During my military days, I was often tagged as a go-to know-it-all for any work that needed to get done in the motorpool. Apparently, the thought process of my immediate supervisors and fellow soldiers was that if I can keep some ratty 1970s shitbox going happily, a military truck should put me over the moon. Since I was in aviation and most of these other guys only cared about fixing aircraft, drinking, or being buck-wild the moment they were off duty, it wasn’t a bad assumption. Hey, I was 19 when I finally made it to my first duty station and got assigned my first truck…I hoped it would be as awesome as everybody made it sound.
Um…yeah, about that. The HMMWV on the right was my first rig. F-10 was a M1097…think of it as a HMMWV Super Duty and you get the idea. Stiffened up suspension, designed to carry heavier loads in the back, yada yada yada. All I knew was that I had the only HMMWV in the unit with a factory tachometer and it had a command box up until it’s deployment to Iraq, when we realized that thing was useless. This is where I learned just how gutless the 6.2L diesel really was. The HMMWV was the product of the 1980s, all right…it moved out like a Buick LeSabre and topped out about 70 MPH if you really pushed hard on the pedal. When converted to it’s open-air pickup layout, though, it made perfect sense. Though, by the time we made it to Iraq, it was no longer my HMMVW, but instead went to a guy named Gonzo. Instead, my consolation prize was F-440, a Stewart-and-Stevenson built M1078 LMTV. Mine had the governor removed. It would run, even loaded down and hauling the trailer. It was my baby from that moment until I left that unit.
F-10 didn’t quite instill the excitement I had been taught to expect from a HMMWV. I remembered all of the praise this off-road beast got during Desert Storm. I remembered seeing footage of HMMWVs bombing around in the sand…and in person, it proved to be an absolute dog. I haven’t been kind to HMMWVs since…mainly due to the power deficit and the ergonomics of the interior. But maybe some power is really all I was hoping to get. Certainly, what you will see below would’ve curtailed about 98% of my bitching. But then I’d be having fun, and some Good Idea Fairy would smash it’s wand on my commander’s head and I’d wind up stuck with whatever was puking coolant this week. I had read about 502ci big-blocks getting crammed into HMMWVs that went over to the Middle East…why couldn’t I find one of those instead?
I have always thought that the HMMWV needed a Duramax. They are dog slow. The 6.2 wasn’t bad in the CUCVs, too bad they were all sold off. The CUCV is the best FOB runner ever, I traded my confiscated 94 ish caprice for one back in Ramadi. Now that I think of it a story about FOB runners would be cool. There were some neat ones out there. GAZ trucks, honda motorcycles, old Hiluxes.