(upbeat country music)
- Well it's kind of nice for me to not have to
go very far out of town to find old cars.
We're still in Traverse City, I don't think we've left yet,
and we've just noticed that there's a house with a bunch of
interesting cars behind the house, and there's a fence
with what appears to be more cars behind it.
So we're heading there right now, hoping...There it is.
Hoping somebody is home.
Now I got to turn around...
And see if they'll give us permission
to go looking around this property.
(country rock music)
Yeah, there's more Mercedes in the back.
Yeah, so this is a Mercedes yard for sure.
Although I see a Toyota, I don't know if it's a FJ,
but a Toyota four wheel drive wagon I guess.
(country rock music)
- [Tom] We're in Traverse City, just South side of town
and there's a bunch of interesting cars back here.
I see a lot of Mercedes Benzes...
Well it looks like an interesting place to stop.
So I stop the car, I knock on the door of the house,
and nobody answers. I just kind of snoop around back here,
see what's going on and this suburban pulls up, and
two people get out of the car. I say, "Oh God, am I gonna
be shot, am I gonna be arrested?"
And Ron Bohr walks up to me and says,
"I know who you are, I watch your videos
all the time, I know your car!"
So we were greeted like friends instead of foes which was
pretty cool.
So Ron, thanks for not shooting me.
- And the dog didn't get you...
- And so you're a Mercedes Benz technician, is that correct?
- Yeah, I started in '71.
- Working for the dealership?
- Yeah, in Traverse City. I've lived here all my life and
haven't whatever.
So 48 years...
- So do you do independent repairs here or what?
- Just for friends.
- Just for friends? So it's a hobby?
- As a hobby.
- Wow. Well, show us around your project cars.
- [Ron] Well my oldest car is a '74. The '74 gas car...
I'm a diesel guy, but this one happens to have a gas motor.
- [Ron] Now all the body work was done 20 years ago...
- [Tom] You've had this for how long?
- [Ron] I've had it for 15 years.
- [Ron] When the dealership closed down,
it was not a good financial situation.
The owner got himself into financial problems,
and some of my settlement was cars,
which I just didn't need more cars around here,
but they gave me cars and that's one of them.
- [Tom] And so this was your daily driver?
- [Ron] No.
- [Tom] No?
- [Ron] I can't drive. (laughs)
- [Tom] Even back then?
- [Ron] I shouldn't even drive on the property, but you
know I drove back then but...
- So Ron has macular degeneration, and so he's legally blind
so I guess your wife hauls you around...
- [Ron] Yep. When I'm not being hauled around,
I'm on the property here and,
usually working on cars or working on-
- [Tom] But you're still able to repair cars-
- [Ron] By braille-
- [Tom] No kidding-
- [Ron] I've done it so long, I know what size wrench
it takes, or what it is, or what goes where.
It's just finding the size of wrench, I can't read the size
on the wrench, so it's trial and error.
- Man... So what about all these cars in the back?
- [Ron] You want to start this way?
I got some more interesting ones over this way
and we can make a circle...
(upbeat country music)
- [Ron] Here is a-
- [Tom] Unimog!
- [Ron] Unimogs.
- [Tom] Two of them!
- [Ron] There's two of them.
- [Ron] This is military surplus...
(upbeat country music)
- [Tom] Is this yours?
- [Ron] No.
- [Ron] I'm trying to get it to run, and I'm using it here.
- [Tom] So what year is this? '88?
- [Ron] '88-
- [Tom] So a Unimog is called a-
- [Ron] Freightliner because we sold it to the
American Government, so they put the Freightliner name...
Mercedes Benz owns Freightliner-
- [Tom] Right.
- [Ron] But this is a Unimog.
It's built in Austria, the front bucket is an Austrian...
It's a SCHMIDT loader, then the backhoe is all put down by
CASE here in the States.
- [Tom] So it came as a chassis? So this-
- [Ron] And it goes down the road about 45 miles an hour.
- [Tom] It's a diesel 4 cylinder?
- [Ron] 6 cylinder.
- [Ron] 6 cylinder, about 6 liters, this one here's
110 horsepower...
- [Tom] 6 liters?
- [Ron] Yeah.
- [Tom] It's a big motor!
- [Ron] Big motor.
No turbo?
