Could the shelf be for a clock?

(I suppose it depends on how strong the shelf is, since I have a Clock, Signal Centre in a heavy cast case which is possibly post-WW2, but it weighs 10.3kg (22.7 lb.), measures 11" x 11" x 4.5" and looks like a squared-off antitank mine when the protective lid is on.)

Chris.

Wire 5 - Box - Inside the box
 

Hi Chris. Thank-you for your message . No , the shelf is too flimsy. I cannot see anything weighing more than a couple of pounds on there.

My friend Daniel and i made good progress today. We installed the 1/4 '' plywood ceiling and the antennae and ventilator tunnel reinforcements . Nice thing about this thickness ( 1/4 '' ) of plywood is that it conforms to the curve of the ceiling pretty easily.

We then lifted the metal generator compartment inside the box , shifted it around , turned it around twice and over again out from the box it went and back in . After a pause , i tought of some other way we could go at it and without breaking anything and hurting anybody it went in it's place.. right over the generator exhaust pipe hole in the metal floor. Could not fit any better. Screwed the compartment to the 1/2 '' plywood walls . Very sturdy.

We then built a temporary wireless table up front, put the original battery supports back in with a repro battery box and built a small shelf over the right wheel well to support the butts of the No 4 rifles sitting upright in the holders affixed to the gen compartment.

I then installed the No 5 Charging panel and the original black-out curtain holders over the windows.

I screwed the covers over the ventilators and then loaded the Chorehorse in the gen compartment.

All in a days work.

Tomorrow some finishing to the door , building a cypher clerk desk, and sealing with silicone around the windows and on the roof.

I will paint the interior white as original either this winter if the snow doesn't come and i can't ski or next spring .



Enjoy the pictures.

:smoker:

Friday's work
 

Hi all,

Half a day's work today.Odds and ends.

Made a Cypher clerk table, a little border around the right

wheel well shelf and lined the rear door with plywood.

Re installed the BO curtain holder over the rear door.

Applied silicone to all the screw heads on the roof and around the windows to prevent water infiltration and damage.

Tidied up and started making inventory of my Wireless equipment after a nice chat with my friend Michel , a new member on MLU.

The Wireless No 19 installation poster on the wall over the wireless operator' s table is a gift from Jon also on MLU.



Stay tuned , same time same channel.

:cheers:

Robert, the interior looks fantastic! Great job - can't wait to see it in the spring!

in regards to your shelf question. I was looking over some photos I had of the Wireless truck in Kingston. They had a signals satchel on each shelf. The straps appeared to be fitted for this purpose. Possibly that is what they were for.

2K1 box discussion wireless oriented
 

Jordan , i think that you are spot on ! Thanks.

Satchel, Signals, Canadian X 2.

The shelf is small and thin and my bet is it can't support anything heavier than the Satchel Signals..including the headsets and microphone it should contain.

Today, ladies and gentlemen , boys and girls ( i am a Canadian Snowbirds fan ) i went for it and applied the first coat of white paint.

I am pretty happy with the results. Even with just a first coat , it hides the imperfections quite well and it lightens up the interior of the box !

I dismantled the blackout curtains holders and tomorrow i am bringing the curtains themselves to a friend who makes house curtains as a profession. They are 18' wide and that is not standard nowadays so i need someone who knows his business and Michel is my man.

I left the small shelves discussed higher with Jordan in grey for now . I will further my research to inquire if they were painted white.

How about the Cypher clerk's document holder / file shelf under his desk ? How about the smell shelf on the left side of the generator cabinet ? The fire extinguiser brackets ? Were they all painted white ?

Enjoy the pictures.

Tomorrow, a second and final coat of white on the interior.

So stay tuned , same time same channel.

:salute:

Final coat of paint
 

Friends,

I applied a second and final coat of white paint inside the box. I painted the floor battleship gray. It is a poetic liberty on my part and not original to my knowledge .

I have lived with battleship gray on warships , aircraft and helicopter decks most of my active life . Also in offices and barracks. So i painted my Wire 5 floor a comforting , easy to maintain colour .

I ordered 5 blackout curtains to be made up as the originals, black on both sides.

When i come back from my latest stint , i will sandblast , prime and paint the curtain holders while the curtains are being made . They should be delivered after the holidays .

So, a little break from the restoration for a few days. Your comments and remarks are always welcome but i will but cut out from civy Internet for a few days and i will be reading your posts over the week -end.

I will also inventory my wireless 19 kit over the week end to see what's missing before installation of a working setup in the box . I look forward driving the rig with full operational gear in the spring.


:thup:

It might have been a guess on your part, Robert, but grey paint on the floor is correct for colour. The original was actually a textured paint to provide a grip on the steel floor. The paint covered the full floor, up to but not including the sill plate underneath the rear door. The sill plate was green like the rear door and the four sets of window fittings. The only other colour inside was the seat assemblies and all the khaki straps on the shelving.

