M38CDN's sold by Crown Assets

[BCA]

Many Canadian M38 CDN Ford's were sold in Canada by Crown Assets Disposal Corporation about 1975-1977. A bill of sale was provided in order to register the M38 in the province of purchase. I recently found a copy of one of those CADC bills of sale for an M38 I had purchased in 1976: the bill of sale was interesting because it listed both the CFR number and the Ford serial number. The motor vehicle registry office in Ontario would just pick one of the numbers and in many cases call it a "Willys". I always wondered if the Army ever cared about the Ford serial or simply relied on the CFR that they assigned to each vehicle. Evidently in this case, Crown Assets paid attention to both numbers. Original bills of sale like this are important in researching the relationship between the manufacturer serial number and the CFR number. Anyone else out there with old CADC bills of sale? .... Brian

[rob love]

Not for an M38. but I have my bill of sale for 30 M151A2s which I bought for $110 each. Bill shows both the serial number and the CFR for each.

Had to scrap them all of course.

[David Dunlop]

Brian.

CADC Ads back then used to list both the CFR and Serial Number as well, for the most part. There was a huge auction of M38CDN's at Shilo one year, however, in which close to half the vehicles had CFR's posted only. Turned out those jeeps had been equipped with the SW Gas Heaters during their service life for which the installation of the heater kit required transferring all the data plates from the original dash plate to the front of the windscreen defroster box. Prior to sale of the vehicles, all the gas heater equipment was removed and the data plates were lost.

A few years later, piles of the heater parts showed up at a surplus yard in Teulon with all the data plates still attached.

David

[BCA]

Great information. Maybe some of those Crown Assets list will surface and fill some of the gaps in M38 research.