military trucks

[Unit453]

The older Dodge M880s were used on the battlefield in some of the brush wars of the early 1980s and the results were reported to be “disastrous.”

Thats funny right there. Davo, good find on that WIKI link. This is sticky material in the making. Or if someone wants to create a thread just on these trucks, I'd be happy to stick that with all this good info.

Dan, I was an Army MP and my first tour was in Germany. We were cruising in early 80's Volswagon vans that were topping out at around 57 or 58 mph, at redline. They were so easy to drive that they kinda became fun. After back to back Bosnia rotations when that part of the world was hot, we got luminas and those thing were friggen quick. When I got stateside, we were driving Luminas there too but not for long since we ran them to around 130-150k miles. I remember certain cars running better with 130k than some did with 60k. Those were eventually replaced with Impalas. We did have 2000 1 ton Burban though with the 454 in it. I would snatch that up every chance I could get. That thing had ass, plain and simple.

When I was in D.C. after 9/11, we were cruising CUCV Blazers at A.P. Hill, near Quantico. They ran good I thought and were excellent in the snow. I always liked those body styles too.

 

[davo727]

There is a ton of info on steelsoldiers site in the cucv section.

Ive learned a few things workin on mine. Had a local guy rebuild one of my alternators, I just had to tell him about the isolated ground deal .

The cucvs also have a funky little relay under the dash for the starter that is prone to stick so I yanked it and wired in a starter relay from a 97 ford superduty.

 

[davo727]

Davo, I'm going to bow down here to your apparently superior knowledge after that book you just wrote on the subject. Don't know where I got the 3:73 thing from, but I'm not going to argue with your wealth of knowledge. I can't believe they were as snappy as they were with 3:08s and very little HP and torque.
I don't get where they come up with the 3/4 ton image, they had 6 lug wheels. Beefed up springs and presumably cooling would be the biggest differences, but it was all still riding on puny axles with puny bearings. Not that it was a problem, I used to torture them and the only things I was ever able to break was lockers and rear u-joints.

I didnt write that book, Thats from wikipedia and steel soldiers sites

 

[davo727]

Heres a good looking M1008 CUCV in houston for $2250

http://houston.craigslist.org/cto/1261558608.html

 

[Detroit Dan]

There a Blazer near me for $1900, been sitting awhile don't know what's wrong with it. It's red, apparently a Fire Dept owned it for a while.
Speaking of colors, what do you know about the paint? I remember there being some story about the paint, it was supposedly hazardous to grind or sand off, both to breath it or to get it on the ground. And supposedly you couldn't paint over it, so it was pretty expensive to remove the old paint. Don't know what they did with our military/PD Blazer, that had nice blue paint.

 

[Acesneights1]

I am thinking once I sell my two trucks the dodge is a little too nice for woodcutting. A Cucv would be nice.

 

[Detroit Dan]

It would be nice to take a 5 quarter and a Blazer and build them into one plowtruck, if you had two available. I'd put the pickup cab on the Blazer frame, put the 4:56 axles under it, and build a small flatbed to hold some weight or a small sander, something to counterbalance the weight of the plow up front.