A good day

[Lionelgee]

Hello Maple Leaf up restorers,

I looked at my truck in a different light today and in the late afternoon sun I could actually clearly identify 4 out of possible 5 numbers which someone had sanded off on the bonnet. Coming out from lots of surface rust and the odd bit of layers and layers of paint were the numbers 7725 and a rounded bit which could be either the bottom of a 3 or a 9.

When I made a return visit to where I bought my truck from a couple of days ago I asked the owner Russell if he knew the contact details of the truck's previous owner. As luck would have it the guy's brother had come to the yard a couple of weeks ago and left his contact details. So tonight I telephoned him and had a good yarn. I found out about the truck's history and some good information about the truck. The former owner Wayne had the truck as a water tanker on his farm for 15 years. Prior to him owning the truck his father-in-law N. L. Bryant owned it for decades. With this time frame it is not too big a stretch to think that Mr Bryant might have been the first post Army owners of the truck.

My truck was sold to the yard when Wayne retired and they had a clearance sale before the farm was sold as well. The funny thing is the farm is one which I have probably driven past a lot during my trips throughout Queensland. Also Wayne now lives only two towns away from where I live and he remembers the truck well. Unfortunately there were no photographs taken of the truck in its working life.

The good bit of information is that when I bought the truck I was told by Russell, the yard owner that the engine had seized. Wayne told me on the phone that this was not right. The engine was working fine when he drove it. What had happened was something else had seized but definitely NOT the engine. You guys might recall that I asked on a different MLU thread how to free up a locked wheel. Well that very much locked wheel, which I managed to free up, was the thing that suddenly seized up on Wayne 20 years ago. This means that the engine could be okay and only needs some tweaking to get started again. Especially since the wheel was so locked that it refused to rotate even with the tilt-tray of the truck it hitch-hiked home was nearly fully. I currently have a spare 216 and a 235 engine sitting on a pallet in my shed. I am now very reluctant to do an engine swap as the truck is definitely ex-Army and I would like to make it an original as possible restoration. Maybe I just have to buy another truck to stick the 235 into! I am sure my wife would not mind at all .....

When I was at Russell’s yard I found a 1940 Chevrolet truck which still had a key in the ignition and part of the hood ornament still bolted to the frame. The hood ornament on my truck had broken off and the bit below the spear was mashed up. As luck would have it the remnant left on the truck in Russell's yard was exactly the bit that was totalled on my truck. A friend of mine who is a boilermaker is going to work his magic and then I will see if I can get the re-fabricated hood ornament re-chromed and put it back on my truck.

Everything else truck related about today was really great – all this without picking up a tool, losing some blood, or getting covered in decades old crap! I think my truck likes me - fingers crossed

Kind Regards
Lionel