new addition

[bobc]

Hi Guys, It's been a while since I last posted on here,I've been wrapped up with the half-track restoration and trying to keep food on the table, I still watch for stuff to drag home and still use the CCKWX around the place to move the bigger stuff,but it's clutch is about gone and I didn't want to have to deal with it so I bought my friends 41 352, I actually bought it for him about 12 years ago because he wanted to do some thing with it some day, but I realized he never would and I didn't want to have to put that clutch in, it is a winch model so I plan on moving the A frame from the other truck, only this time no bubba welding on the frame, I'd like to find some pictures of a war time installation, hopefully with bolted on brackets, the truck is a very complete and clean cab and chassis, they mounted a gas tank under the seat and put a flat bed on the back, it has the early civilian dash and runs great, would be a great restoration canidate if it had the gas tank and bed, since I did get a title for it when I bought it, one of the few vehicles I've ever gotten a title for! I think it's in the registery I'll have to check. So if anyone has a good picture of how they mounted the A frame up front I would really like to get a copy.

[Cat Man]

Welcome back Bob,

Nice to here that you are back in CCKW country. Here are a couple pictures of A frame installations. The two photos of a single telescoping boom are from Burma. They are disassembling CCKW dump trucks and stuffing them in C-47's to fly the hump to China. This was before the two part CCKW "airborne" truck models. I think the boom may have been salvaged from a wrecker truck. It is mounted on the cross beam and bolted to the CCKW front bumper.

The other illustration is from a 1945 manual on use of Airdrome Construction Equipment TM5-252. The later M series trucks have a factory made add-on A frame kit that is shown in the manuals. In that illustration you can see they use the standard snatch block and also run the guy line back to the rear of the truck and hook it to the pintle hitch. No modification required. I think you have to have an open cab to clear the guy line to the top of the boom for that.

The other way I have seen an a frame attached on the front of a CCKW is with a 4 Inch round ring at the bottom of each leg and that is hooked over each front tow hook on the top side of the bumper.









Since I work alone most of the time, I know a crane is a handy piece of equipment. I can't convince my wife to let me buy a GI wrecker truck (yet).

Cat Man

[bobc]

It never fails to amaze me how great these old trucks run, after moving the Studebaker US-6 out into the back lot for storage I pulled the battery from the truck I'm currently using as my yard truck and took it out out to the new yard truck, the starter was shot so I had to use a 12 volt battery to get it to crank fast enough, a little shot of ether and off she went, it sucked up the gas from the gas tank and started to idle, then fuel started spraying all over from a rotten hose, the great thing about having your own junk yard is you always have what you need to get some thing moving, new piece of used hose and she fired up again, the clutch feels really good on this truck, drop the boxes into low 6 and pulled out of the hole she had settled into over the last 12 years, I drove it over to the barn and parked it nose to nose with the other truck, I pulled all the battery cables and cleaned the connections, but no good still wouldn't crank on just the 6 volt battery, another trip to the yard to find the best looking starter, I pulled it down and it looked new inside, the cummutator looked perfect,brushes looked new, I'm pretty sure this starter was rebuilt not long before the truck it was in was parked, I gave it a refreshing and lube and installed it, while I had the old starter off I scraped some of the gunk off the block, it looks like shiny dark green paint underneath all that gunk, with the new starter she cranks great, the choke cable was broken so I scrounged up an M-series fording cable, the big T handle makes it easier to pull,especially when wearing gloves, today after all the family activities ran down I went out to see if my work paid off,it was barely above freezing,I pulled the choke and stomped the starter, she turned over twice and fired right up, push in the choke about half way and she sat and idled, oil pressure is about 45 pounds and she sounds great, some one built a muffler out of a piece of 6 inch pipe, it sound like a detroit powered fire truck! According to the voltmeter it isn't charging so I need to full field it and see if it will charge, then I can start the yard truck conversion, I have an M series bed that I'm going to cut down to 10 feet, then mount the A frame up front. I never realized how much taller the other truck sat with the 9:00X20's on it, this think looks like a dodge sitting in front of it with those little 7.50X20's on it, I have an M-211 out in the yard with some good looking 9.00's so I'll probably swap those out, these tires are really rotten and I hope to actually make this road worthy, some duck rims would be ideal, but I'd rather have them for my open cab G0506 project coming this spring, for now it's just fun to pull an old girl from the weeds and breath new life into it!