Sid Swallow Ford Prototype? Need help!!

[rob love]

Ahhh, I get you. You are talking about the old sheds on the G lines. All the vehicles have been moved to N118, which is the old RCHA maintenance building. Cement floor, insulated walls, and plenty of heat. But as with all vehicle buildings, they are never big enough. As it presently sits, some of the newer armoured artifacts like the M113 and the M577 sit outside tarped.

[rob love]

Here are a couple shots of what I am working with. The truck did have the body work done on it to make it a nice looking cab and chassis. Last year it got torn down as a result of the steering problem, and that was when the worn steering and suspension started to surface, and of course the brakes were shot.

The second photo is the steering box, which I hope will be a normal COE box. Although the box looks similar to the CMP boxes, this one is left hand drive and a lot lighter. The sector shaft is considerably shorter than the ones available from Mac's and other restoration places.

[Lynn Eades]

My un qualified guess is the steering box is a Gemmer engineering manufacture. They did a a lot of steering boxes for Ford and Dodge back then.

[rob love]

Looks like you are right. Googled it and that does seem to fit their design.

[rob love]

Well, here is a bit of an update on the project. I had to remove one of the spring hangers, repair the missing portion of metal, and then re-rivet it to the frame. Tough job when you are working by yourself, but after having riveted upper armor on two different bren carriers, four rivets wasn't going to break me.

Anyway, the vehicle is now back on it's wheels, although I still have a problem with one of the links for the shock absorbers.

While working on it, I came across the serial number on the frame. The number is located between the steering box and the horn, on top of the left frame rail. This one is 1C5987*. Hopefully someone can later add the numbers from the similar trucks at the War museum and at Reynolds in Wetaskiwan. I believe there is also another on Vancouver Island or Victoria.

Anyway, here is a shot of the serial number and a shot of the truck as it sits. I still have to repair that steering box, and when it warms up the body will get a repaint to a more suitable color than the parade square green that it is currently in.

[Walde Libera]

Rob

FYI

Don Gordon owns the Vancouver Island one, he purchased it a few years ago from Gary Moonie. I took pics of this unit when Gary still owned it about 6 years ago; it was in pieces but in very good condition. Don is also a member of Western Command Club, we see him occassionally at events.

Walde

[45jim]

Normal vehicle development follows established engineering principles. Normally, this is: "design" (a small word for a lot of work), a "mock up and/or prototype", "pilot", "initial" production and finally "serial" production.

This vehicle is certainly not a "mock up" or "prototype" (which are usually one-off's) we have all seen photos of the earliest iterations of CMP's which were quickly made up from available parts to develop the actual requirements for the final design. This is not one of those trucks.

In my opinion, this vehicle is a pilot, one of a small test batch of vehicles built to the developed specification. 25 Ford and 25 Chevrolet vehicles is not a sufficient quantity to be considered initial production.

The cab 11 4x2 was the first CMP to reach "initial production" and then changes were made to result in the cab 12 which went into "serial production".