Pete Ashby

Continuing the theme of fitting out the cab next out of storage are the doors and fittings. I'm getting all the door wedges and bumpers sorted out first, with out these functioning correctly it wont be possible to adjust the doors when they are hung to enable a good fit and proper closure. This is where the time goes in this type of restoration project. Below are the sprung loaded wedges that fit into the top of the door frame, corrosion and paint has locked them up solid so I had to disassemble them clean and de-rust the component parts then reassemble and now they function correctly. There are also four small rubber bumpers two on each side of the rear door frames however these are unfortunately perished so new replacements will have to come in from one of the dealers in the US. Sprung top wedges as retrieved from store Disassembled Cleaned up ready for reassembly Pete

Effort continues and is directed to getting 'stuff' out of store and bolted on. To that end here's "something I prepared earlier", back on page 5 of this blog I went to some detail about how I went about restoring the windscreen frame and fitting the glass, now its time had arrived to be unwrapped from its protective cardboard sleeve and fitted, see photo below Next up was fitting the seat base and back rest, both of these are of fully sprung construction fortunately the springs and the securing frame are in very good condition and needed nothing more than a clean, the covers are a little tired at some stage a second cover has been fitted to the base unit over the top of the factory original. Both the base and back will in due course be recovered but for now while I'm climbing in and out fitting out the cab they will do the job see photo below. Pete

Peter, your previous work on removing and replacing the cab rook is ingenious and may offer a solution to other owners of other vehicles. Thank you, the spilt cab is a feature that is unique to Canadian manufactured Chrysler Dodges, the US produced version of the cab didn't have this feature they were built as all welded construction and were discontinued when the open cab style was adopted as standard early in WW2. The method I used here would certainly work for US closed cab types however due to the increased weight of the combined scuttle floor and back panel I'd suggest larger load straps should be considered. What I find interesting is how they did knock down and rebuilds for export to the front line in war time. I guess they were not too concerned for the paint work. Agreed I don't think preventing paint scratches was particularly high on the agenda and of course there was no shortage of man power, The roof is not particularly heavy, just awkward in terms of centre of gravity for a lift, however four blokes could easily lift it into place. Do you have the history of this vehicle, as its quite rare in preservation and not the kind of vehicle of use in civi street? Unfortunately I have no service history other than the build date, contract number and the block of British WD numbers issued for that particular contract. You are right there are not a huge number of Canadian built Dodges in restoration when compared to the US produced product and even fewer tankers. These were produced on only two contracts placed by the War Office on Supply Mechanical 2989 (1428 trucks Z5597435 to Z5598863) and Supply Mechanical 6087 (473 trucks Z6087 to Z618871) this particular truck falls towards the end of the first contract. A large proportion of the tankers that survived war time service seem to have left service relatively early and here in the UK there were several firms who removed the tanks no doubt selling them off to farmers and construction companies and then constructed bodies to house a small Harvey Frost crane and chain block and sold off to garages for light vehicle recovery and this was indeed the fate of this truck. Consequently it has appeared to have spent most of it civilian life sitting in the back of a garage workshop waiting for the occasional call to duty. Here's my truck with the recovery body still in place photo probably taken in the 1980's ?? And here's a couple of tankers with identical conversions in service with a Leicester firm. You can tell that they are ex tankers by the fuel tank shields still in place the 15cwt GS version didn't have this feature. The idea was to prevent the tanker crew from standing on, and damaging the fuels tanks while operating and filling the water tank. The comparative scarcity of all models of Canadian Dodge produced trucks I think can be explained by several factors. Firstly overall production numbers were less when compared to Ford and Chevrolet CMP variants , secondly they are of a much lighter build, essentially being a slightly modified pre war commercial design when compared to their CMP cousins which were grossly over engineered for their projected load capacity however this factor ensured a higher survival rate in both service and civilian operation of the CMPs . And as I've eluded to during the cab restoration section of this blog Dodge seemed determined to use sheet metal construction methods that were guaranteed to trap water and speed up corrosion. As an interesting aside, I was once told by someone who used to drive the 3 ton trucks in the Dodge range post war that hauliers, notably in the market gardening trade and fish delivery to London markets, liked the ex military Dodge as it had a two speed axel so could cope with a limited amount of unmade road situations but the main plus was that they were much faster on the paved road than almost anything in a comparable load class. This meant they could get merchandise to the London wholesale markets faster than their competitors thereby getting the better price. As a result I suspect the already mentioned corrosion issues and the fact that they were flogged to death meant an early trip to the scrap yard when the British commercial vehicle market started to get its post war act together and bring out newer and more powerful diesel models in the mid 1950s. Rather a long answer there sorry, however I think you asked an interesting question that begged a fuller answer. Pete

