[motto]

For what it's worth,

I've just been out and looked at three L/L Chev chassis and none of them have the tube spacer. For all the years I have been around these trucks I have never come across one with a spacer tube. Perhaps they have all been discarded along the way but they are obviously not a real necessity. The reason for this is that the bolt used is stepped adjacent to the threaded section and a thick washer is used that is pulled up against the step. This gives the right amount of compression on the spring and makes it impossible to crush the cross member. I can see the necessity for the tube if there was no spring to compress and you were merely tightening a bolt to clamp a bracket into place.

Also I have only ever seen the small steel bracket mount with the bolt and spring on these trucks as in Phil's drawing. I believe this is the same set up as used on the Chev Blitz. I have never seen a rubber mounting on one of these vehicles and didn't know they existed until looking on this thread. I suspect the rubber mount to be a post war innovation. Rubber was a precious commodity during the war.

David