From: chance wolf (chance_wolf@shaw.ca)
Date: Wed Jul 21 2004 - 05:00:07 PDT
----- Original Message -----
From: "John Doherty" <mofta@hiwaay.net>
To: "Military Vehicles Mailing List" <mil-veh@mil-veh.org>
Sent: Tuesday, July 20, 2004 7:21 PM
Subject: Re: [MV] M880/M887 Questions
> My 1977 M886 was from a NG unit. It was missing the 3 lever light switch,
> and my dash insert was also broken.
Mine was ex-9th Infantry Brigade (then stationed at Ft. Lewis, WA) "HQ33",
and I got a laugh when I saw that the dash insert had been screwed back on
with three nice, new, bright, shiny Robertson wood screws. Heh. The
Robertson (square head) is a Canadian thing!
> As far as the military wiring harness goes though, it was very
> professionally done. It was a well designed add-on, that simply plugged
in
> between the factory connections and the military added devices. It was
> quite simple to remove and double check the factory connections with a
> wiring diagram from a Haynes Dodge pickup service manual.
I found the actual plug-ins and stuff seemed well thought out. It was just
the nasty torpedo hole in my firewall that seemed really unnecessary. I've
seen other 880/886 vehicles where the wiring was strung through decently
though, so maybe mine was an anomaly.
> BTW, the Dodges are notorious for the ammeter gauge going bad and killing
> ALL the power at any given moment. That was the reason the former owner
got
> frustrated with this unit and I got it. I simply bypassed the gauge to
> eliminate the problem alltogether.
Yup. I did the same. The contacts at the back of the ammeter basically
melted themselves out of the ammeter casing. There was also some
high-resistance in the ignition circuit causing low voltage at the ballast
resistor which I never did quite figure out, though I strongly suspect it
was the ignition switch itself. Started well enough if you had a decent
battery though, so I never bothered tracking it down.
Just off the electrical topic for a moment, but if anyone's driving his (or
her) Dodge M880-series truck and feels the accelerator pedal moving around
all by itself beneath your feet - you'll find the two front clip bolts
holding the front of the cab on (bumper area) will be missing entirely.
I've now seen three vehicles like that exhibiting exactly this system,
and/or creaking and flexing and moaning through fairly basic cornering and
what-not. Sure is a weird sensation you get from the gas pedal when you
have this problem. Very hard to describe.
Also, one other M886 thing I found out the hard way is to keep your battery
connections nice and clean. I had a bad one I didn't know about which went
open while the engine was running and blew the "computer" (electronic spark
control) directly after. Swell. I invented several new words that day -
none of which are repeatable in polite company.
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