills with the 40k though and it was not exactly legal.

I still have a few more things to replace on Red that is showing its age and likely to break soon like all of the leaf and coil springs, The brake drums and at 650,000 miles he is past due for a complete engine rebuild. Total cost to make Red A Brand New truck again is going to come in at $35,000-$38,000 Buying a comparable new truck to replace Red would come in at $140,000+ And still wouldn't match Red any area except it would blow Red away in cosmetics. I got no problem with old and ugly, it is what is under the hood and under the bed and cab that count in my book.

LOL I am putting new transfer tanks in the bed. I run a pair of tall 100s for diesel, a 50 for Kerosene and another 50 for hydraulic oil. LOL added the one for hydraulic oil after this last year of blown lines and contstanly having to buy it in 30 and 55 gallon drums. Can buy it bulk 50 gallons at a shot from a shop and not have to fight with the drums!

Tricked out Trucks are attention getters. I don't like people paying attention to my stuff!I don't like drawing attention to my stuff!! If people think you have nice stuff and see nice stuff they will steal your nice stuff!!! People see a junky looking, dinged and dented 20 year old truck........... they just don't have much interest in it.

And after experiencing Mrs Kraps new Ram 2500....... I DON'T WANT ONE!!! She loves her truck, more power to her. I hate the damned things with all of its features, buttons, and Gizmos. My Cassette player with the Jerry Reed Cassette that has been in it and playing for the last 21 years is good enough for me! And yes that Cassette still plays like it was just bought and inserted.

Red has computer chips for the 24valve fuel system and injectors that is about the only thing left that is computer/chip connected in Red, there are a few critical it won't run or won't right without being hooked up things but not much.

I had a 50 gallon fuel tank put under and with the other 4 transfer tanks could have a total of 350 gallons of fuel range onboard. While Red has great HWY MPG he loses it hard in stop and go and low speed driving and drops down to 7-8mpg. So if I had to travel off road or in clogged roads I could travel 2800 miles one way at most. If I was traveling at 58mph (Red Optimum MPG Speed) I could go 9100 miles. Halve those for get there and get back

I have a good topper and a decent camper insert for Red. It takes about 10 minutes to back under the camper, lower it down and clamp it down. Takes about 30 minutes to get the topper on and clamped down. And could hook the Krap Kave Kamper up for another 24 feet of mobile living space if in the unlikely event we ever had to flee. We drill it every now and then and can have everything ready, secured, and the run away provisions loaded and ready to run in 2 hours. Not a great time frame but if I am going to turn into a refugee. I am going to be a comfortable refugee or not at all I ceased long ago having interest in being a bugout bag and back pack refugee!

Despite Reds Weight he is well balanced and those wide tall tires let him traverse terrain most other trucks would fail at. Deep soft mud is his Achilles Heel. Not even Red can beat the laws of gravity and soft sticky deep mud In my back road mudding and rough terrain adventures Red has pulled a lot of much nicer trucks out and there is not much more satisfying than pulling Jeeper or a Big Attitude Hummer out LOL as long as there is something solid before the frame hits the mud Red won't get stuck. Well there was that time I had the frame stuck on a Ridge of clay and not a wheel touching enough ground to get motion LOL. Ended up having to put him in gear and jump up and down on the back bumper and idle him off a inch at time until the front end tipped forward and then book it to the drivers seat before he took off without me. Important to know what your rig can and can't do before finding out the hard way what your rig can and can't do! After 21 years of driving and working with Red I know exactly what his capabilities are and what his limitations are.

Kevlar and the armor plates in the doors and around the cab. LOL I used to go to some places that were more like warzones than American Cities. East STL being one of them that I was delivering construction material to. Sitting at a stop light one day a bullet came through the passenger door and smacked into the drivers side door missing my legs and belly by about a inch. So when I was having the broken stuff fixed inside the doors I had my shop of the day armor and kevlar the inside of the doors. Plenty of room for the windows to still go up and down. A few weeks later I had the same body and window shop add the same front and back of the cab replacing the insulation with Kevlar and Steel. Not cheap to have done but a small price to not have a .45acp in my body in the future. And I was making good money hauling hot shot into the warzone construction sites back then. Stray bullets zipping around some Cities was common long before recent years. And I like being bullet free and protecting myself as much as possible to remain bullet free. A no bullet diet is a healthy diet! The glass is not bullet proof but bullet resistant and I guess designed to deflect as long as it is not a direct head on high power natured bullet. Bullet proof glass was way out of my price range and really not practical.