- [Ron] No turbo. Because there's no room for turbo.
- So these are trucks and they're also tractors right?
- [Ron] Yeah. You can get multiple attachments,
you can pull railroad cars with them, you can go down the
railroad, they use them at switching yards in Germany.
It's just a Swiss Army knife of a tractor truck.
- [Tom] Isn't that something.
- [Ron] And they also use it for exploration,
and over landing and all that type of stuff.
- [Tom] It's 4 wheel drive? I've seen these in Europe
as lawnmowers. They go down the highway with big gang mowers
like bush hogs almost.
- [Ron] Yep. This is the military version, and its got
air power, air outlets, it has a hydraulic... we don't have
the chainsaw... but the hydraulic chainsaw. And also a
hydraulic jackhammer. That goes in the compartment there,
and there's a hydraulic hose reel that runs them.
So mainly, over here, probably working on bridges, roadways,
clearing runways, and who knows what country
this could have been in.
- [Ron] And then the red one over here is a '75, and this
came from either Pellston Airport, or Peller Airport,
and they were very popular... and then I have a 12 foot
snowplow blade, which makes real quick work of snowplowing.
You don't see much-
- [Tom] Wow! So does the motor come out the bottom or?
- [Ron] No. The cab tilts through the hinge here, and the
cab tilts forward, and then you work on it.
- [Tom] Wow. Is that a 6 cylinder diesel as well?
- [Ron] Same engine. This is only about 90 horsepower.
- So this was originally a yellow color.
- Right, that's the case yellow,
or it was used on an airport so...
Front PTO, rear PTO, front hydraulics...
there's two hydraulics systems in it.
This is the reservoir for the front hydraulics system.
These are all the control valves, and that works the
front snowplow blade. Which the blade itself weighs a ton,
weighs 2,000 pounds-
- Literally a ton!
- [Ron] Literally a ton.
- [Ron] This one here too,
it advertises 20 speeds forward, and about six in reverse,
and you can see how closely the engine is packed in there.
- [Tom] So how much does this weigh
if it can pull a 2,000 pound blade in the front?
- [Ron] With the blade on, we're about three ton.
- [Ron] These axles are portal axles,
actually turn shorter than a farm tractor...
- [Tom] Six speed in reverse...
- [Ron] Well basically, but they lock you out
of a bunch of gears.
The main transmission is six speeds,
and you have a four speed transmission behind that, the
auxiliary transmission, then there's a high and low range
and then there's a forward and reverse,
and then it's front and rear locking differentials,
but I can still get it stuck-
- [Tom] Really?
- My son, the second day we had it,
he had the front tire buried in the muck back here and-
- Is this yours?
- Yes. This one is mine.
And this is an older version of taking a 580 CASE backhoe
and it fastens in a whole different way,
and it doesn't have all the...
the oil tank there is actually a CASE,
got a CASE brand on it.
- [Tom] Got it. That's heavy duty.
- [Ron] And that's '75
And this is the rear hydraulic system,
which is a hydraulic pump running off of the transmission,
and the front system works off on a belt.
- [Tom] So you use this to
drive through the woods here?
- [Ron] Just floating the ground,
I also... where the woods are dying,
we have the more ash tree disease,
so use it for logging and stuff...
(soft rock music)
- [Ron] There's a station wagon-
- [Tom] I see that yeah.
- [Ron] Which I recovered from a junkyard-
- [Ron] I traded him a Ford Explorer.
This has five cylinder turbo diesel.
Cast iron block, cast iron head.
(soft rock music)
- [Tom] Oh so here's another Toyota!
This is what I saw.
- [Ron] Yep, FJ60.
- [Tom] Wow. See I'm from North Carolina,
and stuff like this we don't see. Rust like this.
- [Ron] This was a local vehicle.
Hundred and ninety-some thousand miles.
- [Tom] So what's the status of that?
- [Ron] This will be my four wheel drive vehicle
back in the woods.
Throughout here its the rust and the oil pans rust out
and that's why right now
I'm putting a different oil pan on it.
- [Tom] So this looks like a shiny cab
on this Chevy pickup truck here.
- [Ron] Yes.
- [Tom] Ah that's a big truck!
- [Ron] This is a two ton-
- [Tom] It's got the quarter windows...
