[Bob Carriere]

Bonjour all......and a special "HI" to Uncle Bill......

The worst for wear seems to be the shackle pins and bushings.

I also found some interesting spring specs in the MB-C1 manual ...... been looking for that info and it was right under my nose......

From what I can see the rear springs are probably OK as they are.... will need to replace the brass bushings that are now oval. but all the leaves are there...unbroken..... will replace all the clamp/brackets with new hardware.... the leaves are rusty but not overly pitted and still have some arch to them.

The front springs are plain "flat" and at only 2 inches wide amazing they carried that heavy plow for so long. I hope finding shackle pins will not be a problem.... should be fairly standard.... 4 are useable and 8 are badly worn.

In sandblasting the frame this week end I discovered a small crack in the front frame..... underneath right next to where they had welded a bracket for the snow plow...... lucky to find it with de-greasing fluid...... half inch on the vertical section of the outside...curves underneath for about 2 more inches....... having the frame on stands and upside down greatly helped discovering the flaw. I grinded the crack Vee shaped and will weld from both side....hopefully its future life will not stress that area too much.

About half the frame is done....sitting upside down on stands....gave it a quick phosphoric acid wash and will do the top side later the will paint the whole sucker with POR 15...tie coat ...then a couple of coats of WWII OD....... some of the forward cross members needed replacing and have been blasted and painted seperately to be bolted back in at the end. This will allow me to get behind the typical blind spot of the crossmembers and seal those areas good.......

I will probably shop at Malmberg springs and hope the spring guy can make sense of the spec sheet I will show him.

After lifting and moving these spring packs around the yard ...they are heavy **^^&*...... so I will leave it to them strapping young men at the spring shop to do the bull work for me.

Its coming...slowly...but its coming together....