Hey guys, what happened???

Hey guys, I just got back on her tonight and noticed that my post from this morning about the military thumbing their nose at the EPA and having old the machines refurbished was POOFED. I know I mentioned that it didn't seem to be right in being forced to do one thing by the government while they did something else. Still I can't understand how it could have turned into a POOF post.

Personally I just thought it was an interesting news item about the reliability of the old stuff vs the new stuff based on the opinion of those that really do stake their lives on their machines. At worst I figured it would get comments about the cost of technology, or something along those lines. But for it to have turned something political enough to disappear really makes me wonder what some of the guys on here are really thinking sometimes. Oh well, live and learn as they say..........

musta fendered someone............

didn't notice it got poofed but you can bet somebody turned it political and there are a few on here who will turn it nasty mostly id**** that aren't intelligent enough to say something worthwhile

Don't play the ingenue, Wayne. You intended your post to be a political troll and you knew it would invite political responses. And I'm sure you knew up front it would be deleted, giving you the opportunity to come back and pout about it.

Think that's bad? The military uses halon fire sxtinguishers at will.
I seen a vidio clip of the 1st gulf war when an aircraft came in with a little smouldering spot. One of the base staff who could have used a 10lb C02 extinguisher. Took a large wheeled halon unit and hosed down the aircraft as if he was using water.

This website is located in one of the "greenest" states on the left coast of the United States. That explains why some posts, such as yours, get poofed immediately. Also, tattlers enter the mix. I don't know how long you've been posting here, but several years back the web master and mistress decided to, in an attempt to get political posting off the tractor boards, create a forum for political as well as tractor wars. They evidently thought people from here would go over there to fight over red and green paint. It didn't work out that way. The forum attracted political posters from all over the landscape and Yesterday's Tractors was becoming an ever increasingly frequent target for political searches. Most of the posters over there never came to these forums and in fact didn't know diddly about tractors. I enjoyed going over there and entering the fray. "Is this a private fight or can anyone get in?" has long been one of my guiding principles. But, the website was becoming known as a political website and the owners took corrective action by eliminating it and continue to discourage political conversation which is just plain hard to do.

Yea, its obvious from the response here, someone got their nnalert in a knot.

Well said, MARK B. He knows when he's trying to stir the pot. Obviously the monitors do also....

Bought a Halon extinguisher when they were discontinued. Seen Halon work on construction equipment during development and it was impressive. Obviously wouldn't be able to refill it, but in a fuel or oil fire there isn't anything better. Just need to be upwind of fire or be able to hold your breath for a few minutes.

Lets complain about what has kept and continues to keep this country like it is.Wonder how much time old Wayne spent in the military? Oh well, some people are just idi?ts

For your information I spent 6 years in the Navy and am a Veteran of the first Gulf War. If I had had my way out of high school I would have been either a Marine on the ground or on a SEAL team with the Navy, but nature/heridity took my dreams and left me color blind. As it was I settled for something else I was interested in and still served my time as a Machinist Mate, getting out as a E-6. My job consisted of tending to the "old equipment" shipboard. By old equipment I mean your old fashioned coal oil fired boilers that had been updated to fire on JP5, as well as my main responsibilities of tending to the main steam turbines, heat exchangers, reduction gears, and all of their associated support equipment. We didn"t have any of this new, fancy gas turbine equipment where the all the guys do is "push a button" to fire it off and go. We actually had to be the first onboard ship to get everything fired up and to operating pressure (1200psi) and insure the ship was ready to go when they decided to. We were also the last off the ship because just like everything had to be fired up it had to be shut down and cooled down. When we were underway our mainspace temps averaged in the 100+ degree range so we actually worked and sweated for a living during our watches which were typicaly 8 hours on and 8 off or 12 on and 12 off. Rarely did we have the luxury of 3 section duty (ie- 4 on 8 off) underway like the rest of the ship, because we were always undermanned. My last shipboard assignment was as the LPO (Leading petty officer) in the #4 engine room aboard the USS America (CV-66). In case you didn"t know that is/was an aircraft carrier built back in the late 50"s-early 60"s. As of about two years ago it is now sitting on the bottom of the ocean as a base for a coral reef thanks to your government.

So, before you go spouting off about someone"s military time you ought to at least go and do a search on this site because that subject has been brought up many times and my military service dates are out there if you look.

Yeah the granola crunchers in Washington are horrible. Mostly west of the mountains by seattle. the east isn"t bad. I live up by the border, and it is granola central. I still have the farmer, logger roots though.

Yep, we had big Halon bottles all over the main spaces on both of the ships I was on. If I remember correctly the destroyer had 8 300lb bottles and the carrier had 12 300lb bottles. It was overkill to a large degree but it was intentional overkill for the sake of safety. On thing many people don't realize is that a shipboard fire, especially an engine room fire, is the worst thing that can possibly happen to a ship. As such they take firefighting and the materials used to do it VERY seriously. As for the halon systems in our spaces, they were designed to only be used in an emergency as they did create hazardous fumes when the halon came into contact with the flame. As such the systems could only be set off from outside the space as you evacuated. We were still trained what do do if caught in the space when the system went off, and that was basically get your breathing device on and active ASAP and go to a protected area away from the flames if possible. Beyond that it was pretty much KYA goodbye and pray to be rescued.


