Please may I enlist the combined talents of all contributors?
I need to establish the components used in Marmon-Herrington 4 x 4 and 6 x 6 conversions. Here is a succession of authorative information taken from DND papers et al:
'On Tuesday, 30 May 1939 at G.M. of Canada, Oshawa,, Colonel Carr was shown two 4 x 4 trucks destined apparently for the Malay States. [It is queried here whether Colonel E.W. MacDonald, the ‘Special Representative’ in Ottawa for G.M. Products of Canada was involved in the presentation]. The company informed him that they also had orders for two more such trucks for Australia, one for India and one for Egypt. The front axle on all of these trucks was a ‘Timkin’ [actually Timken], product that was similar in all respects to the Marmon-Herrington system, which was also produced by Timken'.
'On 30 September 1939, Stan Ellis cabled in code from the High Commission in London to W.R. Campbell who was by then the Chairman of the War Supply Board, referring to Carr’s enquiry to Canada House regarding the Guy Quad Ant. This vehicle had been designed throughout as a 4-wheel drive [4 x 4] 25-Pounder gun tractor and was also equipped with a Winch. Could Campbell explore the possibility of using the Marmon-Herrington front end drive on the Ford of Canada 101 [-inch] chassis with an off-centre to the left rear axle differential and a rear drive shaft from the rear side Marmon-Herrington front drive shaft takeoff position on the transfer case?'. This resulted in the F15A + F-GT of course.
'H.J. Carmichael, Vice-president and General Manager at G.M. of Canada replied to Charles Burns, by then Assistant Deputy Minister in the D.N.D., 6 October 1939, that he wished to assure that their company would co-operate 100%, and would do everything in their power to facilitate arriving at a proper unit to be built from Canadian component parts, to serve the purpose that the unit served in England {sic.}. Carmichael added that they would be more than pleased to have a conference there in Oshawa with officials of the Department, Ford officials, and the company’s Engineers and ‘economically work out a satisfactory unit’. .......Ellis cabled Carr October 15 and asked to be rushed a reply to his query regarding the adaptation of the Marmon-Herrington system for an Artillery Tractor'.
'Sid Swallow has commented that the pilot Ford 4 x 2 trucks used parts procured with the benefit of automotive suppliers’ parts books including Timken front axles, and the mudguards from a generator trailer manufacturer in Montreal'. However I think Sid was confusing the 4 x 4 pilot Fords with the 4 x 2...the 4 x 2 I think used the '40 Ford axle although the correspondence says that the '39 Ford front axle was not stong enough. In production Ford used GM axles in the early days simply because the DND had asked McKinnons to tool-up for multi-drive truck components and under the mutual component-supplying arrangement Ford made the cabs etc for GM of Canada and GM supplied axles. Can someone please confirm the point about 4 x 2 Ford components?
'It is suggested [by me!] that the pilot 4 x 4 F.15A truck in common with early production trucks was equipped with Chevrolet differentials on Chevrolet axles*, with the Marmon-Herrington transfer case and Rzeppa C.V.J. [Constant Velocity joints] steering ends. The pilot C.15A may well have been similarly equipped although the Chevrolet-badged production units had Timken-Detroit Axle Corporation transfer case and Bendix-Weiss Universal joints [U.V.J.] steering ends. However, Ford’s Rzeppa design U.V.J. and axle shafts as fitted by to the front of their 4 x 4 Trucks were interchangeable with the Bendix-Weiss components, but Ottawa suggested that both right- and left-assemblies of the same type be fitted rather than mix-and-match'.
As a point of discussion, I am suggesting that the Marmon-Herrington company contracted transfer case manufacture to Timken Axles Corporation in Detroit, and that M-H used in their front-drive arrangement either Ford rear axles or Timken axles. Does the Timken Parts List refer to M-H pre-war please?
Hanno's photos confirm that in wartime Canadian Traction used Timken rear-drive axles/cases, as well as Welles-Thornton components from the Thornton Tandem Company of Detroit.
http://www.geocities.com/marmonherri...truck_cdn.html
It did occur to me to ask those with owners of M-H trucks to advise if there is any wording cast into the transfer cases to indicate manufacturer!
As regards 3-ton trucks, the correspondence shows that Ellis was talking in October 1939 of using 1940 EATON rear axles [on the F15 at least he was calling for 4 x 4 M-H drive on 1/3rd of the first production and the rest 4 x 2 with Eaton 2-speed rear axles] which he understood were stronger that 'Ford Standard' {sic.} and further 'In this connection it would be necessary for Eaton to provide a suitable gear ratio to coincide with the Ford Standard used in the front axle'. So Ellis was talking about using in the F60S/F60L and I suppose F30S a 1940 Ford front axle + M-H transfer case by conjection, and a specially-designed Eaton rear axle with custom gearing. Thus the '40 Ford COE rear axle was deemed strong enough for front-drive even in 3-tonners! The relevance here of Eaton axles is because of the GM influence...the CMP trucks used COE components. *The 4 x 2 C.O.E. or Forward-Control G.M.C. trucks used Timken [Timken # 31000? I-beam Reverse-Elliott?] front axles and Eaton [Eaton # 1265 H.D.?] 2-speed rear axles, although the Normal-Control trucks used Chevrolet I-beam and one or more designs of Chevrolet rear axles. The U.S. trucks used either Chevrolet Type CTCH front axles/3-speed-gearboxes and rear axles or [the heavier trucks] Chevrolet Type UCH front axles/4-speed gearboxes and rear axles. Because Ellis was thinking all the time of using COE components even in the Ford CMPs, he naturally considered using what GM used which also to a certain extent if not large extent coincided with his beloved Marmon-Herrington arramgements!