Oh yeah!
Yeager had a few they used as spares.
Some were stiff necks and one or two actually had really loose cushion hitches.
I remember that it seemed like you had to be a midget to fit inside the thing.
The ROP's on these machines were massive.
And the engine looked like a flat head Ford V-8 with a straight pipe.
Running these old machines seemed like some sort of punishment for breaking your regular machine.
Kind of like being sat down in the corner and having to wear a dunce cap.
The dinosaur I ran had an early 3 sp. transmission.
2nd gear didn't work either.....
1st to 3rd was always an adventure....
You made sure that you were at least headed down hill otherwise the flat head V8 would lug down to nothing....
And the smoke!
That machine would turn day into night shifting from 1st to 3rd.
Now going from 3rd to 1st was another story.
Brace yourself for some rapid deceleration......
Followed by reaching down and resetting the tach.
It over tached.....peged into the red every time.
I've never laughed so hard in all my life when I piloted one of these mighty timeless machines.
What amazes me about these old 641's...
As primitive as they were, they just kept on running and running and running.
I don't care what you tried to do to break or lessen your time your time behind the wheel of this time capsule, they just kept on hauling dirt!
Most of them ended up as water pulls, but the cream of the crop 641's remained as spares.
Kind of a reality check to remind us of how things once used to be.