FWD HAR-01

[jack neville]

The truck in post 26 has been recovered.
The truck in post 23 after having languished for the last 9 years as garden art has also been recovered.
Some abandoned but very good sheet metal from Cloncurry in Queensland has been purchased.
I will start a new thread but I am pretty excited to have gathered all these rare relics in a short space of time.

[Mike Cecil]

Well done, Jack, looking forward to the new build thread.


Mike

[Bob Phillips]

I would like to add a few comments re FWD vehicles now that this thread has been revived. I live just a few miles from Kitchener Ontario in Canada where the FWD company had their canadian assembly plant. trucks arrived in a broken down state from the home factory (Clintonville Wisconsin I think) and were reassembled in Kitchener. I have attached a photo from the early war years. The site is long since redeveloped and after the war FWD made a variety of heavy trucks using International cabs. In my 40 years of prowling through junkyards and farmyards looking for military vehicles in Ontario, I can tell you that the FWD was not very common here though I found several o ver the years. Today they are non existent except for a few hoarded away by collectors. I owned a cab over version with a twin boom Holmes wrecker that had been operated by De Havilland aircraft but the wrecker went to Holland and the truck to a collector in the Ottawa area. They were neat trucks with wooden framed cabs that unfortunately didn't survive Ontario weather conditions very well. I also seem to recall that while they were slow moving vehicles ( same as CMPs) the speed reduction occurred in the chain drive transfer case. I still have a NOS transfer case buried in a van body here somewhere. I can post a few pictures of the old trucks that were here years ago if anyone is interested.

FWD-kw.jpeg FWD-coe.jpg

[jack neville]

Serial number of the garden art truck is 147564.

[jack neville]

These AWM photos show truck#147755 (?)
I don't know how many of these trucks came to Australia but as tow vehicles for radar units there would not have been many I would not think.
If someone knows how to decipher the ARN registers could they let me know.
Interesting they only have one headlight-on the right side, as we drive on the left in Australia. Maybe?

[Grant Bowker]

I have the idea that the US contracts for the HAR had two headlights but the commonwealth contracts only had one. I don't recall the source for that belief, possibly the Observer's Handbook by Bart Vanderveen?

[Hanno Spoelstra]

What a great project to take on Jack, you are to be commended.

Have you read the article “FWD HAR-Series Trucks” in Wheels & Tracks issue no. 5?