1953 m38a1 cdn

[Frank v R]

all the history you will find about your vehicle is in the layers of paint, time to wet sand and be gentle some of the markings will be decals ,DO NOT SANDBLAST !! the vehicle is too old to find records within the CF, you may be lucky and have one of the jeeps that took part in Nato Ex in Norway, nice Cam scheme, please send me (click here) a 3/4 front photo of your vehicle for the data base with the CFR# in the photo , it would be great if you can post some general photos of your vehicle for interesting details, you may have a Willy's or Ford produced M-38A1 cdn, the Willys are rare, your CFR number also tells us that the vehicle was not equipped with radios upon issue, 32 being non radio , 33 radio equipped , this may have changed later during the vehicles service life, hope this helps

[Ed Storey]

Frank: What about the M38A1s that have a CFR which starts with 31?

[BCA]

From my understanding the CFR number system (Canadian Forces Registration number) has the prefix year when the number was assigned. In this case: 53 for 1953. Then a dash mark. In the case of the 1/4-ton jeep the next digit is 3 which signifies the weight class of the vehicle, in this case a 1/4-ton truck. This leaves only 4 more digits.
I believe these four digits started at 0001 for the first 1952 M38 (i.e 52-30001) and progressed to about 52-3220 or so. I believe when the 1953 M38A1 jeeps were received that the last 4 digits of the CFR number were continuous with the last issued M38 CFR.
It is interesting to note that the ordnance code for the M38 and the M38A1 were the same: 2230 wo /wn and 2231 w/wn so this implies that the army didn't really differentiate between the M38 and M38A1.
There is photographic evidence of M38's with CFR's like 53-33xxx but I don't know why this high series existed. As Frank suggests it may be related to specialized equipment that was added and therefore the CFR was changed. However I would want to see documentation on this possibility.
Of particular interest of the UK M38A1 would be to know the Ford serial number and the date of delivery (MM-DD-YY) on the dashboard brass serial plate.

[BCA]

Sorry I missed the addition post with the Ford serial number. Good information. My particular interest is the relationship of the CFR numbers with the Ford serial numbers and dates of delivery for Canadian M38's. There is no direct relationship between either the M38 CFR number, the Ford serial number or the date of delivery : just broad trends.
Many jeeps are missing their original brass dashboard data plates sets: often taken as souvenirs. I would be interested in serial numbers and dates of delivery for any serial plates that people might have in there data plate collections.
To add to the confusion, Canada had some Willys M38's (generally October 1951 dated) and examples of jeeps that had additional data plates added when they were rebuilt. There are also examples of Willys M38A1's adopted by Canada, given CFR numbers and the typical ad-on convoy light. .... Brian