New to me C60L's

[Hanno Spoelstra]

Hello Ken,

Amazing find, now see if we can reconstruct its history.
What if it could tell its tales about being built in Canada, shipped to India to be assembled and fitted with a locally made wooden body. Then taken into army service, again being shipped over vast distances and used in various countries, changes of ownership, only to be sold off and serve out it's working days at a farm. And now finally retired in your barn.
It will make for an interesting historic information sheet, if not a booklet of several pages.

Will be following this with great interest.

Hanno

[Ken Smith]

Thanks everyone for your input, I phoned the farmer today to give him an update and check up on a few C60L related things. He said I sounded like a kid in a toy shop.
The only photo he has of the truck with the wooden body on it was taken too far away to make out any details. The truck is in a paddock being loaded with bagged wheat. They were one of the first farms to change to bulk in our area, and that is when they dumped the wooden body for a hydraulic steel body made by another local farmer/engineer.
He does have a few photos of the truck when he shifted his house not once but twice, and I mean the whole house, on a couple of dollies he made himself. He is going to get some copies of the photos made for me.

Tony I would be 100% sure our trucks were kept together some time in their lives. Looks like yours lasted longer than mine in service. I have taken a photo of the 4004 it looks like 1004 but you can just make out the pointy side bit of the 4 if you look carefully .

Keith and Mike thanks for your input, your enthusiasm and sharing your knowledge.

Hanno that was an interesting chronology of events and probably close to the facts, the farmer wrote out a similar A4 page list of the trucks civilian history.

Ken

DSCF4326.jpg DSCF4321.jpg DSCF4320.jpg DSCF4319.jpg

[Ken Smith]

Tony,I forgot to put in I don't want to sand the doors as the paint is to good, there is nothing on the bumper, but interestingly when I was rubbing the dust from the 4004 for the photo, another set of numbers has started to appear under all the ones I have found so far.

I think Mike is correct and these trucks sat around getting painted a lot.



What do you think of the weird looking 7 at the beginning, it is really thick paint?

Ken

[Tony Wheeler]

Originally Posted by Ken Smith

What do you think of the weird looking 7 at the beginning, it is really thick paint?

If you rub back to the right of it Ken I believe you'll find another complete ARN stencil. Judging by the colours there were two complete repaints in Australian service, so I'd expect to find 3 separate ARN stencils. The two most recent ones are visible already, which means this 7 belongs to the original one.

I think you need to work on the lower serial, ie. the one you've just spotted. It appears to be the most recently painted IARN. The one you've already revealed is less than conclusive, mainly because the first digit is unclear (although I agree it's most likely a "4") but also because it looks to be from a different repaint, in a much larger digit size. The vertical looks way too fat to be part of the same stencil set, and as a "4" it's out of alignment with the 004. Maybe the correct "4" has already flaked off...? That's the problem with using a scraper, the flakes usually comprise several layers of paint, and you can wind up chasing the wrong digit. Based on my own experience I'd strongly recommend avoiding the scraper and sticking to wet rubbing only, working gently through each layer of paint, and taking lots of photos as you progress. For precision work on digits I use a folded corner of wet and dry, wearing magnifying spectacles. It's slow painstaking work but it's the only option when you have so many serial numbers superimposed. This is the trickiest one I've seen, you rarely if ever get so many serial number repaints, and they're usually above and below each other.

Fortunately the bottom serial is almost clear of the others, and with very little paint on top it should rub back quite easily. Also, since we already have 004 we only need to confirm the first digit, and check for anything to the left of it, which is hopefully the 2 smaller IARN digits. These appear to be in evidence already on earlier repaints, in particular what looks to be a small "4" jammed in at the left, possibly associated with the larger "4" stencil mentioned above. I'd expect the broad arrow to absent on the front shell, just like the pic below, as there's obviously no room.

I agree with you about the doors Ken, there's no guarantee the IARN is present anyway, as it was far from universal practice on these C6OL doors, judging by BCOF photos. Hopefully the front shell will yield a full IARN, without resorting the driver's side! Apologies for the bum steer on the bumper, I should have known it wouldn't be there on these vehicles.

Nice work on the bonnet, quite a bit of info there. I'm curious to know what "CLASS" refers to in this context. Interesting to see two stencils, which seems to indicate both repaints were Northern Command.

Anyway thanks for your all efforts Ken, it's priceless info you're providing here. I believe yours is the only IARN ever reported anywhere, and I'm pretty sure we'll never see another one!

P01813.874 Sea of Japan 1950-09-28 3RAR en route from Kure Japan (BCOF) to Pusan Korea aboard.jpg

[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

[motto]

More power to you Ken. Looks as though the vehicles have fallen into good hands.
At the very least you beat the scrappy.
David

[Phil Waterman]

Originally Posted by Ken Smith

.....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

Hi Ken

This says something about the family, I'm sure they will appreciate the pictures of the progress with the big thing being it back on the road.

When you write up the history of the vehicles be sure to include this as part. You are fortunate to have so much of the vehicles history. Look forward to see pictures.

Cheers Phil