Am I crazy for wanting to buy this?

Guy right up the street from me is selling a chemspec "High Heat" same as 860ss ACE. Basically its a slide in vortex. Only has 1500 hours on it. All stainless frame and housing. Nissan 4 cylinder a15 motor. Roots dslr 59 blower. $4000 or I can trade him one of my rotovacs and pay $3000.

Blown coupler, otherwise looks pretty clean.

Now I have heard these things have had their share of issues do to over engineering on ACE's part. But I hear great things about those motors. Prochem and many others used them to power their monster units.

So thinking about picking it up and doing some simplification of the unit. Maybe switching it to belt driven if that is at all possible.

I don't really need a truckmount right now. But man thats tempting and would be a super cool rebuild.

Talk me out of it.

Blown coupler ? Coupler as in quick connect ?
I heard horror stories of the Ace 860 but the chemspec version not so sure, at that price though, I would be tempted too.

From what little I read about it, and really have no personal or known experience, it sounds like an over engineered nightmare TM.

Sounds like unless you're a great Mechanic, or at least very mechanically inclined(?), it would be best to avoid it.....unless you want to pay someone that is, a fortune??

If you get it for 3k, tinker around and give up, you could still part it out for close to that or more. Our family shop used to buy up all the really unreliable cars for real cheap just to have a huge parts bin for those that still drove one of those buckets of junk.

I've heard some aweful things about those mounts, but that just means there are people scanning CL and Ebay hoping ot find that key part to get back up and running.....you will have those parts if nothing else.

If I were to take it in I would really simplify the unit. Judson the thing so to speak. Go to pulleys instead of the expensive and hard to fix coupler system. Simplify the heating and water systems.

I'm mainly interested in it for the motor. I have heard very good things about those. People getting 8000+ hours out of them and they are relatively easy to fix. The issue I am seeing is its size. That motor alone is huge!

It's bringing out the Tim Taylor in me. Uuuugghhh Uuuggghh! More Power!

There is a lot of power hidden in those mounts and they say very good things about the motor, so your plan has merit. Power can certainly corrupt....especially in a TM.

I wonder if I could build a stainless steel waste tank that could handle the weight and vibration of that big a motor. That would make up for a lot of the bulk.

in probability getting ahead of myself here.

Keep talking me out of it...

Tempting.
Do you need it.?
Can you afford it.?
Can you put it to use?

Waste tank? Look at the 8O gal mytee plastic ones. Good up to 20" lift I believe. And lighter.

Fuzzsucker wrote:I wonder if I could build a stainless steel waste tank that could handle the weight and vibration of that big a motor. That would make up for a lot of the bulk.

in probability getting ahead of myself here.

Keep talking me out of it...

Okay, go down to the bar tonight. Find a nice girl, sweep her off her feet in a wild romance and get married down at the Courthouse. Then, tell her you want to buy this monster truckmount and it is only 4k dollars.

I'll just sit back with a coffee and let things take its natural course....  

   Send pic I want to do some looking

yeah I decided to take a pass. After some research I found that motor is excellent but the parts are a nightmare to find. They haven't made them since 2005. I told him if he wanted to trade it straight out for my rotovac and some other misc stuff I would take it but I'm not paying the additional money for a possible lemon that I can't fix. Maybe in a year or two ill look into a big block Kohler and get some more speed out of my 4008 GD. Much easier to find parts for and to repair. I hear they have a 40 hp EFI coming out soon.

If its basically a slide in vortex and hes selling it for 4k,    my most simple deductive reasoning would say that its too good to be true.  

thats an expensive motor,  and expensive blower,  all the parts are not cheap at all.     so there is some reason this guy isnt just parting it out himself.

some how he thinks if he gets just 4k for it hell be best off,   which makes me think there is more problems then just the blown coupler    

I wouldnt buy someone elses problem,    but sounds like you already decided that



also not sure if im right but doesnt your 4008 GD only use about 8hp?   maybe ACE can correct me on this. would the big motor create more vac?

According to the GD computer analysis the triflow 408 blower will use 23.2 hp at 14 hg at 4000 rpm. Thats before taking into account running the water pump and other losses from belts and pulleys and assuming the unit is still allowed 512 cfm to pass through it. Which under load conditions is unrealistic. So its pulling even more hp. So you really want 35hp to run that blower at full speed without having a detrimental load on the motor. I run it at 3000 rpm and my 29hp efi (now rerated to 26.5hp) has a hard time keeping up when water clawing.