- [Ron] Quarter windows deluxe,
you can see the deluxe features, all around the windows.
- [Tom] That's a one ton or something?
- [Ron] Two ton.
The 6400.
Two speed rear end, 235 engine.
This was restored... actually the guy that owned it,
his son restored a '49. Same truck.
This was probably a
farm truck that was used to haul cherries.
And we'd pick our cherries in July
and then the truck gets put away the rest of the year.
And then in '94, he made his maiden voyage with it,
and he did a lot of brake work and whatnot,
and he went to his local sawmill, and on his way home,
with the single circuit brake system,
and the brakes gave out, on the hill so he went off county-
- And he made it home in first gear and very slowly,
but in '94 he parked it and then I got this from him.
- [Tom] What year is this one?
- [Ron] In '51.
So here's a hot rod Mercedes.
I know a little bit about these, that's the-
- [Ron] Oh yeah!
- [Tom] That's the 16 valve Cosworth right?
- [Ron] Yep. This is my son's car.
- [Tom] Yeah, I went to the Cosworth factory
in England when they were making engines for these.
So this is one of the rare Mercedes Benzes that's got a
16 valve Cosworth engine that was developed by Cosworth
in England and they have manual gearboxes.
This is quite the hot rod.
- [Ron] The manual gearbox was a five speed,
but it was a true five speed,
it was actually a racing transmission,
so it wasn't an overdrive transmission or anything
like that, so it's five speed.
It's a 2.3 liter, the lower part is all Mercedes,
all the upper part is Cosworth,
four valves per cylinder, that's how you get the 16 valve.
- [Tom] So this was kind of a competitor to BMW M3,
the first generation M3?
- [Ron] Basically back... of course it was not the
horsepower you get nowadays from a 2.3,
but it was 186 horsepower.
- [Tom] Man that's a lot.
- [Ron] But you had pretty much 300,
the next size car up,
suspension and brakes and pretty much to race it you just
had to put a roll bar in it.
- [Tom] I know a lot of races are looking
for these now.
So what is your son's intention for this?
- [Ron] Restore it someday.
He just moved back to Traverse City from Southeast Michigan
so he's got to get a house but-
- [Tom] So it's a pretty sound body?
- [Ron] Yep, all the ground effects is all factory.
It's all a factory car.
- [Tom] Here's the telltale right here. 2.3, 16 valve.
Neat car, wow. Have you driven this one?
- [Ron] Oh yeah.
Back in the day, when they were being sold new,
I had the opportunity...
the guy bought one as they were getting phased out,
and we had to go to Hickory, North Carolina-
- [Tom] I live 20 miles from there!
- [Ron] What's the dealership, Hendrickson's?
- [Tom] Hendrick!
- [Ron] Yeah, had to go there and flew down
three days before Christmas,
and drove it home and a lot of fun.
- [Tom] Oh I bet!
- [Ron] Third gear is really nice,
it redlines at six and a half,
you come on an on-ramp in third gear
and just blow past everybody, then you shift twice more...
- Very nice! Wow.
- [Ron] Very nice car and stuff.
And behind you is a 4MATIC, that's a four wheel drive car.
Unique about this one is it's been all repainted
in a non-Mercedes color,
and everybody likes this color and the way it was painted.
- [Tom] Well, I think we've seen enough here.
This was pretty cool.
- [Ron] Actually, I have people coming from Germany...
When their relatives or friends come from Germany,
they stop by and try to see my car collection,
because they don't see the '74s or any of those or even
the late '70s cars or just all the newer cars over there.
And then the Unimogs, all the Unimog stories
and Unimogs people stop by.
- Ron, thank you.
What a pleasure to be recognized
as I pull into your driveway and not shot.
- [Ron] My son is a gun collector and he's not home.
- [Tom] Oh thank goodness.
- That was a pleasant stop,
we met a guy that had watched Barn Find Hunters,
so he knew who we were! So he let us go around his yard.
It's really neat when a guy like that has a 41 year history
of working on Mercedes Benzes...
He worked at a dealership, he does independent work,
now he's legally blind
but he still can feel how to fix a car.
It's just amazing, and he has so much history he could tell
us about working for Mercedes Benz...
Going to Stuttgart on special award trips.
You don't meet many people like that. It was a good morning.