[rob love]

So I have been itching to get at this project. While in Kandahar I managed to spend a little bit of time on ebay and came up with the panoramic scope, the elbow scope, and the qunner's quadrant. I got one small breech part as well.

Once home, I got to the sandblasting and cleaned up the axle, the drums, and the backing plates. All turned out very well. I hammered out the one rusty bearing to try and get a part number, but no luck. I did manage to get some part numbers off the races. A check from the manuals to google gave me several online NSN breakdowns from which I got the commercial numbers for the bearing and races, the wheel seals, along with the thread pitch and size of some of the large nuts used on the gun. I ordered almost all the parts from ebay, where bearings average about $10 each vice the $20-40 you pay now at the jobbers. I even found the brake pivot shafts on ebay for a couple bucks each.

Below are some shots of the progress so far. I do not have brake shoes for it, but have the first drum installed (still waiting for one more bearing) and the pintle bar is also sandblasted waiting it's turn to go on. The middle photo shows just some of the inspector's marks along with the Sorel Industries stamps found on the top of the axle. The pintle has a large nut on it that is 2-1/4 with 12 threads per inch. An internet search found me one for only $17....far cheaper than the $60 it would have cost downtown here. The trail locks on the axle were also sandblasted, disassembled and lubed, with new set screws to keep them on the axle.

If anyone has a spare set of brake shoes for a 105mm kicking around, and has no plans to use them, please give me a shout.

Winter is fast approaching so this is likely just as far as I will get this season....time to prep the outdoor stuff and the yard for what is supposed to be an extra harsh winter.