Otter LRC CM4647296 comes home

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by Jordan Baker

Interesting differences in these parts. It’s a shame there is not more photographic evidence to look over for these kinds of details.

Here are two photos showing details. Both were made in 1947 when in Netherlands Army service (one could even be yours?). They both seem to have the "humpback" (for lack of a better description) door locks.


Source: https://beeldbank.nimh.nl/foto-s/det...c-dac9b71bad64 and https://beeldbank.nimh.nl/foto-s/det...8-31602a8e6740


Edited to add a third photo made in 1949:


Source: http://hdl.handle.net/10648/a8c455da...8-003048976d84


This fourth photo made in 1946 seems to show your "first" type of door lock?


Source: http://hdl.handle.net/10648/a89bd9d4...8-003048976d84

[Jordan Baker]

Finally made some time to work on the Otter……So off with the doors and off with all the layers of paint….thanks to the needle scaler. Minor repair will be needed on the one door. At some point someone for reasons unknown took a torch to the middle of the door. Lots of layers of paint in its life but underneath the metal is close to pristine.


With regards to welding up the torch damage. Anything in particular I should be mindful of or can I just weld it up with my Mig welder?

[Hanno Spoelstra]

When it was a army running on conscripts, the Netherlands Army vehicles got copious amounts of paint applied to them "to keep the soldiers busy". I wonder if your Otter was ever fully stripped and repainted in Dutch service, or whether the new layers were painted on top of the wartime paint layers.

Have any other markings besides the "W/T" come up?

[rob love]

When welding armour plate, it is normal to preheat the area. As you are simply using it as filler rather than for bonding purposes, you ought to be ok with just mig welding it. But preheating it wouldn't hurt. Preheating will reduce the chances of warping or cracking.

Perhaps you need to talk with a mat tech from the forces. They get some training on welding armour. But in order to retain the armour strength, I'm pretty sure they would be using arc with special rod.