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

[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.