How To: Restoration of Ford M8 armoured car US Ordnance number 7373

[David Dunlop]

Hi Darryl.

Your nice work continues!

The issue with your wireless gear does not surprise me. A chum of mine (retired commercial radio engineer) currently volunteers at the local RCAF Museum, restoring their wireless equipment. This past Winter he was having a heck of a time getting a late war American piece of kit to behave properly, inspite of several triple checks of the service manuals and circuit diagrams he had available. One circuit in particular was giving him grief and seemed odd to him, even though it was in agreement with his available information.

He was lamenting to me about it one afternoon over a coffee, wishing he had an earlier version of the manual to refer to. When he mentioned the manual reference he was looking for, it rang a bell and it turned up in one of my odds and sods drawers. When I dropped it off for him a couple of days later, it confirmed his suspicions. The later version he was working with had an error in the drafting of the circuit diagram that had been missed. He restored the circuit to the original diagram and the set popped back to life perfectly.

Makes one wonder just how many such errors are out there waiting to make our lives challenging!

David