Hazardous or not halon is the most effective fire fighting system I have ever seen. The system in our space on the destroyer got set off by a drunk coming in off of liberty one night. Talk about the sh!t hitting the fan over an incident, it did over that!!!!! Fortunately we were in port and our space was the one shutdown and the only guy on watch was in the operating booth. When the system went off it automatically shut down ventilation, etc in the spaces and closed all dampers, basically isolating the space. Even with that kind of isolation the boilers in the fireroom forward of our space caught a whiff of the stuff and it nearly put them out. Think about how "good" the stuff had to be to nearly extinguish a pressure feed, oil fired flame.

As far as it being used on aircraft they did/do that because Halon does not leave any type of residue so any systems uneffected by the flames will remain uneffected by the extinguishing agent. We were always trained that it was AFF if possible or if not PKP for the fuel fires, PKP for anything non electrical, and CO2 for anything electrical. Our only use of halon was for flooding the mainspace in case of a major fire. We were also trained to put out pretty much any type of fire, including fuel and electrical, using nothing but water. With the fuel you pushed it to the side of the space and knocked it out, with electrical you used a High velocity fog and the water particles were supposed to be far apart enough not to conduct electricity back to you. Fortunately I never had to test either process except for the fuel fire. That was just in a training exercise where the whole whole floor of a two story building simulating a mainspace/engine room was a puddle of fuel. They lit it off and we put out with two hose teams using nothing but water. Now that was exciting.

Who was pouting, I just asked a question since I didn't get to see any of the replies. As for it being political I made no "political" statements to be argued over. I simply stated that the military was basically thumbing their nose at the EPA (which is true), and that it's hard to understand how OUR government/military is allowed to do something they say we can not/should not do (again something that is true and does not need to be debated or argured about). Beyond that it was nothing but an observation about how the guys that risk their lives everyday understand what reliability and repairibility are all about and are doing something about it......... But pouting, I could give a sh1t less if someone didn't like the post or not, I saw nothing to argue about, I just though it was all would be of interest to guys that liked older machines.

Personally, I found your post interesting and informative. Interesting because I probably signed for one of those Case loaders way, way back as the commander of an air cavalry troop. We were glad to see them because we dealt with a lot of heavy stuff like ammunition and parts and also did a fair amount of digging, building revetments, just plain old holes in the ground, etc. The ones we had were articulated but I don't remember the model #.

Hey Bill, I've been posting here for at least 5 or 6 years, maybe more, I don't remember exactly when I found this place. Over time I have seen some blatently political posts and the mean spirited responses and fights atarted over them sometimes get gone and I agree that's what should happen when things turn sour like that. In this case I pretty much mentioned the government doing something they say we shouldn't do because it actually makes sense. To me the fact they are doing this is a good thing and actually showes some common sense being shown by the government for a change. Why fuss and argue about that????

The thing is that regardless of how passionate someone is about their political views it's the simple fact that alot of good people, all with different views, but one common goal, are the reason we all have the right to be that passionate and have diffetrent views. Ultimately it makes no difference what "political" views someone has, as none of them make any difference at all unless we are all willing to listen to each other (((without arguing and name calling))) and work together to make things better for our kids just as our parents and grandparents and greatgrandparents and on and on, have all done for us.......

(quoted from post at 16:34:33 02/16/10) Hey Bill, I've been posting here for at least 5 or 6 years, maybe more, I don't remember exactly when I found this place. Over time I have seen some blatently political posts and the mean spirited responses and fights atarted over them sometimes get gone and I agree that's what should happen when things turn sour like that. In this case I pretty much mentioned the government doing something they say we shouldn't do because it actually makes sense. To me the fact they are doing this is a good thing and actually showes some common sense being shown by the government for a change. Why fuss and argue about that????

The thing is that regardless of how passionate someone is about their political views it's the simple fact that alot of good people, all with different views, but one common goal, are the reason we all have the right to be that passionate and have diffetrent views. Ultimately it makes no difference what "political" views someone has, as none of them make any difference at all unless we are all willing to listen to each other (((without arguing and name calling))) and work together to make things better for our kids just as our parents and grandparents and greatgrandparents and on and on, have all done for us.......

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Did I miss something or did they do some selective poofing? I thought there was some SA post by Earl in here earlier??

Odd...they usually pull the whole thread? Or did I get mixed up & not remember where I saw what?

Wayne, I don't see how you could use the expression "thumbing their nose at the EPA" and not mean it in a political way.

