Who wants to buy a M135 truck from the 50's?

Skaal-tel said:
These just run a truck 350 afaik - making them a snap to wedge something with a bit more "pep" under the hood. 383 or 427 small block come to mind. I'm sure an ls1 could fit with some work as well. Could be a real fun project. Transmission gearing and EFI would go a long way towards increasing fuel mileage.

Of course, the MLVW is starting to hit the occasional crown auction. I hear if you buy a "Frame" from the states you can even make them road legal.
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They run on a GMC 302 inline 6 truck engine specially designed for this line of military trucks and later adapted to some commercial trucks and buses. The hydramatic transmission has the low range feature, as opposed to the transfer case of most similar military vehicles. So engine/transmission swaps are not quite so simple. Besides, you are messing with the nostalgia when you make changes to a truck like this.

There were some early releases of the MLVWs, where they were sold with a salvage title only. That would be the reason some were changing the frame and cab...in order to get a clean serial number. There are no further releases of the MLVW....they were all being sent to selected federal pens for dismantling and destruction. However, with the new levels of austerity in the DND, combined with a several year delay in the selection and aquisition of new trucks for the regular army (the reserves already have their replacements), any further disposal/destruction of the MLVWs had now been halted. Any ex-reserve MLVWs will now be used for spare parts to keep the regular force MLVWs runing.
 
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