10-4 Magazine April 2023

66 10-4 Magazine / April 2023 rotting to the ground and buried in mud from years of sitting in a dirt lot. With the help of friends Danny Smith and Joel Sweeney, it took nearly two and a half years to track the owner of the Magnum down! After finding the elusive owner, Stephen purchased the truck for $15,000. While some said he was crazy to pay that much, he now owned one of the rare 186 Mack Magnum edition Super-Liners. With help from Danny and another Mack connoisseur, Bob Daumer, the Magnum was dug out of the mud, loaded on a Landoll trailer, and then hauled back to Mainesburg for its restoration. Three years later, after stripping the Magnum down to its frame rails, re-skinning the 36” Able-Body sleeper, adding fresh paint and new graphics, having much of the Magnum’s interior recreated (with the exception of the stock red Mack seats with the Magnum logo embroidered in the headrests), and rebuilding the E9 engine and the entire driveline, the big black Bulldog Mack Magnum rolled out of Stephen’s shop looking as good as the day it rolled off the assembly line. “It’s not perfect, but it’s 99% complete,” referring to some of the unique odds and ends that adorned the Magnums when new, like the chrome brake chambers, which he did not put back on the truck. “I have a love/hate relationship with this truck, as I have never been able to get it to run just right. I’ve consulted with other Mack gurus, and we’re all a bit confused on why it is having trouble idling correctly,” Stephen explained. While Mack had no definitive numbering system for the Magnum trucks, based on chassis records, Stephen has been able to figure that his Magnum was the 71st one built. “Every dealer was offered at least one Magnum, and mine was originally sold at Easton Mack in Easton, PA,” said Stephen. It rides on a 212” wheelbase, with its 500-hp E9 V8 engine pushing power to a Mack 9-speed transmission, then on to 4.17 rears, and riding on a Neway air-ride suspension. While most Magnum editions were double framed, Stephens is one of the rare single frame trucks produced. The truck currently has over a million miles on it, and Stephen has never operated it for revenue since its restoration – he’s content to let it be a show piece. In 1986, the Statue of Liberty turned 100, and to help celebrate this momentous occasion, Kenworth created their limited edition Liberty models, and Mack followed suit, introducing another limited edition – the “Freedom” edition – and 200 of these units were made from Super-Liner and Ultra-Liner trucks. Marketed by Mack as “Freedom From Repair Costs” with parts, labor, and warranty for three years/300,000 miles, excluding normal consumables such as tires, filters, and lubricants, these Freedom edition trucks were available with both the Mack inline E6 and E9 V8 engines. The trucks were phantom gray with red accents, along with some special graphics, that reflect the Statue of Liberty. The Freedom edition Macks were marketed and sold during the 1986 production year, but all the trucks were delivered in the fall of 1986 and classified as a 1987 model year upon delivery. For years, there was a guy who owned a trucking company down the road from Stephen who had one of these 1987 Super-Liner Freedom editions in his fleet. He offered it to Stephen a few times, but he always passed, because the guy wanted too much money. However, about six years ago, a driver ended up laying that truck over while delivering a load with a dump trailer. Not damaged too badly, the owner wasn’t interested in repairing the old Super-Liner and approached Stephen again in the hopes he’d be interested in purchasing it this time. While not interested at first, although the price was right, Stephen’s son Kyle had been working in a truck repair shop and decided to purchase the vintage Super-Liner after his dad told him about it. So, now there were three cool Super-Liners in the Tice family! The Freedom had been converted from a sleeper truck to a day cab, but the previous owner had saved the original 48” Able-Body sleeper, so he included it in the sale. Once again, another rare Super-Liner made its way to the Tice shop for a full restoration. This one, not powered by the legendary Mack E9 engine like Stephen’s Super-Liners, has a 350-hp Mack E6 Econodyne, mated to a T2100 Mack 10-speed transmission, and now runs on new frame rails, since the original ones were twisted when the truck was laid over. Today, sporting a 224” wheelbase, the rebuilt truck also has 135 gallon fuel tanks, all-aluminum wheels wrapped in 24.5 tall rubber, and a Neway air-ride suspension.