Just to inject a couple of facts into the discussion:

1. You, I, or anyone else can take a piece of twenty-year old equipment and rebuild it just the way it was new and the EPA isn't going to say boo. In this case the military isn't using any special privileges, although to be sure they have quite a few. And they rebuild old stuff for a number of reasons that have nothing to do with whether or not better technology is available. The Air Force has 50-year-old Boeing 707s in its inventory, long after they were retired from commercial service. It's often more practical to keep fixing the old stuff rather than get Congress to appropriate money for a new system, for which they would then have to provide logistics to support.

2. The military DOES get into hot water with the EPA when it runs afoul of federal pollution laws. One example would be the groundwater pollution at Camp Lejeune, NC. Follow the link if you're not familiar with this particular case.
Camp Lejeune groundwater contamination

The reason the military is rebuilding the old loaders is because they are mechanical not computorize. The new ones with a computor will not hold up as well and also the computors can be shut down from a plane or a satellite. I wish that instead of getting rid of the thread that is not up to standard they would put it some place where people with a little thicker skin could go and read it.

Obviously you are right, but only to a degree. If you are not aware of it the state of California right this minute is hard at making every piece of off road equipment in their state complient with EPA as well as the more stringent CARB restrictions. Sadly the EPA and the rest of the country take alot of their ideas from CARB when it comes to forming their own requirments so look for it to come to your state soon. As for how they decide to enforce the new requirements I do not know but their ultimate goal is to rid the state of any engine that emits any type of pollutant at levels they deem too high.

I do know that like they have different levels of what must be done to each piece of equipment based on it's age and how many credits you aquired by repowering another machine, bringing it to the new spec early, etc, etc, etc, etc. The ultimate goal though is that every engine in a piece of off road equipment meet at least the tier requirements in place for that particular engine class for 2007. I'd have to dig out the charts again for the exact scale but within a few more years they expect every engine to meet even higher EPA tier standardswith the ultimate goal that they all reach the requirements for the tier in effect in 2014. I order to meet those standards they have to add aftermarket particulate treatment systems, or completely repower the machine with a higher Tier engine. If the engine is too old then the only option is to repower as the aftermarket treatment systems do not meet their requirements. In those case the cost to repower is usually higher than the alue of the machine so the contractor, etc is left with no choice but to sell or scrap the machine and buy a new one that does meet their specs......... Doesn't sound fair to be told that you have to invest the hundreds of thousands of dollars to buy a new machine or invest tens of thousands to do an upgrade if possible, just to stay in business, especially when a 30 year old machine thatr was paid for was doing the job just fine, but that's basically what the law is eventually going to make happen. Thank you EPA and CARB......

I know you have seen it on here more than once but part of doing things like this is that they also require that the old engines be rendered inoperative so they can not be rebuilt and make more smog In other words the old stuff will be going to scrap making it harder to find core engines, etc when it comes time to repower your antique machine, etc.

On another note California has already pretty much banned any OTR truck that doesn't meet at least 2007 EPA standards from operating within the state. So, tell me how in that case you can rebuild an older engine and get away with it when it can't be run in the state regardless of whether it's freshly rebuilt or not just becuase of it's age.

On to the 707 issue you mentioned. I agree there is alot of old military equipment still in service. Heck the ships I served on were 20-30 years old plus back in the late 80's and early 90's when I was on them. With the 707's, while the main part of the plane remains basically unchanged they are constantly being upgraded with newer, more powerful engines as well as updated avionics. The same goes for other real military planes be they fighters, bombers, etc. For example the B52's, C130's, F14's, F/A 16's, A10's, F/A 18's, etc, etc. are all old airframe designs that have been upgraded many times over the years and are all still in service. Heck if I remember correctly the B52's and C130's are all based on designs started way back in the 50's and finally brought online sometime in the mid to early 60's. With the ships I was on both the America and Pratt recieved numerous upgrades to the electronics, fire control radar, armament, etc over the years. In the case of the main engines the turbines, etc never changed but nozzles that fire the boilers were upgraded to fire different fuel as well as more efficiently years before I got onboard, and just as I was leaving the America they upgraded again to even more efficient nozzles.

In other words whatever the case with the military age usually means alot of upgrades in one way or another to the machine being revamped. With these loaders they were done back to factory spec using the old technology because without the electronics. Doing it that way they are basically EMP resistant/proof, they are easy to troubleshoot and repair, etc, etc out in the field. Working on equipment for a living I can tell you without a doubt that if you want a piece of equipment that is going to be both reliable, repairable, and inexpensive to operate as well as repair then one without electronics is the only way to go....in this case the guys in charge knew that and actually did something smart for a change......

Wayne, that was a good and interesting post. Obviously, those are CARB and not EPA regulations, but nonetheless pretty oppressive.

S7210,

If what you say was true, the services would all be ripping the electronic fire control systems out of their aircraft and going back to switches and relays. Not so: they are in fact replacing electromechanical fire control systems in older aircraft with electronic systems and multiplexed wiring. These newer systems offer better functionality, greater reliability, lower weight and improved survivability over the old switch-and-relay systems.