[Ken Smith]

This post is about a F60L I have just purchased, I am putting it in here in the interest of keeping all my stuff together.
When I start putting the restoration pictures for the C60L and the F60L in the restoration section I will put them in different threads.

This F60L was only about 3klm from my place and I didn't know it existed until about a month ago. The previous owners father and uncles bought the truck at a disposal auction at Cecil Plains aerodrome just after WW2. The aerodrome was on a farm near the tiny town of Cecil Plains west of Brisbane. In 1945, 102 Squadron RAAF flew Liberator bombers from there, there are some good pictures on the AWM site of the bombers in their dispersals. To this day there is still heaps of steel cable in the trees for the camo nets.

Anyway back to the blitz, some details are Serial 14717, Engine 2G40613 F and ARN possibly 46660. I am confused with that as I thought 1941 F60L's started with 51***, 52*** or 53***. The spare cab I have is Serial 12891, Engine 2G41490 F and ARN 52498, which is earlier serial but later engine and ARN.

The blitz was deregistered in 1976, then did 10 years as a spray rig, then parked up, it has always been shedded. It has all doors and really is very complete, and not a rust hole anywhere, the previous owners grand son took the headlights out of it a couple of months ago to put in his Suzuki scrub basher, I have a feeling the 6 volt bulbs didn't like 12 volts. I will add that although he cut the wires he carefully put all the retaining screws and the headlight doors to one side.

It was painted at some stage with a incredibly thick coat of yellow primer and 2 coats of grey gloss. The yellow primer put me off a bit as it looks like desert sand, but from reading the forum I found that F60L's with a Australian roof hatch didn't go to the desert, so I sanded through it to find the ARN. There are 2 coats of green, both layers the ARN starts with 4 .

The truck has a very good home made wooden dropside body which I will leave on it, painted olive drab instead of the current lettuce green, and with a canopy it will be a reasonable copy of the original body.

Pictures to follow shortly.

I forgot to say the local truck wrecker offered double what I offered for the blitz, and at a family meeting the family agreed to let me have it, at my price, as long as they can follow its restoration progress.

Cheers Ken