The top coat on the cab roof had cured sufficiently to permit careful handling although it will probably take another month to cure properly depending on ambient temperature, which at the moment is decidedly chilly for July. The first thing to sort out was just how to lift the roof without ; a) damaging the paint b) lift the load exactly square to enable the whole thing to line up with the sockets in the scuttle and the back panel c) not crush the rain gutters that took weeks of effort to fabricate and repair and d) provide sufficient tilt and lateral movement to aid location, it's not a heavy lift but the centre of gravity is very off set towards the rear. I came up with this idea its a combined lifting frame and spreader beam made from scrap wood to keep the strops from pinching the gutters and to ensure a square lift see below. Lifting frame/spreader bar, the sponge pads on the ends have a duel purpose they prevent damage to the paintwork and to provide a degree of grip for the frame to prevent it sliding about while manoeuvring the roof into the scuttle and cab back sockets, Oh and there's the added complication of the sealing strip along the bottom edge of the cab roof that has to fit tight flush over the top inch of the cab back...... well there we are then!. The lift is under way and I'm using light weight rachet straps to hold the frame in place and also using them as lifting strops, this is not recommend for any form of heavy lifting but the roof is under 50kg. I can adjust the straps up tight to reduce the head room for the lift and I'm not fighting with yards of spare heavy duty strop around the hook. The cover sheet and and an old cushion keep the hoist chains from damaging the paint. I'm using the adjustable levelling bar attached to the hoist hook that I mentioned and showed a photo of in a previous post when I was installing the engine and gearbox, this bit of kit makes any lifting task an awful lot easier. A cover sheet and low tack masking tape protect the paint on the cab back during operations Here the lift is part way through and I have to alter the centre of gravity now to lower the front of the roof into the scuttle sockets this is done by a combination of winding the handle on the load leveller (that's the red bit of kit under the block) to shift the lift centre of gravity forward and very slowly lowering the hoist bit at a time. And as if by magic it now looks like this This operation took an afternoon start to finish but it was time well spent as no paint was damaged, nothing got dropped and I didn't get crushed with a dropped load so all in all a good result. All that has to be done now is to bolt and screw the whole thing together and fit out the cab with the glass, the seat back and all the small bits and pieces, but that's for another day. Pete

After 48 hours the the gloss coat has just gone off enough to be very lightly rubbed over with a fine grade Scotch-Brite pad to form a key then wiped down with a tack rag to remove the dust then two spray top coats of semi matte G3 to finish the job using the crane and hinge device to spray the inside as before. And it now looks like this:

A nice warm day and not too hot with medium humidity just the job for a bit of spraying. Here the gloss black undercoat has been sprayed inside and out and the whole thing has had 24 hours to flash off more to follow Pete