As for the shelving inside the 2K1 and 2K2 bodies, I am not aware of any of it ever being stencilled/designated for specific items. These are soft skin vehicles. For lack of a better description, they are much more 'casual' than AFV's. They are not part of the front line fighting. In an AFV, spare parts and ammunition must be consistently located in familiar positions when needed. The combat capability of the vehicle and the lives of the crew depend on this consistency.

In these wireless boxes, apart from a handful of items that actually do have specific storage points, they were designed to be flexible and each crew probably set the storage up with a fair degree of personal preference for what worked for them best.

David

A little fine sand thrown into the paint would get you the gritty texture as per original.

I thought I would share some pictures of a friends wire truck as I believe it is quite complete and original and might help you out with your restoration :)

a few more

And some more

And some more, You can never have enough pictures :)

A couple more, If you need a specific one just let me know.

Wow
 

Ask and you shall receive.............. thank you and thank you everyone.

Would still love to get a Hi Res picture sent to my email of the black panel..... from either you or Rob.

Cheers

Black panel ?? Do you mean the charging board inside the white panel box.

Also can someone tell me what this item is for hanging on the bracket ??

....for Super Dave
 

Yes please..... a hi res ...sent to my home email......I can enlarge the black panel inside the box at home and read the lettering.

Much obliged.

Bob C

2K1 box discussion
 

Just returned from Valcartier. Busy times .

Thanks Chris. Bought a little bottle of silica grit and it's going on the floor tomorrow. By the way , that little bottle is just like that foot powder bottle liberally distributed to us in the Forces when we undertake the 13KM '' walk in the park ''

Thanks Dave, those are great pictures. So great in fact that they made me realise that i am very far away from completion of this restoration. There are so many details i was missing before seing your pictures.

Bob ( Carrière ) , your friend still has time to catch up with me before i can get my hands on that control panel , fabricate a wireless table and a ''fridge '' door. We might still make it to Tank Day in Oshawa in May if he starts soon.

This is a great Forum , assembling together through our hobby great people.

Cheers and a very Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. Take a moment to think of and to thank our troops deployed in far away and strange lands so we can live free and safe during this period of the year when they are away from their families . I have a friend and collegue in that situation right now.

:support

Cheers.

Super Dave

The fitting in the bracket mounted on the upper corner of the side of your Gen Box is a heat shroud that is supposed to be clipped somewhere onto the Onan AC/DC generator to shield it's exhaust pipe and prevent it from overheating something critical. I have never seen an example of the model of Generator in question to understand why protection was required.

If the mounting bracket and shroud are original to your Wireless Box, then it was originally equipped with the Onan mounted on the floor and the chore horse on the upper shelf. My old Wire-5 Box had the same bracket and I found the shroud in a box at Princess Auto. The same Gen Box also had that big steel tray with the grab handle mounted in the floor of the Gen Box so it must also relate to the Onan, or it was a standard item for all boxes.

There is an instruction decal (white paper with red printing and border) that was put on the wall of the gen box just to the left of the shroud mount and it actually referenced the model number of the Onan Generator used in these trucks. Currently, my photos of that decal are in my 'No Can Find Collection'. Whenever it turns up I will post a copy of it.

The ratio of Onan/Chorehorse combos to all Chorehorse must have been quite low. Princess purchased a lot of some 100 Wireless-5 vehicles from War Assets or Crown Assets in the mid 1950's at a point in their service history where they had only ever seen wartime equipment in them. They were sold initially as complete vehicles. By the late 1960's Princess had started stripping the boxes off the cab and chassis assemblies and flogging them separately. For some odd reason the cab and chassis's were listed in their catalog as Dodge 3/4-tons even though the photo was a Chev CMP. About 40 unsold boxes and about a dozen cab and chassis assembles were still in the Princess Yard here in Winnipeg by the end of the 1970's. Only a half dozen or so of the boxes by then had traces of having the Onan bracket setup. Some of the boxes were being used for storage but most were still pretty complete .There were also a pair of Ford Cab 13 FAT's, a cutdown HUA a half dozen Halftracks formerly owned by the Brandon Construction Company and two or three Chev 6x4 CMP's, one of which had been a Dental Lorry. By the end of the 1980's all had gone to their Scrap operation north of town and were crushed.

David

Thanks for the info on the bracket, I will pass it on to the owner of the vehicle.Yes if you ever find that sheet of paper pleases post it with dimensions so that he can get one made up so it will be that more complete of a unit. :thup2:

Super Dave.

