Andrew,
In the fall of 2018, there was the opportunity for the Base Borden Military Museum (BBMM) to acquire some parts for GM 6046 engines.
The first trip was quite an eye-opener where we encountered mountains of Detroit Diesel parts (some contained in partially collapsed buildings), and the challenge became the ability to identify the military-specific parts among the large quantities of other similar parts.
This resulted in acquiring and studying as many manuals as possible and studying the parts diagrams to hopefully enable quick visual identification of the military parts.
To add to the challenge, the site was being cleared, with many of the items that we didn’t claim going directly to scrap.
We made out well and saved a lot, but I have no doubt that we missed some rare and valuable parts.
Amongst the piles/crates/cages/shelves were some Valentine specific parts, so there was at least one 6004 engine that had been stripped there. We didn’t find any Fan Support Brackets.
There were 30 Canadian Valentines which stayed in Canada (of the 1420 produced, 1390 were shipped to Russia) and BBMM has the sole intact survivor of those 30 tanks. It still has it’s engine, but due to the condition of the vehicle, it would take many days of effort to get into the engine compartment for a thorough inspection. There is some potential that the engine has the aluminum flywheel housing with integral fan supports.
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