[Tony Wheeler]

Hanno, I think it's a misnomer to describe CMP axles in terms of load rating. Certainly within the 60L/60S range there's no correlation with componentry such as steering ends or steering box. These appear to be nothing more than design upgrades - early production 60L/60S had small steering ends and steering box, while later production 60L/60S had large steering ends and steering box. I'm not sure exactly when the changeover occurred in Canadian production, but it's not seen in Australian assembly until mid '44, and even later in Indian assembly I believe, perhaps around mid '45. Hence a very large proportion of Australian and Indian assembled 60L/60S/FAT were fitted with small steering ends and steering box.

As we know of course, the 15A retained small steering ends and steering box universally, however I'm not sure that's true of the C30/F30. I've seen at least two F30 ambos in Australia with large steering ends and steering box. As far as I can make out, the only SPECIFIED difference between C60S/F60S and C30/F30 is wheel size. This gets back to our earlier discussion concerning CMP load class rating, which appears to based solely on wheelbase and wheel size.

On the question of auxiliary springs - they're definitely specified in the Ford workshop manual, and while it's not the most dependable source of info, you'd certainly expect auxiliary springs on the C30/F30 Derrick and LAAT. I'm not sure about the various ambos, but it occurs to me they may have been anomalous in many respects.

And yes, 16" and 20" wheels are fully interchangeable, with no difference b/w Chev and Ford.