Pete Ashby

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

Excellent photo regards Pete

The electric charge tariffs will be spareated and charged at a higher rate via those helpful lovely smart meters in so many houses and then you'll be charged additionally by the mile for road tax collected on camera but more probably from the vehicles electronics direct to satellite. The future is not bright and all that glitters most certainly is not gold Pete

More progress all be it of a small nature, .as I've noted elsewhere it's the small stuff that just eats up time. I'm continuing the fitting out of the dash so attention has now focused on the gauges. Their general condition is fair to good but they need overhauling while the bezels and cases need cleaning and repainting. This is how they look when brought out of storage, the ammeter and fuel gauge cluster is representative of the overall condition for the rest of the gauges. The bezels, glass, face plate and gauges are disassembled into their component parts, all metal parts are de-rusted, etch primed and a top coat of semi gloss black. The case has an etch primer then a top coat of weld through primer that is just about the right shade for the original dull nickle plate finish. The glass needs treating with care as the numbers are screen printed on the inside face and can be easily damaged so I use cotton wool dipped in warm water with a little non salt detergent added to carefully swab both sides. The next step is to check out the operating mechanisms of the gauges. A careful clean with a dry soft paint brush then lubricate all moving parts and pivots with watchmakers oil applied sparingly with a pin. Thats the red stuff in the little bottle with the pin beside it in the photo below, then cut a couple of new case gaskets out of thin card and reassemble now repeat for the ammeter and fuel cluster then finally the speedo. Here's the oil pressure and temperature cluster all ready for reassembly . Pete

Thank you The RH drive exhaust manifold for the long block Chrysler engine is not any easy beast to hunt down here in the UK, I think you guys had a grater variety of modified commercial Dodge Chrysler kit issued to you at your end of the world than we did here. Pete