Introduction, Just jumped in!

[ashyers]

Hello,
I've just purchased an M37 and joined the group. I've like them since I was a kid and admired the brush trucks at the local fire station. Seems having a break over the holidays and access to craigslist leads to all kinds of new projects! I'm a high school auto instructor and I thought it would be fun to work with my students on something different. We picked up the truck Sunday and have been busy working on it since. It is complete, rust free, running, mostly unmolested, but it sat for a decade and is a long way from a driver. We have our work cut out for us! So far we've put the truck on the rack and we're busy using the Operation and Organizational Maintenance Manual from 5/55 to sort out the brakes and a few other bits so it's safe to move the truck around the Shop. The goal is to turn the truck into a reliable driver that's clean and functional. No fancy engine swaps or anything, just a good honest M37. The students are really enjoying the experience, except for the spiders and layers of cement like mud caked on the underbelly of the truck!

I did have some questions for the group related to information and vendors.
1) What are the best manuals to have on hand for dealing with this truck and were do I find them? We will probably be into the entire truck and the manual we have is excellent, but lacks depth.
2) Which vendors are most supportive to the M37 crowd?
3) Is there a vendor that handles engine components? We may rebuild the motor down the road and I need to start preparing.

I'm sure I'll have tons of questions as we get deeper into the project! So far I'm really enthused, it's been fun to work on something totally different, and I get to use all of those big sockets for a change! Back to studying my manual...

Andy

[Cal_Gary]

Welcome Andy and your class of students-we need younger members to join our ranks! You could not have chosen a better shop project-Dodge made 115,000 of these trucks and parts are readily available through a number of vendors, this forum, and military swap meets.

Some of our forum members are also vendors:
jbizal is John Bizal of Midwest Military;
M-Series Rebuild is Charles Talbert and crew-military vehicles is Charles' life's work and he's very open with his advice and expertise.
Other sources (check the "Links" link up top):
Vintage Power Wagons (tons of M37 stuff but a bit pricy);
Adirondack Dodge
Sam Winer Motors
Vermont Commercial Salvage

Manuals: TM9-8030 is an excellent "how to" manual for most everything M37; others purchase the M37 CD manuals on eBay (but mine did not include the 8030 manual).

I'll leave some room for our forum mates to weigh in; glad to have you and crew with us!
Gary

[ashyers]

Gary,
Thanks so much for the welcome and info. I suspect I'll be contacting some of the vendors soon, the list gets longer daily! I found some good .pdf's online this evening dealing with M37's and my plate is pretty full at the moment. Since the vehicle sat so long there are quite a few unknowns and I suspect many surprises waiting for us. It's going to be fun to watch the project progress. It pretty cool when the students see what they are capable of with a bit of elbow grease and patience. Watching one of the young women in the class pull off the wheels yesterday was classic. I suspect it was 1/2 of her body weight!

Andy

[Cal_Gary]

Hey Andy, I see you're in Oakland. Take advantage of this: The Military Vehicle Preservation Association (MVPA) National Convention is in Pleasanton in 2016. The last day is open to the public-Members only on the 1st and 2nd days. You might consider joining. You should also check out the state club at MVCCNEWS.net-a great group to link up with, and they run the 2 biggest shows/swap meets west of the Mississippi twice per year over in Lodi! You should take your crew to their Spring meet-admission is free for the entire week and they'll have a blast!
Gary

[Elwood]

Andy, welcome to the forum.

As for the best manuals, I've found these three to be the most used on my shelf:

- TM 9-8030 Operation and Organizational Maintenance 3/4-Ton 4x4 Cargo Truck M37, May 1955

- TM 9-8031-2 Power Train Body and Frame for 3/4-ton 4x4 Cargo Truck M37, 1953

- ORD 9 SNL G741 List of All Service Parts M37, January, 1954

These are available in print (softbound) from Portrayal Press (http://www.portrayalpress.com), Vintage Power Wagons, and others. There's also a vendor on ebay selling them in looseleaf or spiral bound format, which would work well for shop use. I have these on CD, too, but my experience with the scanned versions has been less than stellar. During the scanning process, at least for the ones I have, some of the information became unreadable or worse yet was changed, particularly small numbers such as in percentages. Although the electronic copies are cheaper, I wouldn't buy them again.

There are many, many additional technical manuals, technical bulletins, maintenance work orders, etc. that apply to all or select components of these trucks, but the three manuals above are a good place to start.

You didn't mention what year your M37 is, but if it's an M37B1 (built from 1958 through 1968), or an M37 (built from 1951 through 1954) that's been upgraded, it will likely have the later (and much improved) NP420 transmission in it. If so, you'll probably also want these (assuming that you have a US version, the Canadian M37s used an ACME transmission):

- TM 9-2320-212-34P Repair Parts and Special Tools, April 1972

- TM 9-2520-232-35 Transmission, Mechanical, Assembly (2520-627-8308) (New Process Model No. 420), July 1959

The usual suspects (Midwest Military, Vintage Power Wagons, etc.) carry many of the engine parts. Since the basic short block flathead six cylinder was used by Chrysler from the early 1930s until the late 1950s in cars and trucks, and into the 1970s for industrial applications, some of the parts are also available from other, non-M37 specific suppliers. Just be careful that you're buying parts correct for the T245 or T245A version of this engine (assuming that your truck still has an original engine in it). Things like the oil pump, distributor, spark plug wires, flywheel, etc. are unique to these trucks.

