Regulator Restoration

[Mike K]

I will try to fill in some gaps ..

Back in 1976 .. I owned a 42 Mb jeep, the starter motor packed up.. I was told of this place in Camberwell, a Eastern suburb of Melbourne .. Well I searched the street for ages.. just rows of typical Melbourne houses in a quiet back street . No warehouses or commercial buildings in site ... I finally woke up. What's that innocent little alleyway over there ... no signs indicating anything. I drive down and find this huge old warehouse ..bits of Ford V8's everywhere .. heads lying around outside . Hundreds of Ford ring sets falling over on the floor.. rows and rows of WW2 vehicle parts .. literally packed to the roof . GMC , Blitz and Jeep mostly.

In the tiny front office ,Keith showed me few manuals on Blitz , pointing out cab 12 's and such. Would have been the first time I met him.

Being in a prime inner suburb, the land was worth more than the parts I think. I believe the school next door wanted to expand and the writing was on the wall.

Two oldtimers ran the place, Jack O'Donnell and Jack White. Jack O was a bit of a rogue . I found Jack W more forgiving .. on a good day, he would almost give the stuff away . A friend of mine walked away with a huge box of NOS Jeep parts for about 20 bucks... Jack White of course .I bought a whole box of the generic US blackout inserts for 50 cents each or similar, they were ideal for colour matching , still packed in layers of tropic wax paper. There were NOS instruments for CMP NOS Jeep carbies .. It was literally a WW2 storage dump. They had little accessories too , the chev rose tan light switch knobs. I remember the hundreds of packets of Ww2 Jeep front axle rebuild kits, about 5 bucks each.

Sadly, much of it went to scrap . They would get in those big waste bins and fill them up with NOS parts. I saw it myself.. NOS CV joints being chucked in the bin. Somebody actually tried to follow one of the waste trucks , but once it got to Sims it was doomed. During it's last days , I found the NOS cab 12 doors there, 2 sets of them,10 dollars each .

Mike