Hot Testing Slant Six Engines

You pose excellent questions. And I have no good answers. But I will flesh the event out a bit. I was 26 at the time and quite frankly had become somewhat accustomed to the odd combinations of options Chrysler would build upon request. But those 3 trucks were the most 'out of the box' vehicles I'd seen till then or since. The dealership involved was a one car showroom outfit located in a town of 2000, so selling 100 cars a year was probably optimistic, and half of those were pickups. I was one of 3 mechanics, there was a wash boy, and the boss was the only salesman who doubled as his own secretary/treasurer. It was about 10:30 am when the semi pulled up front with those 3 "antique" trucks. The bodies and fenders were painted a pastel green and the hood panels, fender edge reinforcement angle iron and other trim bits were a much darker green. Tires looked to be Korean war tread design, duals in the rear, big leaf springs. The front drive axles had a felt wiped ball socket affair at the spindles that housed a multi 2 piece multi-fingered bronze oil filled coupling that did the duty of a U-Joint on steroids. At the time our town had a DNR field station and in the next county there is a USFS station. 2 counties away is a military base as well as a now defunct SAC base. We are located on the southern edge of the Huron National Forest. Maybe the USFS pulled the strings since both agencies work closely together when the Jackpines (gasoline on a stick) light up and burn at 35 miles an hour. At any rate after we checked them in and prepped them for delivery they disappeared for a few weeks and reappeared with 2 pto driven 2" hose reels behind the cab on each side and I'm guessing a 500 or 750 gallon water tank. There were rings everywhere for a bunch of fire extinguishers and shovels etc. Pintle hitches and 6 ton PTO driven winches on both ends. The whole truck was so way more heavily built than say your typical fuel oil delivery truck yet smaller and lower. Like I said earlier they still use them in the same role of first responders and they still look really good. I wonder if the 230 was better at running low rpm PTO's? Or did they need the toughness of the body metal design to plow through the brush and small trees while getting to a fire site? A normal 3 ton truck would have its fenders bashed off on the first fire run. We wondered about the exhaust valve seats in the antique engine since all there was was no lead gas, but none of the 3 ever came back with compression problems so I guess Chrysler had installed either hard steel inserts or perhaps beryllium inserts. Fact is in the 5 years I was exposed to them all they ever came in for was LOF every 100 hours and the odd electrical problem, they seemed bullet proof otherwise. Changing the oil in those front axle universal joint assemblies every 16000 miles always brought a smile as it was such an odd bit of service. The book called for whale oil in them which by that time was either in short supply or never to be seen again. If we found them to be uncontaminated we put the original whale oil back in as there wasn't a viable substitute for it at the time. If it was watered we were forced to use 80-90. I left for greener pastures in 1980 and don't know if the 80-90 caused any problems.