The next bit took some tea drinking and a bit of thought, the question was how to spray the inside of the roof and the outside in a sensible time scale i.e. without the risk of damaging the primer undercoat on the outside surface by turning the whole thing upside down. Well after some rather good chocolate Hob Nobs ( these are biscuits for any non UK followers) to go with the tea I came up with this cunning plan, see below, by fixing a couple of medium gate hinges to the back of the cab using the existing fixing holes I could hinge the whole thing up spray the inside hinge it down and spray the outside all in one session without damaging any of the etch primer. When i was ready to spray I held the roof in the open position using a strop on the angle iron connected to the crane so I could alter the angle to facilitate spraying the inside which is a bit tricky with a lot of different bracings and returns, These photos show the cab roof in etch primer trying out the idea and ready for the gloss black undercoat I use as my standard painting regime . More to follow Pete

So as I said above it's been a while however progress has been steady, with the scuttle and the cab back finished and fitted attention returned to the cab roof. For those of who have been following the blog you'll remember that I have already done a whole heap of repair work already on the roof and that was recorded in an earlier entry to the blog so this phase is all about paint removal and prep ready for painting. A quick recap, this is how it started out : And here's the dent I had to fix, just how I tackled this I covered in detail in a previous post I decided to strip the old paint off the inside first using methods I covered when I posted about the scuttle and cab back previously and after a bit of effort, made slightly more difficult by bracing struts and closed sections, it looked like this: Undercoat in etch primer, the piece of angle iron across the front prevents any distortion of the front while the roof is being worked on The roof was then turned the right way up and screwed down onto the pallet so that the outside could be worked this is the starting point: Here paint removal is ongoing the cling film is used prevent the paint stripper from drying out too quickly Bit more work and it ended up like this with a small amount of filler to finish off the area where the dent was: Then a coat of etch primer and it looked like this: More to follow Pete

Well it's been a while, so what's been occurring then? Well it's rained a lot and then it rained some more and when it wasn't doing that it was misty and cold, the workshop keeps the rain out but it doesn't keep the damp air out so it's not a good idea to start stripping paint and exposing bare metal. Apart from anything else it was too cold to spray new paint anyway, that and a hard disc failure recently meant that updates have had to wait until A, the weather improved and B , I could recover the data from the old hard disc both of which have now happened Hurrah !!!! so stand by for some updates over the next few days Pete

Really impressed with the standard of your work it's ordered, meticulous and with attention to the detail. Congratulations Pete

Good luck with the restoration, keep posting your progress I'm looking forward to following the project Pete

Excellent work guys, keep the updates coming Pete

A little more progress, the dash is now almost completed just need to fit the high beam indicator and source a main lighting switch other than that it's done, all gauges refurbished as per previous post above and the speedo has had a new glass brought in from DCM in the US and I made a new dial indicator carrier using the lid of a CD case which was just the correct thickness. The instrument are the standard civilian fittings this truck was the last contract in 1943 that had them, after this all subsequent contracts had standard military round gauges and CMP style switch gear. So this is a page from the Drivers handbook And this is how it all looked in the beginning And this is how it looks now After that brief interlude it's back to scraping paint off the cab roof ...... such fun. Pete

Yes it was a nice find Alex a rare human connection. I did carefully consider saving the the mark on the scuttle and the others Iv'e shown here but eventually decided to record them for posterity by photography and then remove them as part of the restoration process . Pete

While removing paint from the inside of the cab roof I came across the mark in the photo below, it's in blue pencil under the factory red oxide undercoat directly onto the raw steel and looks like the number 20. I wonder if it's a welders identification mark ? There are a number of gas welds that go to make up the cab roof. Probably done at this stage of the war by a female welder, uncovering it was a small moment of connection over the 80 year time lapse. This isn't the first factory assembly mark I've come across on this truck however the other two have been on top of the factory G3 they are shown below circled in red This mark was on the seat base in white paint, it appeared on the seat base that had not been removed since 1943 And this one is in blue pencil once again this time on the front of the scuttle again on top of the factory G3 Just maybe the Canadian Dodge Chrysler equivalent of Rosie the Riveter made those marks on the truck assembly line in the Windsor plant in 1943........... who knows. Pete