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

[Big D]

Hi all,

I don’t have a lot to report this week as I’m still waiting on gearbox parts, so progress on that has ground to a halt. I’ve attached a few more pictures of the components now that I have everything stripped. You can see the damage on third gear and to the synchro hub for 1st and 2nd gears.

As Willy pointed out to me, cleaning out the oil galleries in the front of the gearbox housing are very important. This is the feed for the front bearings from the oil pump. My housing had a broken plug in the front and at first glance it looked like a Welch plug to me, but it is a NT 1/8” brass plug which I had to remove with an extractor. New bearings and the replacement third gear and synchro rings should hopefully not be far away.

I managed to get hold of a set of the elusive engine bay panels. Many thanks to R for coming up with them. I'm told these are quite important for the cooling on these engines. I’ve cleaned a couple of the panels up already and painted them. The metalwork on the two bigger panels is quite thin in places so I didn’t blast them and instead have been removing the paint using paint stripping discs and a wire wheel. I’ll do some patching of the holes and then get them painted. These panels are a great score.

That's it for this week.