Great War truck

I am off to take a look at a Jeep that although fully restored has not left its garage for the last ten years. I guess that the brakes will need looking over, but will the Jeep have any other areas which for certain will need looking over? A full oil change i suppose. If fuel has been left in the petrol tank will this be a problem? Anything else he should be worried about? Thanks Tim

I think this is the one you mean:

I ordered mine on Amazon. It should be here next week. It must be very hard to write a book on a subject that no one has really touched on before in any depth and for which there is very little reference material to refer to so i expect that we will probably find a few more mistakes. However, mistaking an armoured Jeffery for a White is a bit of an unfortunate error.

Just a little bit more progress today:

He then turned his attention then to the smaller angled water pipe. Held it in the machine vice to just skim the bottom so that he had a flat surface to hold it on. Then set it up on an adjustable Angle Plate in the Milling Machine so that he was able to bore out the pipe to 1.5" to take the copper delivery tube. Another straight forward operation.

Tony did some more machining on the Water Pump today. Cleaned up the top flange on the Body which will take one of the angle pipes and the Boss for the Drain Cock.

These photos are fantastic. Lots of interesting bits of kit there. Thanks for posting them.

Stunning photos. I am stunned and will remain so for the rest of the evening.

Are those buildings on the horizon possibly aircraft hangars?

Albert has released two new books i believe. American cars, trucks and motorcycles of WW1 and American military vehicles of WW1. I very much enjoyed his Encylopedia of US trucks. I think i will take a visit to Amazon in a moment.

Now doesnt that look loveley. Amazing turn of speed when compared to the plodding pace of ours. Mind you, in that first clip of film it looks like you are going down a one in four hill!

Financial i believe. Very sad end, but an incredible collection and without Mr Budge a lot of this would have been scrapped or at least never restored.

The Pump Body can come out of the lathe now, but he did a trial assembly of it with its associated bits whilst it was still held in the chuck. Looks OK. We still have to take 3/16" off the thickness of it from the other side and drill and tap various holes. The required stainless steel screws and studs are already made up, so this just leaves the two elbows to machine before final assembly and that will be "job done"!

Further progress. Tony cut the 2" x 16 tpi thread on the Gland Boss on the Water Pump. Not a straight forward exercise where he would have preferred to have used an ordinary straight external thread cutting tool, but the thread is half buried within the casting and the Bolting Flange for the elbow sticks out too far and would have been in the way for a direct approach at the thread in any case. So to overcome these difficulties, he ran the lathe in reverse and used the same internal cutting tool that he used to cut the thread in the nut, but on the far side of the tool post. This worked just fine and the nut screws on comfortably.

Today Tony bored out the Pump Body to take, firstly the Pump Drive Shaft and then opened up part of that same hole to take the Gland. Reduced the depth of the previously machined faces to the final correct thickness, but the Pump Body will ultimately have to be reversed in the chuck for 3/16" to be taken of the other faces to give final correct thickness or depth of the whole unit. Here we have The Pump Drive Shaft in position with the Gland on it. Now with the Gland Nut hanging on the shaft and showing where the gland nut will ultimately screw on. The final job to be done on the body whilst it is still in the lathe is to screw cut the thread on the Gland Boss to take the Gland Nut - 2" x 16tpi.

Where did you hear that from? That contradicts my understanding that most of the US ones being sold off at European auctions. I always like to hear different views though as it improves my knowledge of the whole subject. The British owned ones were of course disposed of in the UK.

I didnt know there was a surviving Premier in the US, i know there is one in Australia. I am sure it has an amazing story to tell if only it could talk. Gordon's FWD came from the Furrer collection and was recently sold to Hayes Outapalik who then sold it on to a Californian museum. Gordon reproduced the wooden B type body makers plate (by IH Co) for us to copy. It is fantastic that the Furrer FWD's survived in such good condition. Dons FWD looks fantastic. How did it get on with the MVPA convoy? We did just over 60 miles in our FWD in one day and that was exhausting, so the people who did the whole route originally must have been built of sterner stuff . I was quite appalled to see some one in a link on the MVPA blog describing it as "an old fire engine".

Thats very interesting. 250 surviving Model B's seems a very high figure. I had in my mind somewhere in the region of 50, but admittedly my estimate keeps growing and growing as more come out of the woodwork. Which ones have you driven?

Tony has carried out preliminary machining operations on the Pump Body. Chucked it by the outside of the body first of all so that the face to take the cover could be machined. This had to be faced off and then bored out so that the cover would slip in snugly. He then turned the Pump Body around in the Chuck and held it by its newly machined surfaces. Took preliminary cuts on that and bored it out to finished size to take the Mounting.

That sort of wheel is not very common, but i have a photo of a US Army FWD taken in october 1918 with that sort of wheel. There were a number of different designs. Five i think it was. The manufacturers plate has been taken off the Swedish FWD, so we dont know who made it. A shame. Tim

Wonderful pictures and quite unusual i think. I have not seen many pictures of Quads in Ireland. Many thanks for posting them. Tim

They still keep turning up! I was unaware of this one which is I am sure the only one in Sweden. It was sent in to MMI who forwarded it on to me. It is almost certainly ex US Army surplus which was privately imported from France into Sweden in the 1920's and sold to the Swedish military who used it in the Stockholm arsenal. Although looking a bit dirty it is in fact in remarkable condition and although not the first Swedish military vehicle, it is their oldest surviving one. Now would it be best to leave it as it is in unrestored condition, or to restore it?

It is a great looking truck. Made out of the best bits of other trucks. The cab is off a Heavy Aviation. I have got the wire wool and will get my needles ready. Tim

The completed Mounting - now put to one side to await the completion of the other parts before final assembly. Tony is now addressing the final big casting - the main body of the pump. The casting is not very "clean" around the centre and he is trying to get as much of that muck as possible off it before machining it to try to save the tools. The gaps or spaces around the middle are quite small so this is not an easy exercise. He has cleaned up the outside "seam" on the casting left by the two parts of the pattern by "draw-filing" it.

The final holes have now been drilled in the Mounting - a 3/16" lubrication hole to join up with the machined slot inside the bore and tapped 1/4" BSF on the bottom for a threaded plug. Steve is making the screwed plug as he has a slitting saw attachment on his lathe and will be able to cut a clean screw-driver slot in the plug. The other hole is 1/2" and is simply a drain hole.