Just noticed in your Post 103 the last two photos nicely show the corner of the wall that Bruce Parker and I were talking about the other day. The Installation Manual for the 19-Set Equipment in these trucks indicates the Charging Board No.C5 is to be installed with it's four mounting brackets in this location and the sketch of said installation is a bit dodgy (possibly intended for the 2Gx Wireless Body Series) as it fails to include the copper buss bar and two main cable feeds running along the wall at this point. It gets even busier in that corner as I had forgotten about the pair of Enfield Racks in that location. Stow the two rifles and you have lost about another 6 inches of wall space.

David

No.C5 Charging Board vs Fuse/Distribution Box
 

It is possible, there might be some confusion regarding the functions/requirements of the C5 Charging Board and the Fuse Panel/Distribution Box in the 2Kx Series of Wireless Boxes. Both perform similar functions but in two, entirely different ways.

The Fuse Panel/Distribution Box is permanently hardwired into the electrical circuitry of the WIRE-5 Body. It serves multiple functions within the wireless box, distributing power from the generators (either combination thereof) to the Wireless batteries, the lighting system and the power ventilating fan. It also provided circuit protection by means of fuses to these circuits. You can operate your 19-Set equipment within the wireless box until the cows come home the way this system is set up.

However, there may be circumstances arise, when the signals team have to leave the comforts of their wireless truck and set up operations with the 19-Set 500 yards away or more, possibly for several days, so in addition to the hardwired permanence of the basic wireless truck systems, critical pieces need to be portable on short notice to continue operation of the 19-set away from the truck. The wireless set on it's Carriers No. 23 goes, along with the batteries, the upper shelf (portable) chore horse, required cables and headsets. The two aerial leads are left hanging from the chimneys on the vehicle roof and you may or may not need the remote control units.

The one, critical thing you cannot take, is the Fuse Panel assembly since it is hardwired to the vehicle system. That is where the Switchboards Charging No.C5 Canadian comes in. It allows the signals team to continue charging the wireless batteries from the chore horse while operating the 19-Set away from the wireless truck. When everything is being run from inside the wireless truck, the No.C5 Switchboard assembly is no longer needed and must be stored somewhere. The manual suggests the four storage clips for it should go underneath the right rear window, in front of the Gen Box, but there is not enough room there to mount it when not in use. The other alternative when not in use is to store it in racks underneath the wireless table as is done with some other CMP Wireless vehicles.

So, if discussions about the location of the No.C5 Switchboard on the walls of the WIRE-5 lead any of you to believe this item was an integral part of the day to day operation of the WIRE-5, my apologies. It is strictly a travelling accessory for the 19-Set, to be taken from wherever it was stored and be used when away from home, and put away when one returns.

Hope this helps a bit.


David

David,

You have just resolved , in a moment of pure genius . a riddle that has been unsolved for me for a very long time.

The C5 Canadian Charging Panel is a portable unit and has nothing to do with the Wire 5 box, ..unfortunately.

Now, we late restorers have to find the impossible to find .

Note: I have seen such a panel with the fuses and switches in a C60 L Machinery Lorry . Not that there are many around...

Oh well. The hunt continues .

:wacko:

Robert.

The thanks are shared with Grant Bowker who took the time to PM me the presence of the potential confusion. Glad to help out, and like they say, if you are too old to learn, you are probably dead!


David

David, Do you have any pictures of the Onan generator that would be mounted on the lower shelf just in case one might stumble across one ??

Sadly no photos. Just the photo hiding somewhere of the
Instructions for the shroud that ID the model of the Onan in question. I wrote Onan in the 1980's about that particular generator (pre internet form of communication) and got a reply it was so obsolete they could find nothing in their files about it. I think it had a two digit number and that is about it.

David

Just a late thought. If that shroud has a part number stamped on it, that might help ID the generator.

Fabricated a generator compartment door today.

Fitted, rigged some hardware store hinges, painted and installed ,

Will post pictures when the second coat of paint goes on tomorrow .

Went for a ride in the countryside, with the snow and cold wind , pretty much like the winter of 44-45 in Holland were it would of fought.

For our troops deployed or about to be deployed overseas today i had a tought .

Robert
 

Just a thought about the Gen Box door handles.

A few years back, there was a surplus yard here in Manitoba in the Teulon area that had a lot full of old vehicles as part of their operation. In that lot they were using a pair of old milk delivery truck bodies for storage. They were from old 1950's era COE trucks, but what caught my eye was the same handles were on the back doors as were used on the Gen Box door. I am also sure I saw the same handles listed in one of Spae-Naur's catalogs from the late 1970's, but cannot recall what they described it as being used on.

Thought I would pass it along if it helps with your search.

David

Robert, do you drive that beauty in the winter when there is SALT on the roads?!? I would be paranoid of getting one spec of salt on that truck.