Red Works for me and I have invested more than a little time and money into Red. If I had not planned on keeping Red Until the day I die, I would not have done anything special to him. Since he was planned for life...... If I want to go really FAST I can, if I need a lot of pulling/pushing power I have it. If I want to go thousands of miles without stopping for fuel its covered. Not much terrain Red can't traverse. And with the hitches, slide ins, clamp on stuff Red can be a transformer and range from pick up truck to rolling refugee camp. And looks like a not very interesting beat up old truck

 

my early 2000s chevy half ton vehicle is pretty rusty, I just dropped nearly 2k on getting the brakes, upper and lower control arms and ball joints, bushings and front hub/wheel bearing assemblies. The original suspension had 240k miles on it so i definitely got my money's worth out of those. Seems crazy i know but 2k won't buy me another newer vehicle.
Last year it was just over a grand for new tires. No i didn't go with standard passenger tires but load range e. Those things are terrible for ride when the rig is empty. felt like the suspension was broken (hint it was)

but why load range e? Because those sidewalls are way tougher than stock tires. Branches from trees downed from thunderstorm/tornado or our wonderful michigan potholes tear standard tires to hell.

Load range E i can tear though the corn fields at full speed and not have to worry about sharp stalks, tree branches nor even decent size branches or sharp ass rocks turned up by the plow. Hell, i can go over the rock piles that separate the fields and through the hedge rows.

Passenger tires usually come as std equipment and they don't/won't last in the poor rock piles in the UP (don't ask how i know)
these last years. I only replaced the last set due to them starting to get dry rot and the treads started chunking at highway speeds after 8 years and 75k miles. Sidewalls had skuffs, cuts and other abrasions but never leaked and left me to put on the spare.

yes, they are over kill for a half-ton but having the ability to just drive through the top of a blowdown or over the mine rock waste walls with out having to get out to clear or find another way around is worth it.

Down fall is the driving dynamic changes greatly with those super stiff sidewalls. Tires do not soak up bumps and if you put on HD shocks ... that is getting transferred to you through the steering wheel and floorboard/body.

As for mileage, If i stay out of the throttle i can get maybe 19 on a 500 mile run to the UP on either tire. But the standard tires will ride so much softer on the highway.

Logging or mining roads? If I'm getting 10mpg I'd be happy but way more confident that i wasn't going to be needing 2 spares to get to the end of the bush road and back on the 10 ply tires.

 

Been driving my 98 f150 4x4 the last few years, a full replacement bumper was a must! Saved me from 3 deer and a turkey buzzard so far. Did have to have tranny rebuilt a year ago but shes been a trooper. 10 plys get put on it as well. Need a good tire when your off the beaten path.

 

Got a buddy in Texas, who got his hands on a Dodge Cummins diesel full ton dually, the model previous to yours, @Kamp Krap. Bought it from a wrecking yard after an insurance company totaled it, straightened the frame, and has been driving it the last 25 years or so. Probably not getting quite the mileage yours does, but the damn thing would pull a 2-story house, if you put wheels under it!
Me, I'd like to get my hands on one of the old US Army "CUCV" trucks, that they used before the Hummers came out. Full ton Chevy frame, upgraded to 1-1/4 ton, with leaf springs all the way around, and manual locking hubs in front. Designed for an 18 year old Army private to be able to operate, they came with a 6 cylinder diesel (no turbo), and a 3-speed automatic (the 700R). Top speed you'd want to drive it, for any reasonable amount of time, would be ~55 MPH.

BUT.....some have upgraded the transmission to a 700R4, and say it can cruise at 70 MPH all day long, without winding out the engine. And some have even fit a turbo onto that engine, and turned it into a real beast!

When I worked for the Navy in Guam, back in the 90's, we got our hands on half a dozen of them, after the Army decided they didn't need so much pre-positioned equipment (waiting for WW3) in Europe.....so they sent out notices, and said, "If any DoD commands want this stuff, you just pay to have it shipped to you!" That's when I fell in love with the "Cut-V" trucks.

Even better? They come standard as described (model M-1008), heavier duty (M-1028, with higher quality front & rear end), M-1031 (with a maintenance storage bed) and M-1010 (with an ambulance body, in lieu of a pickup bed, which some have turned into a great off road camper.

Here's a listing of a sweet one. Hefty price, but you don't usually find them in this good of shape, and the dealer knows what he's got.
1986 CHEVROLET CUCV M1028 | eBay

 

Long live Big Red Thunder Chicken
You'll be sitting on an apple crate driving that thing before it quits!

 

Just got me an E-350 1999 Econoline van. Has a 6500 Onan genny, air compressor, long wheelbase, roof top heat pump, and a 42' pneumatic mast. 51k miles. Paid $1500 for it. Going to change the rear gear to a 3:55 from the 4:10 that is in it and go with a locker. Has a 42 gallon fuel tank. This is my forever truck now.

