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

[Big D]

Hi all,

Here are a few photos showing progress with the hull. It’s a nice feeling actually putting it together rather than the constant disassembly of the last couple of years.

I’ve had to spend a lot of time cleaning out the threads of all the fixing points on the hull. I ran a tap through each one of these before blasting but I’ve found now that I’m having to do them all again, due to the paint. I guess I can’t really complain about a good paint job!

I will need to do a bit of touching up of the paint on the nuts and bolts once I’m happy with everything.

I haven’t bolted the FT-237 radio tray down yet but I needed to make sure it was positioned right on the shelf. I cleaned up the paint on the shelf mounts so I should get a good earth on the FT-237. I’ll start routing the radio cable through the hull so I can cut it to the correct length.

I still haven’t sourced all the hydraulic lines so I won’t fit too much more in the hull until I have those laid out.

The decals I had made up worked a treat, although you do have to get them lined up first time as they stick like hell.