My new (to me) Deuce and a couple of deuce questions.

[rob love]

I recently brought home a 1956 M135 deuce, and drug another home for parts. The engine on the good deuce had been left with the valve cover off for the last 25 years or so, and had stuck valves even back in 1987. I pulled the head, cleaned everything up, did a quick valve job because of the pitted seats from the little bit of moisture that did occur. I just got it back together today, and after figuring out that I was 180° out on the distributor, she purred to life. Still lots to do, but it is starting to look promising. I hope to drive it out of the shop tomorrow.

I bought this to serve as the prime mover for my C1 howitzer project. I intend to re-do the semi gloss paint and markings to approximately the pre-1970s era.

In the future, I hope to add the winch kit, the heater kit, and maybe even a hiab crane. I also need to find a source for 12' long planks of oak to rebuild the troop seats and racks. I picked up one of the dual drive PTOs the other day, which provides power to the front and to the back of the truck.

Anyway, here is a photo or two of the new girl:

[rob love]

Anyway, in my search for parts, I visited a nearby yard of old deuces and ran into a couple of unique ones, which leads to a couple questions.

First, there is one of the line deuces in that yard. Was the Deuce line truck purely a Canadian thing, or were they patterned after a US truck? Dash shows it as a M135 which was kind of interesting: I thought they would have used a M133 (cab and chassis only) for these conversion. On the flip side, we have a deuce with winch here at the Shilo museum which has the data plate of M133, although it is completed as a M135.

Secondly, I found one cab had the data plate of the XM222 water truck. Serial number was somewhere around 0015, with a build date of 1952, and the crossed cannon ordnance corps inspectors mark stamped on the data plate. Obviously an early American made truck, but interestingly had a Canadian CFR number on the dash, with a 1954 model year. Did Canada build any of the M222 water trucks, or were they all from the US? Has anyone else noted US built GMCs in Canadian service?

[Jon Skagfeld]

This help in any way?

ECC 124107 Cable Layer, Truck Mounted, c/o

ECC 124102 Truck, Cargo, 2-1/2 ton, 6 x 6, w/winch, w/e
3895-21-109-3752 Cable Layer Adapter Kit,
Truck Mounting, EIS 7009

[rob love]

Well, the NSN is Canadian, but often we used Canadian NSNs even for US trucks, likely to cover for any changes or modifications we made.

I'll post the line truck question on the steel soldiers website, where membership is predominately US.

[Ed Storey]

The Canadian 2½ ton series of vehicles were based on US designs. In US service the M135 was pretty short-lived being replaced by the M35 Reo series. One distinguishing feature with the US M135s is that they were soft-top where as the M135CDN was a hard-top.

I believe some of the early trials vehicles used by Canada were of US manufacture and were used alongside the Canadian manufactured vehicles. I would be interested to know what the CFR was of the XM222.

I think the line vehicle you are talking about is the M207CDN Signal Line Maintenance Body and Equipment ECC 124902 of which only 18 were manufactured.

[rob love]

Interesting Ed, where do you get the source of 18 made?

The "Cdn Army Catalogue of Ordnance stores: Generic listing of vehicle and tracked equipments..." lists both M207 chassis (ecc 124902) and M133 chassis (ECC124901) being used for the (line) maintenance truck. It only shows a drawing of the M207 chassis version though. This body is mounted on a M135.

I suspect this truck was one of the early releases in the 70s, since it was not fitted with the west coast mirrors, although it does have a few peculiarities like green top clearance lights on the cab, and large yellow lenses on the SMP front signal lamp housings in the grill.