 

M# 6.5NHDFB
S# B990 866806

Thanks for that BT. I applied to Smokstak as I have a 7k commercial and a 5500. They have yet to approve me.

 

@natshare - never saw one with a 6 cylinder...all of the ones I worked on had the 6.2 Detroit. And that was from the time frame when they phased out the M880 and M151 and went with the M1008/M1009 series.
Used a M1010 for a contact team (onsite repair) vehicle during DS. With HMMWV tires (on M880 rims) it would put the HMMWVs to shame. The a/c wasn't a bad benefit either

 

This one ….for TEOTWAWKI the one I had before this may have been a better choice but this is better for everything else I do !!

 

Here's my Baby, a ultra Rare 42/46 Dodge WC-27 Power Wagon (only made 800 of them,), and ONLY for Pacific Theater!
It's NOT a Fake, we tracked the SN on it and Dodge agreed it was one of the only ones left in the world! What makes these rare is the left over production 1942 Half Cab trucks ( ALL were 1/2 ton, 6 foot bed trucks from 41 and 42 ONLY) and the factory needed to clear out it's over run of stock, so they grafted the nose from the later 1943 trucks and then shipped them to the Pacific where they served mostly with the See-bees doing runway construction and aircraft towing! As far as we know, this is the ONLY one in the states, and Dodge has no idea how it ended up here, other then it might have been shipped back to the states some time after the war! I bought it complete but non running in 2010 from an old farmer in southern Oregon, paid the YUGE sum of $3000 for it with all the paperwork, and towed it home. I was missing the original engine and 4 speed and T-Case, but was otherwise all there and surprisingly in really good shape considering it's age and war time use! Now that I own it, it's been a Resto-Mod and a works in progress. I don't care how rare it is, to me it's the coolest truck on the planet, and far to much fun to ever sell, so I dropped a ITB-4 Cummins 16 valve Mechanical Diesel in it ( After a full rebuild and serious power upgrade) and installed a 5 speed Eaton trans and a seriously modded NP-205 with the planetary reduction third gear and twin stick conversion, so it now has DIG. What most folks don't know, ( Outside how rare this is,) is that ALL WC series Power Wagons are in fact 1 1/2 ton, it's only the spring rates that determine the weight rating ( Which is an OFF ROAD RATING BTW, and half it's road rating), so i didn't have to worry or need to upgrade axles, other then a full set of Yukon internals and they are now trussed and braced. it also has a full 4 link suspension and coil springs and tube shocks on it, and I upgraded to a full set of "Combat Rims" which are in fact Bead Lock wheels that the Army specified for combat trucks, the idea was to allow a single soldier to be able to change a flat, or a tube in the field with out having to take the whole assembly off and have too deal with all that on his own. These wheels can be found pretty easy, but no one seems to want them for their trucks, so that's extra cool with me. I sent mine to my machine shop who is as nutz as I am, and we cut the back side of the Bead Rim Lock on the lathe and added a 3 inch piece of steel strip and then welded them back, then flipped the rim around on the lathe and cut the back side off and repeated the same cut and weld, so the rims went from 6 inch wide to 12 1/2 inches, so I can fit the monster tires on it later when I get back to it! I still have a ton of work to do to it, I want to paint it two tone red and black like my 46 PW, and do up the seat and interior, and have a new top made for it to match. This thing is a frickin tank, weighs around 7000 pounds as it sits, and yet it gets around 21 MPG on the highway, and cruises all day long at a lazy 65 MPH!

I did the Army green because I thought it looked cool, but decided I don't really like it now, so, off it comes, and will do the two tone red and black along with the new rims and tires and custom bumpers and all the other stuff I still want/need to get done!

They just don't get any cooler then this, and i'm super proud to own it, My Baby!



Wife HATES IT! LOL

 

An interesting tidbit on those Chevy CUCVs, they all use the same key. It was common for various units to bolt a chain to the floor and when you parked, you’d flip it up through the steering wheel and secure it with a padlock. It was too easy and common on post for folks to hop in the wrong truck (they all look alike) and drive it away.

 

Thanks BT!!

 

This right here with big wide mud grips will go anywhere you boys go!

 

^^^My first car was a '65 Beetle with 36 hp. Didn't go worth a crap in the snow and the only got 16 mpg^^^^

 

Yep, you got me there! It WAS a V-8 diesel! Only been about 25 years since I drove one of them, so guess that fact slipped a bit!

 

Back in the 70s ,, a buddy of mine had a VW station wagon ,, he couldn't drive worth a crap ,, any car with any horsepower ,, he just scared the hell out of me driving . But ,, it snowed one year pretty heavy ,, for a southern town ,, but that boy could drive hell outta that VW in the snow ,, and I couldn't hardly get it to move . But he had a knack with that car .