themeec
Member
TL;DR
Considering Stewart & Stevenson M1079. Have small shop, not big shop. Pros/Cons?
_
Quick backstory:
Jointly owned and renovated a few sailboats over the years with my parents. Kept getting bigger and bigger until we had to rent rigs to tow the things. I needed a second vehicle with 4WD, plus it would be nice for it to pull dual-duty as the boat-hauler. Was disgusted with the price and fragility of current consumer trucks, so looked into industrial models. The more I looked, the more I realized your average F-450 utility truck, or what have you, could be easily re-purposed into a pre-packed, ready to go, outdoorsmobile (seriously, all the cargo space on those things). Thus begins the hunt, and the seeds of evil are planted.
Fast-forward quite a few years:
Parents split and me moving on to built another startup company, yada yada, have long laid the boats to rest. So with towing out of the picture, I started looking at other alternatives. A key one came up, as an old family friend who's Synchro Vanagon's transmission had given up the ghost, had gone with the decision to do a 4WD conversion. His preference of the 4WD swap was far and away in favor of it over the old original Synchro, plus he was very complementary of the price of the swap vs. trying to find a similar Synchro for a reasonable price. So I figured I had a clear route to take: Get a cheap Westy, throw in a Subie motor, do the 4WD conversion, and voila! A capable little offroad RV to tackle our largely road-free fair state of Idaho.
The primary issue I began to discover with this plan, was that I had failed to take in the financial factor in all this. My friend had the advantage of several things, I found. For one, he already had a Synchro as a donor for the swap (something I soon realized once looking up shops who will do the 4WD swap), and secondly, he had already done the motor swap some years earlier, saving him that expense as well. Thirdly, he guy that did the swap was a close buddy of his, so he definitely got a sweet deal on the whole affair. So in short, the omission of these details kind of resulted in this whole master plan turning up with a rather large up-front price tag for a vehicle ready to roll as intended.
Due to this I started researching other options. Looked back into the truck side of things, but the problems were consistent, in that most current consumer trucks are simply too fragile as stock in the Idaho backcountry, and overpriced to boot. The level of modification required to bring these grocery-getters up to snuff escalates really quickly, and in the end you wind up with a great truck, but no real living space, unless you're willing to drop a pretty penny on further mods, or if handy enough, fabricate yourself an RV box.
Enter the expedition vehicles. Came across a few builds, but $400k custom rigs were too rich for my blood, albeit nice. Dismissed it initially, until further drooling build posts resulted in my noticing the pattern of fairly simply utility trucks being the foundation for these. After a bit of sifting through some DIY threads, I landed on the Stewart and Stevenson LMTV. Relatively cheap, even for nice examples, and for the most part, simply built with commonly available parts. Some of the Caterpillar bits get spendy, but as a BMW owner, I'm more or less brainwashed at this point on parts pricing. It's key points of resistance for most builders, the low top speed, bad mileage, and mediocre paved-road experience weren't major concerns for me, since Idaho goes from 1-to-0-roads in 0.5 seconds. The CTIS and overall ruggedness of the vehicle, along with the upfront cost (even assuming most major repairs to said CTIS, air brakes, hoses, new engine, etc) were appealing to say the least.
One big problem, however. I have a lot of experience with RV renovation (Remember all those boats? Yeah, we bought the shitpiles no one else dared touch, and resurrected them with a lot of elbow grease and cash) so I wasn't concerned about the buildout of the finer things for the interior and general function of an off-grid living space, but there are some critical things I lack for anything further:
The more I look, the better the M1079 appeals to me. That being said, I haven't pulled the trigger on anything at this point. While I haven't seen any other alternatives that appeal to me (yet). I'd love to hear the community weigh in on this one. Looking forward to what you have to provide.
Considering Stewart & Stevenson M1079. Have small shop, not big shop. Pros/Cons?
_
Quick backstory:
Jointly owned and renovated a few sailboats over the years with my parents. Kept getting bigger and bigger until we had to rent rigs to tow the things. I needed a second vehicle with 4WD, plus it would be nice for it to pull dual-duty as the boat-hauler. Was disgusted with the price and fragility of current consumer trucks, so looked into industrial models. The more I looked, the more I realized your average F-450 utility truck, or what have you, could be easily re-purposed into a pre-packed, ready to go, outdoorsmobile (seriously, all the cargo space on those things). Thus begins the hunt, and the seeds of evil are planted.
Fast-forward quite a few years:
Parents split and me moving on to built another startup company, yada yada, have long laid the boats to rest. So with towing out of the picture, I started looking at other alternatives. A key one came up, as an old family friend who's Synchro Vanagon's transmission had given up the ghost, had gone with the decision to do a 4WD conversion. His preference of the 4WD swap was far and away in favor of it over the old original Synchro, plus he was very complementary of the price of the swap vs. trying to find a similar Synchro for a reasonable price. So I figured I had a clear route to take: Get a cheap Westy, throw in a Subie motor, do the 4WD conversion, and voila! A capable little offroad RV to tackle our largely road-free fair state of Idaho.
The primary issue I began to discover with this plan, was that I had failed to take in the financial factor in all this. My friend had the advantage of several things, I found. For one, he already had a Synchro as a donor for the swap (something I soon realized once looking up shops who will do the 4WD swap), and secondly, he had already done the motor swap some years earlier, saving him that expense as well. Thirdly, he guy that did the swap was a close buddy of his, so he definitely got a sweet deal on the whole affair. So in short, the omission of these details kind of resulted in this whole master plan turning up with a rather large up-front price tag for a vehicle ready to roll as intended.
Due to this I started researching other options. Looked back into the truck side of things, but the problems were consistent, in that most current consumer trucks are simply too fragile as stock in the Idaho backcountry, and overpriced to boot. The level of modification required to bring these grocery-getters up to snuff escalates really quickly, and in the end you wind up with a great truck, but no real living space, unless you're willing to drop a pretty penny on further mods, or if handy enough, fabricate yourself an RV box.
Enter the expedition vehicles. Came across a few builds, but $400k custom rigs were too rich for my blood, albeit nice. Dismissed it initially, until further drooling build posts resulted in my noticing the pattern of fairly simply utility trucks being the foundation for these. After a bit of sifting through some DIY threads, I landed on the Stewart and Stevenson LMTV. Relatively cheap, even for nice examples, and for the most part, simply built with commonly available parts. Some of the Caterpillar bits get spendy, but as a BMW owner, I'm more or less brainwashed at this point on parts pricing. It's key points of resistance for most builders, the low top speed, bad mileage, and mediocre paved-road experience weren't major concerns for me, since Idaho goes from 1-to-0-roads in 0.5 seconds. The CTIS and overall ruggedness of the vehicle, along with the upfront cost (even assuming most major repairs to said CTIS, air brakes, hoses, new engine, etc) were appealing to say the least.
One big problem, however. I have a lot of experience with RV renovation (Remember all those boats? Yeah, we bought the shitpiles no one else dared touch, and resurrected them with a lot of elbow grease and cash) so I wasn't concerned about the buildout of the finer things for the interior and general function of an off-grid living space, but there are some critical things I lack for anything further:
- A big shop with a lift (engine/axles swaps, etc)
- Fabrication skills (the kind one needs to build an RV box)
- Tools for fabrication of said RV box
The more I look, the better the M1079 appeals to me. That being said, I haven't pulled the trigger on anything at this point. While I haven't seen any other alternatives that appeal to me (yet). I'd love to hear the community weigh in on this one. Looking forward to what you have to provide.
Last edited: