FGT Restoration

[rob love]

I have stripped down the 15cwt frame, and found the side rails to be nearly identical to the tractor. The metal thickness is the same, and many of the rear cross-members are the same, although a few have to be re-located to different positions and some added.

I have two main issues with this frame. Someone had modified the crossmember over the transfer case, and also elongated the holes at the hitch and drilled a number of different holes in the last foot of the frame for dump body hinges. I have drilled the various rivets on the brackets and punched them through with a hammer and a punch. I will likely drill the holes to just under 7/16, ream them to size, and install grade five 7/16 UNF bolts with suitable length shanks into the holes. Locknuts will be all metallic feature as opposed to nylon. These were the method the military used with frames like the MLVW.

One consideration is whether to sandblast and paint the frame before installing the brackets, or after. Doing it before will get a lot more paint into the project, but will leave a few thousandths of an inch of soft material where I bolt on the cross-members. In the big picture, I don't think it will matter, as long as the nuts are re-torqued after a few years.



For the hitch area, because the tractor has the hitch that sits between the frame rails, and the 15cwt had the hitch below the frame, I am going to cut off the last foot of frame on the tractor and graft them in place of the back foot of the 15cwt frame. Besides welding them, there is a very large and heavy plate for the rear roller fairlead that will keep everything together.