F15A blitz or not?

[Luke R]

G'day all,
A while back I purchased what I assumed was a cab 13 F15A to use the V8 for another project.
After speaking to another blitz owner, he mentioned that CMP might have been a gun tractor.
I'm a bit of a noob when I comes to CMPs and having no body numbers to go off I thought you guys could give me a yes/no answer?

Cheers Luke

[Grant Bowker]

Your truck has some features that are not standard on 15 cwts (at least based on my mainly Chevrolet experience) 20" wheels, helper/overload springs, winch, cable guide under rear of frame, transfer case with PTO for winch.
All of these features should be on a gun tractor but could also result from a larger truck being cut down to better suit its post-war use. Look for signs of frame modification to take a better guess - my thought is that the external reinforcement is probably due to the crane added. The cab floor may also give help. do the openings for transfer case shift lever look factory or "gas-axe" made?

[Jacques Reed]

[QUOTE
The cab floor may also give help. do the openings for transfer case shift lever look factory or "gas-axe" made?[/QUOTE]

Hi Luke,

As Grant said there are a lot of pointers to a gun tractor chassis and the floorboard would be a good indicator if it was an original F15A with the single speed xfer case.
As shown on the attached photo the F-15A floor has just a single notch beside the fuel tank selector valve for the transfer case selector lever and no hole in the floor to the left of the valve where the two speed lever would be. If you have a slot, and a hole, for the two levers it definitely was a "gas axe" job.

I had an F-15A with a two speed xfer case and 20" wheels but that was not an uncommon civilian mod. The holes on the crossmember where the transfer case attaches to it were also elongated to fit the larger 2 spd xfer case mounting pattern which is another giveaway that it was originally an F-15A chassis. Another indicator would be the diff markings. An F-15A has the ratio "6-39" (pinion-crown gear teeth) stamped on the diff housing opposite the pinions of the diffs and vehicles with original 20" wheels have "6-43" stamped at that position, 6-5:1 versus 7.16:1 ratios.

There a few a few gun tractor specialists on the forum who no doubt can shed more light on it. I'm hoping it is a gun tractor.

Cheers,

[Mike Cecil]

What's the chassis number? (top of right hand chassis member, adjacent to the engine mount cross member)

That should simplify matters. The Aust gun tractors are easy enough to locate in AWM126 (now online).

Start trawling, Luke!!

Mike

[aj.lec]

Is there a ammo box mounted in the passenger side of nose cone ?
Any evidence of a mount on passenger side wheel arch inside ?
Engine chassis number sometimes found on bellhousing of gearbox at the top as well (If it is original gearbox )
Australian Gun tractor don't have the helper springs but easily added on later

[Keith Webb]

The double rear cross member and fairleads marks this as a winch equipped (=FGT) chassis.

As Mike suggested find the chassis number!

[Luke R]

Thanks for all the info guys.
I've come up with conclusion that it started life a FGT then sometime after/during the crane conversion the cab and diffs have been replaced.
There is no sign of a number on the top of the chassis and the side is plated over so ill have to do some cutting/grinding when I get time to see if I have any numbers on the vertical side.

Cheers again
Luke

[Mike Cecil]

Luke,

The Aust Ford CMPs assembled and stamped with their chassis number/engine number locally, have the stamping as previously indicated, so you won't find it stamped on the vertical of the chassis rail. The FGTs certainly fall into this group.

The number is often quite lightly stamped, so some judicious use of wet & dry might show it up. It will be something like the format '3GXXXXF' or similar.

Once you locate the chassis number, I'm pretty sure Keith or I can narrow down an ARN pretty quickly.

Mike

[Keith Webb]

The usual place is adjacent to the RH engine mount but I have also seen the number stamped on the RH vertical face adjacent to the bolts holding the starter solenoid.

[Mike Cecil]

That's a new one on me, Keith, so grind away, Luke, let's see what you can turn up.

Mike

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Originally Posted by Keith Webb

The usual place is adjacent to the RH engine mount but I have also seen the number stamped on the RH vertical face adjacent to the bolts holding the starter solenoid.

This was Australian practice, right?

[Mike Cecil]

Yes, Hanno: Ford Motor Company of Australia stamped the original engine number onto the chassis for all models, including CMPs assembled in Australia (but not individual CMP trucks imported from Canada as CKD - they retained their usual CDN method of ID, such as the engine number stamped onto the edge of the gearbox/bell housing).

The usual place was adjacent to the engine cross member on the RHS, on the horizontal part of the chassis rail, but Keith has also seen the number stamped onto the vertical, as mentioned above. Hence, the chassis stamping could only be done at the point where the chassis was on the assembly line and the engine/transmission was assembled onto the chassis, ie at the point of 'mating' of these components.

I don't know if any other Commonwealth countries with Ford assembly lines stamped the number is similar fashion, but it was certainly the case in Oz where a sizable amount of the truck was locally manufactured, not imported.

Mike