How To: Restoration of Ford M8 armoured car US Ordnance number 7373

[Big D]

Hi all,

It’s been a while since I last posted so I thought I would provide an update on this project.

A lot of my time of late of late has been devoted to my White Scout car restoration. It has just come back from blasting and painting and I’ve been busy making up a new wiring loom for it.

Work on the M8 has continued in the background. I have the five combat rims blasted and primed with new tires on them. The sixth rim is still in Belgium coming over with some other parts.

The ongoing clean-up of parts has continued. I sourced some complete NOS turret hold down roller assemblies and these required lots of cleaning.

I have started work on the axles and plan to strip these, replace the damaged backplates and drum and get them blasted and primed and then reassembled.

The bogie assemblies on the hull don’t look bad. I had initially thought they were seized up but I figure with some light disassembly and some grease in the right places, they will be good to go.

The turret ring gear has shrunk and is damaged in two places so we are getting two sections water jet cut and they will be spliced into the ring gear and it all joined up.

We have gone to a Plan B with the hull welding. The guys in the engineering workshop have removed what was left of the sponsons on the rear hull piece only by way of carbon-arc air gouging. The removal of these pieces looks like it will give sufficient access to the main inner sections of the chassis/hull so that decent repair welds can be done on both sides.

The inner channelling for the cabling etc in the sponsons was stitch welded on both sides and so was a bit hard to get out. These were obviously put in place before the sponsons were fitted when the vehicles were manufactured. New pieces will be folded and welded into place to replace these.

The plan is that the guys will do a vertical cut from top plate to bottom plate on the end of the side sponson plates on the front hull pieces. Once the inner chassis/hull sections are joined they will cut pieces to fit the gap between that vertical cut on the front hull piece to the end of the sponson box on the rear hull piece, replicating the original welding.

Of course, we’ll need to fit the repaired ring gear in the hull first before that is all finalised!

If anyone can help, I am still on the lookout for some measurements of the mine racks please. I have the length of the rack but I need to know the width of the rack mount for both the lower and upper parts of the mount. That is, the distance from the point the mine rack is joined to the hull, and the folded corners of the upper and lower rack mounts. Could anyone give me these measurements please?

I’m looking for the following parts if anyone has any spares:

* Tool locker lids
* Exhaust elbow
* 1 x turret support roller bearing
* Covers for instrument lights on instrument panel
* Protectoscopes
* Engine oil breather

Thanks.