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

[Big D]

Hi all,

I am hopeful the M8 hull will be progressed in the next couple of weeks. In the meantime I have been working on tidying up small jobs like the grenade boxes, 37mm spare parts box, steering box and assorted gun parts.

I also rebuilt the 37mm elevation mechanism. It appears that the turret was a range target at some point. The elevation mechanism has a small arms hole through one side of the casting, through the centre shaft and out through the other side of the casting. There is also some other bullet damage to it. Fortunately the projectile missed the gears themselves. I cleaned up the entry and exit holes on the shaft and replaced the bearings at each end of the main shaft. Although the main gear is now a little out of round, I got it all to work again. It is not 100% smooth and although I wouldn't trust it in combat, it is working.

I am looking for the knob that bolts to the large adjustment wheel on the side if anyone has a spare.

[Big D]

More photos.

[Big D]

Hi all,

The job on the hull has had to be put off until after the Xmas break now so in the meantime I am still focussing on a lot of the small jobs with this.

As you can see from the photos, I’ve done some more painting on some of the interior parts as well as the gun parts that I had cleaned up in molasses.

I stripped all the turret hold down roller assemblies. As you can see I am missing one, and one in particular is pretty stuffed. I am on the lookout for a replacement for that one plus another one I need to make up the eight required. I’ll need to fabricate the vertical roller and pin for all of them as well as up the horizontal roller for another three of them.

I pulled the two turret support rollers out of the hull. Once out, one came apart fairly easily and both it and the housing are soaking in molasses. The other one looks like it is quite corroded and refuses to come apart so far. It is also soaking now for the Xmas break. I have another bearing housing which is very tidy and a contact has a bearing put aside for me. I am on the lookout for the gudgeon for that bearing though.

[Big D]

I had a look at the FT-237 radio mount and the radio tray. As you can see there is a fair bit of work in restoring the FT-237 so I have put that to one side at present while I concentrate on some of the other stuff.

Merry Xmas!

[Big D]

Hi all,

We have the two hull pieces positioned in place in the engineering workshop now. The pieces have been set up and tacked together to assess what is required to join them.

So far, we have worked off the top and bottom dimensions I have of the sponsons and the turret ring gear and set it up accordingly. Now that it is set up accurately,you can see that there is quite a gap on the driver side, while on the co-driver side, the guys had to cut away a fair bit of the old metal to get the pieces in the right place.

We actually believe the hull pieces could be from different M8’s and it wouldn't surprise me if there is at least one other M8 driving around with two mismatched halves! The pieces just don’t meet as you would expect from one piece that has been cut in half, and the fact that we had to cut away some metal to get them into place, along with a few differences in colour, suggests this could be the case. Doug, your comment about the Italian radio-mount is another clue.

We don’t see that as a problem though and we believe it will go together in a relatively straightforward way. I am looking for some feedback on how best to do the job though please.

The guys in the engineering workshop believe the best approach would be to replace the three outer plates (top plate, mid plate, lower plate) on the sponsons on each side with new pieces of mild steel, cut to size. Cutting off the existing plate is no problem and once fitted they can replicate all the previous welds.

This will give them full access to be able to weld the channel at the bottom of the hull and all the inner parts of the hull that would be difficult to get to. The disadvantage of course is in losing that original plate, but I see the practicality in this solution.

Option two is to remove what is left of the three plates on the sponsons on each side of the rear hull section only. New pieces for these would be cut to a size to match what was left of the plates on the front half of the hull, once they were tidied up, so that a neat join between the two could be made. This would give reasonable access to the channel and inner parts of the hull, and it would leave more of the original sponson in place. There would be a bit of grinding to tidy up the joins in the sponson.

What do all you experts suggest? I’m keen to hear any suggestions.

[Big D]

More photos.

[motto]

Hi Darryl
My inclination would be to go along with the guys who will be doing the job.
Maybe start with the side with the large gap and see how it turns out before tackling the other side so long as there is no problem with distortion.
So long as they can replicate the plates and welds it would have to be a better result than patching up.

Dave