M725 Somerville Cruise 8/12/2011

Nicely restored M725 Military Ambulance. This one is still powered by the Tornado over head cam straight 6 and even with the 5:56 gears it has got to be a turd accelerating.

Don’t get me wrong as I have owned a M725 for quite a few years myself. However when I got my ultra low mile Kaiser M725 from a local police force surplus storage spot it was modified.

Matter of fact it was very modified all over. Firstly it had a set of Corvair bucket seats up front. They were fairly comfortable for the most part but, the lack of seat belts was a bit disturbing as I am so used to wearing them these days. However I almost thought that whoever did the conversion probably didn’t think it was ever going to go over 40mph or so 😕

Then the second way it was modified was it being painted as a rescue unit and was covered in police badges and such. Was great for me as I got inspection to bring me right to the front of the line with it and got all sorts of favors. Matter of fact when I got it the inspection sticker was way past due but, when I passed cops on the streets driving it they would just wave to me as I drove by along with what happened at inspection.

Lastly was the drivetrain modifications it had come equipped with when I got it. It now had a LT1 small block Chevy under the hood replacing the OHC straight 6 it originally had. It did however still have the 6 cylinder radiator in front of the new V8 power-plant that lead to some over heating problems that I was never able to fix 🙁

Then behind the SBC it had a Turbo 400 automatic transmission hooked to the stock straight cut gear transfer case. So even thought it was modernized with the automatic trans the transfer case would whine very loudly do to the gears.

Aside from all that it was converted from a 24 volt system to a 12 volt so some of the gauges did function properly.

Then it had manual steering and brake. The steering wasn’t the worst as it had a heavy steering box so it wasn’t to hard to spin the wheel even at slow speeds. However the manual drum brakes sucked cause even though the drums where HUGE, you still needed to down shift the TH400 trans to help the 1 1/4 ton rig to slow down 😯

Even after all it’s faults I wish I still owned it cause it was a cool rig to tool around in 😛

M725 Somerville Cruise 8/12/2011

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