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

[Big D]

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[Big D]

The turret is back and looking quite nice, complete with that old battle/range damage. I had to clean up a couple of lumpy parts on the top of the bearing face, where the hold down roller bearings would run, that I had missed pre blasting and painting. I have fitted the 37mm gun mount and recoil system. The gun mount sits on two heavy pins, one at the top and one at the bottom, each secured by a 3/8” screw. It was a bit of a handful fitting the assembly on my own, but I got there. The barrel has been straightened and I will likely fit this along with the damaged breach while I await the arrival of a replacement 37mm gun which is in better shape.

I picked up some of the other parts which had been painted and fitted the inner front guards. I left a lot of the imperfections in them but the new paint has freshened them up nicely. Just fitting these inner guards changes the appearance of the vehicle again.

I have continued tidying up a whole lot of other little jobs. The data plate that needed to be trimmed to fit has been done and glued into place. I received the 11/16” hydraulic fitting I needed for the throttle slave cylinder (thanks Taylor) so that hydraulic line is in place now. I still need another tapered fitting for the master cylinder which is on the way. The back panel is now fitted in place. I have also fitted the master switch box and battery cable as well as the interphone boxes for the commander and gunner. I will wire up the interphone boxes over the weekend and give them a test.

I spoke to the engine reconditioner and unfortunately the bores on the engine block were too pitted for even a bore out to 0.020 pistons. I might have got away with 0.040” oversize but I didn’t have any pistons that size, so I have decided to make use of the 0.060” pistons I have here and we are boring the cylinders out to fit those. Does anyone have any 0.060” rings they want to part with?

I have located the gearbox parts I need and I’ll have those parts on the way to me shortly.

That’s about it for the moment….

[Big D]

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[Big D]

Hi all,

Here are a few pictures of the latest progress. I have fitted the recoil system and elevation system. I found the elevation system and sector gear on the recoil system had to be fitted at the same time. I had the elevation gear in first but I couldn’t find a way to fit the sector gear for the recoil system afterwards as there was just not the room to make them mesh unless installing them together.

The 37mm racks, map clips and binocular holder are fitted, but I will need to remove the rear 37mm rack to lift the turret onto the hull. As you’ll see the binocular holder is white. From what I could see these were white on earlier M8’s and then green on later ones. Someone may correct me on that.

The barrel is now straight and the good news is that the damaged part of the tube will be obscured by the sleigh. The breech ring is off and will require some rebuilding.

What is the easiest way to fit the barrel to the gun mount? My thoughts were to fit the sleigh onto the recoil system and then with the recoil system angled downwards, slide the barrel (minus the breech ring) into the sleigh. Is there a better way?

After cleaning up the channels, I test fitted the sleigh onto the recoil system with my fabricated brass channel on the sides. The sleigh will go on, but it will be a snug fit with that new brass.

I finalised the interphone box wiring for the commander and loader. The headphones on these worked straight away but the microphones did not. I worked out that the way I had wired the connector on the FT-237 radio tray (which was as per the TM 11-2702 manual) was actually wrong. I can recall when I did that FT-237 wiring, that it didn’t seem right that the microphone circuits (yellow and brown wires) for the back interphone boxes weren’t on the same line as the interphone boxes for the front. Anyway, I wired them together on the FT-237 and the rear interphone boxes now work fine with headphones and microphones.

I have some of the sheet metal back from the sandblasters, painted and ready to go. Unfortunately, the sandblaster got their wires crossed with the painting. The plan was to blast and paint the tool lockers, as they were ready to fit, but just blast and prime the big sandskirts, because I still needed to apply some fibreglass to them to improve their roughish appearance. The blasters got that the wrong way around and I have a pair of tool lockers which have just been blasted and primed (!), while I have some fully painted sandskirts which still need to be fibreglassed! Oh, well….

I spent a bit of time making the radiator drain plug access flap on the rear lower engine panel. The reproduction panel that I had didn’t have this hole cut in it. Thanks to Willy for his help on the design of this. I received a nice load of parts I needed in the post today (cheers Reg), including the radiator mounts, hydrovac tube and hydrovac repair kits.

The last of the bits and pieces are loaded up and ready to go to the sandblasters for priming and painting.

That is all for today….

[Big D]

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[Big D]

Hi all,

Progress continues…

I was about to fit the transfer case to the hull but have just found some original cushion mount retainers (thanks Nick and Charles), so I will wait until they arrive before I fit the transfer case to the hull. I filled the transfer case with oil. The front declutch housing took just under a litre of gear oil and the main housing took just under two litres. I filled to the point where oil was just coming out the filler. I expected the transfer case to take a bit more than that. Can anyone confirm? I don’t appear to have anything in my manuals which shows the quantities. Someone was reproducing lubrication charts for these a while ago. Are these still available? I messaged the seller without success.

While I was mucking around with the handbrake assembly, I realised that I didn’t have the bell-crank which is fitted to the hull, as shown in this picture I borrowed off the net. If anyone has one of these lying around in their bunch of spares, I’d be very interested.

I’ve painted the stars onto the turret. The rough surface of the turret didn’t make it easy to apply paint masks which meant that I had a bit of bleeding of paint on the edges, so I’ll need to clean those up. I’ve also added a few more waterslide decals to the hull and turret. The bullet hole in the star looks effective!

I got the handles and two locking levers made up for the engine covers. The handles were spot on but the rod used in the locking levers was not quite the right diameter, and they are a slightly loose fit, so I’ll get the other two made up with the correct diameter.

Now that I have some hydrovac kits (thanks Reg) I have started reconditioning the hydrovac. I don’t think these kits are exactly right for my hydrovac, but we’ll see how we go. The slave cylinder on the hydrovac is pretty rough internally. The main return spring was rusted inside the bore of the slave cylinder and removal twisted it, so I will need to replace that. At this stage, the piston is still stuck in the bore of the slave cylinder so I am soaking it in the hope of getting it out at some point. The bore will need a stainless steel sleeve so once I get it all apart I’ll get it off to the experts for fitting that sleeve. I have rebuilt the main cylinder of the hydrovac with replacement seals and that side of it looks alright at this point. I’ll finish the whole unit off once I get the slave cylinder back.

I am trying to finalise the bleed points for the hydraulics now. I want to fit a bleeder nipple to the end of the short hydraulic lines I’ve made which come from the T junctions, but I am struggling to find a fitting that will allow this. What have the guys who have done this used for such a connection?

I have the lockers front outer guards and some other parts back from painting now. I’ll pick up the gun tube, sleigh and mantlet next week.

[Big D]

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[James P]

Back at post 332 you mention a oil seep on the pillow block, have you ever considered Corn Head grease for the fill ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7zNhli-J0Gk