LSVW trailer question

[Marc Montgomery]

thanks ed, so it does have a designation..of sorts..
interesting in french its "modele militaire" and in english "smp"
Would that be "standar mil pattern, or "special mil pattern" or ??
and would you know what ECC means?

Am I missing a build date on this?

[rob love]

ECC is Equipment Configuration code. There would be a basic number for a class of trailer/vehicle and a slightly different number for each official variation of the trailer. ie: If it was a cargo, or had a mounted welder, or a generator, they could have a different code.

I see you are mixing up the 1-1/2 ton trailers with the 750kg trailers. All of the M104 series were made for the 2-1/2 ton and larger SMP trucks like 5 tons in the old days, and the HLVW in the new days.. The original ones in Cdn service dated from the late 50s/early 60s. These were replaced with new ones in the early 80s, and another batch in the late 80s. That was where the Cdn3 etc came form. They did not differ a lot from the early M104 trailers. There were little things like the large M-series lighting, and the vinyl tarps. The main difference was the front landing gear. The 50s/60s trailers had a single big Fred Flinstone wheel for the landing leg that had to be manually raised and lowered. The new versions had two varieties of landing leg. First was the Fred Flinstone wheel with a jack attachment to raise it in it's hinge. The second version had smaller dual landing wheels which had a jack built in to raise and lower, and the whole assembly would hinge. The early 80s trailer was made (IIRC) by Manac, and the late 80s trialers were made by DEW. There were a few basic variants, including Cargo, water tank, and kitchen. I believe there were also some fuel tankers, although most of those I saw were on dual wheeled 2 ton trailers.

With regard to swivelling pintles: For each truck/trailer combination either the towing truck or the trailer would swivel. In the case of the 1/4 ton trailers it was the Jeep/Iltis that was fixed, and the trailer would swivel. With the 3/4 ton/5/4 ton/LSVW fleet, it was the truck that swivelled and the trailers that were stationary. With the MLVW and up, it was the saem...truck would swivel and the trailer was stationary.

Sometimes you would see trailers being towed by the wrong class. This could lead to problems either with a combination that had no swivel, or else a combination where both could swivel. If there was no swivel, then the cross country stress could damage the trailer or truck frame. With both swivelling, the pintle could rotate upside down, which was not ideal either.

[Robin Craig]

Marc,

The trailers were made in Ottawa, for the entire production run, as far as I know.

In those days I lived not too far from DEW and seemed to accidentally be past there on a regular basis.

I did at the time take a lot of 35mm colour slides along with my then best mate (now deceased) Andy Graham. The pair of us were shutterbugs with long lenses taking pictures of many things all the time.

The LSVWs themselves came into Ottawa on flat cars as chassis cabs directly from Kelowna and were started and driven over to the DEW shops to get the refurbished SEV bodies put on them, but thats another story.

Anyhow, back to the trailers, there was some horrible fight between DEW and the Crown over the corrosion protection and the seam sealing as the sealer fell out after painting. Someone got screwed somewhere im thinking.

The trailers will suffer the same problems of lamination based corrosion over time.

If the Crown spent a bit of money just building car port style covered parking for their MV fleets and got them just under cover they would have such a better return on their investment. I know our farm machinery fairs so much better just under a roof with no sides.

My lady, new to the MV scene, has only just started to appreciate how many days of a year the average MV sits vs being used after we pass through a local base and see the same vehicles in the same place month after month.

If only common sense ruled the world.

Off to plow snow, again.


R

[rob love]

Re: Carports. The federal government cannot put up an inexpensive building....can't be done. We had a bunch of pole sheds recently built here in Shilo. No electricity or lighting in them....as soon as you string a light they would require fire sprinklers. In order to have fire sprinklers you will require heat. In order to have heat you now have to build the shed as an insulated building. You can see where this is going.

You will see a lot more stationary vehicles in the next couple years as the DND mothballs up to 50% of it's SMP fleet as a cost cutting measure.

[Robin Craig]

Marc and others

While not to do with these trailers but the bigger older ones, the Maker's name on some is Manac if you spell it backwards it is Canam. They make many structural steel items like bar roof trusses and the like. Same folks just a different division.

R

[rob love]

Robin: Interesting...I did not know that. It would appear that Manac trailer was the original company and it acquired canam steel in 72. It would also seem they have thinned out their Cdn trailer production and have acquired US plants. They now manufacture many of their trailers in the South.

Here is a link to the companies history: http://www.manac.ca/about-us/

[Marc Montgomery]

So if I understand correctly
The Cdn Forces have in their inventory M-104CDN3, and M-104CDN4, and the slightly smaller metric trailers Im thinking of , "Trailer Cargo 850kg SMP CDN1"

Curious though, many of these SMP CDN1 have been released for sale with little to almost zero apparent usage...I presume there are many still on strength, but why release several in almost NOS condition?

Meanwhile, in many places around the world vehicles are parked under simple pole structures with rounded corrugated tin rooves...Protection from the sun in some cases , and precipitation in others.

Shame we should do that here but cant for reasons Robin and Rob L mention