IBM System/34
Fayetteville, Arkansas: Extricating the IBM from storage and loading it into
the back of the truck.
The steel frame around the truck box was purpose built for this, it allows the
weight of the IBM to be spread across the whole box frame when winching it
into the deck, and strapping it down.
We had two winches ("Come-alongs"), some short chain lengths, snatch strapping
(Ratchet-straps, Snap-straps, strops, etc), two aluminium ramps and a bloody
great big tarp with some roping.
We backed the truck up to the storage garage, and put the ramps out. They were
precisely (remarkably coincidental) the right length to fit on the concrete
lip of the garage and sit on the truck deck.
There is a large central U-bolt welded to the front of the box-frame. The
winch was hung onto this, and then fed out. Lo and behold, the cabling on
a single winch wasn't long enough - so we used the second winch (Which turned
out to be buggered anyway) to lengthen its reach by some three feet.
We wrapped a single strap around the bottom of the IBM, about a foot from its
base, and ratcheted it down nice and tight. Nothing bent, remarkably, a testament
to how solid this unit is.
We pushed it up to the lip of the ramps on its six casters, and then hooked the
winch grab onto the IBM's strap, and started winching.
Everything went pretty smoothly, except for when we needed to remove the
second winch from the line to give it a short enough travel to pull the IBM
clear into the deck.
This entailed the other chaps blocking the IBM on the ramps, and then pushing
against it to stop it going anywhere, while I quickly loosened the winch,
pulled the extra one out, strung the cable out on the first to hook it onto
the central U-bolt, and we were away laughing again.
The next trick was getting everything well held to the deck, so that it wasn't
rolling around as we drove the 8 hours home. The tarp was wrapped around it
first (still tripled over, since it was so large), and then we strapped it
from one side of the box frame's front angle to the other. There are blocks
that are placed at its base between it and the front of the box to stop it being
too far forward and bashing up against the frame. The strap was ratcheted down
to hold it firmly against the front of the box. There are two other straps which
are wrapped completely around the mid-section of the IBM ratcheted down to
either side of the frame to stop it from rocking side-to-side.
There are two ropes employed to hold the tarp to the base of the IBM and so
on, and then a number of large logs were sat on either side to hold the
tarp down. There is another block at the back jutted up against the tailgate
so it didn't have anywhere to go at all.
We had a mostly-empty extended cab section, so Pralle carefully loaded and
stacked all of the floppy boxes, jukebox carts and manuals into the cab.
When fully laden, the accessories filled the extended cab, full width, from
the flooring to just under the level of the windows.
The back-end of the truck sat at least six inches lower than it would normally.
The truck is a Ford F150 half-ton, with the "big block" 300cid (4.9L) inline
six cylinder, rounding the 214,000 mile mark. The mileage isn't nearly as
good as it used to be, but the return trip from Arkansas to Iowa (According
to Yahoo, a total of 518 miles) averaged at 18.7mpg, at a reasonably constant
speed of 70mph in OverDrive where permitted using cruise control.
