Great War truck

Crouching low in a DUKW for concealment and protection, men of the 89th division, U.S. Third Army, cross the Rhine River at Oberwesel, Germany. March 26, 1945. (Photograph by the U.S. Department of Defense.

Oberwesel it is then

I was reading the September 1987 issue of Vintage Commercial Vehicle magazine (i know, i know - i have quite a backlog of reading to get through) and came across Nick Baldwins article on AEC. In it he stated that AEC received an order to build 1,200 replacement Peerless radiators in 1917. I mentioned this to Steve and he told me that while stripping down the Peerless rad he found an AEC stamp in the neck, just visible on the top left of this photo which left him a little puzzled. So, now we know the answer.

What a truly incredible find. Well done!

Sold! Where has it gone?

Tony has been working on Greasers today and picked on this lot first of all as they are identical. Quite different from what we are used to. The Cup is filled with grease as usual but instead of screwing the cap down to push the grease into where it is required, there is a separate mechanism of a rod coming down through the cap and on the inside end of this is a "piston" - so that when the handle on the top is turned the grease is forced out through the usual type of hole in the bottom of the greaser. There is or should be a leather "piston ring" on the piston head. The leather is only sound on just a couple of the ones in the picture so new ones will have to be made. 3/16" thick leather - 3/4" diam and 3/8" hole in the middle. A job for the wad punches. The 11 in he picture are the sound ones but there are more parts of these which may be recovered.

Does anybody have any information on this please?

Thanks

Tim

On 10/7/2021 at 7:00 PM, Citroman said:

Could the 2 Daimlers of this belgian brewery be ex-army trucks?

Quite possibly.

A volume 2! Oh my. Lets see how the German ones sell.

That is very sad, but matches what I had heard to. There are a lot of drossy books in print but there are some real gems as well. It would be tragic if publishers started going to the wall. I love having books around the house. Not quite the same having it all on kindle. Sad times.  

By Tankograd publications. The latest two books in their "Imperial German Army Weapons and Soldiers of the Great War 1914-1918 series.

My copies have just arrived. I cannot begin to say how excited i am to have this. Admittedly, i had been asking the author Jochen to do this book for at least the last ten years. The book is in two volumes with part 1 covering the background of German army motorisation, then trucks alphabetically by manufacturer Adler, Ageka, Ansbach, Audi, Benz, Bergmann, Braun, Bussing, DAAG and Daimler, while volume two covers Dixi, Durkopp, Dux, Hansa Lloyd, Horch, Komnick, LUC, Magirus, MAN-Saurer, Mannesmann-Mulag, Nacke, NAG, Opel Podeus, Stoewer, Unio, Vomag, Windhoff and foreign and captured trucks. There are additional chapters of them in wartime service, Accidents, recovery, repair, motor troops uniforms and documents. Both books together have nearly 400 hundred photographs the quality of which are superb. The difficulty and expense in obtaining such a high number of quality photographs is enormous and Jochen has established a superb work in bringing them together on a subject which no one has been able to cover in the past. I cannot recommend this book highly enough and i look forward to the next one in the series.

Does it look a bit like this?

Amazing work. Well done you!

Thanks for adding that Guy. The Allison Jeep previously sold for £25K so he took a bit of a hit on that.

I had a bit of spare time so i cleaned up the valve caps and put a first coat of red on one of the blocks.

Thanks Richard. I agree entirely. I am only stating what the auction blurb states:

Right, i am really confused now. I dont know much about Jeeps so need some help here. This unrestored rebuilt Allison Ford has a T90 gearbox which was normally fitted into CJ2a, yet the Allison i was looking at which was rebuilt in the same Month has a T84. Production of the CJ2a started 17 July 1945. Is it possible that Allison could get hold of a T90 to put into a rebuilt GPW when CJ2a's were being built with a number of left over parts from the MB and GPW. 

Some comparison photos. Any thoughts please anybody?

I have deleted this post as it might create offence::

I was very interested to see the extremely rare and unique 1943 Ford reconditioned by Allison steel as strangely enough i was only looking at another one a few days ago. what are the chances of that?

Gas detector. It is painted with gas detection paint and changes colour. Located so the driver can see it.

That is a super sounding Pierce Arrow. Another survivor i did not know about.

Steve fitted the second of three gas generators to the Thornycroft. The platform which holds it has required something on it to stop people using it as a footstep. After fitting he took the bolts off again for some adjustment, so not a permanent fit yet. It does look nice though. Thanks again to the forum member Peter for putting me in touch with the previous owner.  

Radiator castings undercoated and trial assembled. All OK - all we need now is the new Core!

This lot

Yesterday's demolition of the Radiator revealed that the two side frames were different from each other - one was of iron and other was ali. The iron one was sound but the ali one was cracked and broken and will have to be replaced.

A visit to the Spares Department today yielded the remains of another Radiator - the top tank had already been removed from that one but the two side frames were still there and were iron ones. These have been taken off today - one is completely sound whilst the other is slightly cracked - but not beyond repair.

So with the sound one that we already have in hand and with the sound one now revealed, we have a complete set of original iron Radiator castings - very pleasing - all we have to do now is construct a new core, These latest two must now go for sand blasting.