If you haven't already done so, good things to find are the serial numbers of your frame and engine. These topics will help:

Frame VIN: http://www.g741.org/PHPBB/viewtopic.php ... ber#p47853

Engine S/N: http://www.g741.org/PHPBB/viewtopic.php ... ber#p42554

If you have any questions, ask away. The search function is very useful, too. The depth of knowledge and willingness to help here is amazing.

[52 M-42]

Welcome to the group, Andy! You will find a lot of useful help here on the forum that isn't in the manuals. It's experiential knowledge (tribal knowledge is probably more descriptive), and you will find it immensely helpful.

Your students may also enjoy discovering all the variations of these trucks (ambulance, radio truck, command truck, Canadian versions, Arctic kits, etc). It's also interesting to stumble across the various accessories; heaters, radios, tool kits, lights, etc. These trucks can be worse than Barbie Dolls as far as "accessories" go.

There is another site that has some information on these trucks that you might want to look at, called Steel Soldiers. There was a gentleman on that site that also was a teacher. He used an old, neglected M-37 in his automotive shop class as a restoration project that his students eventually entered in parades. You should still be able to locate his thread with the site's search function.

Good Luck with your project! I look forward to seeing pictures of your work and hearing the tales that go with the pictures.

52 M-42

[Tuko]

I'll also add vintage wiring of Maine, because I'm going to guess your original wiring is SHOT (look under the dash) and it would be a shame for your new project to go up in smoke from an electrical fire!

[ashyers]

Thanks everyone. I'm excited to see all the replies !

Well, I took the advice given and recorded the S/N's of the truck and just finished entering them in the registry. The S/N's are as follows:

MFR. SER. NO. 80017193
CONTRACT NO. 8615
DATE DEL. 12-14-51
MODEL T245
Engine No. T245-I2246
Frame No. 80017193
Cowl No. 9102-1076 (added 1/9)

The truck is registered as a '53 and was first sold in CA in '67. Judging by the mud caked under it and pine needles it may have lived somewhere else for prior to making its way here. Both the mud/clay and pine needles remind me of what you would see in Georgia. I wonder... It has troop seats, a soft top (F & R), and a swing away spare. It also has some form of knob on the left side of the dash that appears to be plumbed into the brake system, maybe a hydraulic brake lock??? I have not seen one before. I'll check it out further tomorrow.

I'm getting together my list of vendors and the shopping will likely start this weekend. We've been busy pulling the brakes (love those flat head screws!) and will likely have the hubs and bearings off pretty soon. When the kids leave for the day I spend some quality time with a scraper and shop vac removing clay and crud. Cheap therapy!

Andy

[jim lee]

Welcome!

You may find working on M37s to be, er.. unconventional? I sure did! I spend much of my time saying things like "What in the world were the designers of this thing thinking?!?" The military manuals will tell you to do crazy procedures. I found that they actually tend to work! Post pix of what your doing, this saved me a few times when people here looked and were able to tell me to rethink what I was doing because I was screwing something up.

+1 on the vintage wiring. Gritted my teeth and bought the set. Love it! Its so nice to have everything working.

Buy most of my stuff at midwest. They are a delight to work with.

Remember, pix or it didn't happen!

-jim lee

[Elwood]

Thanks everyone. I'm excited to see all the replies !

Well, I took the advice given and recorded the S/N's of the truck and just finished entering them in the registry. The S/N's are as follows:

MFR. SER. NO. 80017193
CONTRACT NO. 8615
DATE DEL. 12-14-51
MODEL T245
Engine No. T245-I2246
Frame No. 80017193

Nice that your data plate and frame numbers match. If the Chrysler historical archives are still open, you should be able to obtain a printed copy of the original factory build card for your truck. It will show you what engine number was installed in your frame (hopefully the same one, but these things tended to be swapped around), and possibly what military registration number was assigned. The build card will look like this:



You can request the build card here: http://www.fcanorthamerica.com/company/ ... vices.aspx

...and a swing away spare. It also has some form of knob on the left side of the dash that appears to be plumbed into the brake system, maybe a hydraulic brake lock??? I have not seen one before. I'll check it out further tomorrow.

The driver's side spare was added, as these were factory-installed only on the M43 ambulances, and on the later M37B1 models. The spare was originally mounted in the bed on your M37.

The knob sounds like the pump for the engine primer system. Your serial number is early enough that this system was factory-installed; the TM 9-8030 that you have has a list of running changes that were made (Chapter 1, Section 6).

[just me]

The pump is the cold weather primer. It is tied to the fuel line and plumbed to 3 locations on the intake manifold with nozzles.
I am repiping mine as a windshield washer squirter with a tank on the left kickpanel and nozzles on the cowl. It will never be cold enough for a primer here. My brother repiped his to fill the floatbowl of his carb as the gas boils out during the summer. Saves cranking time.

[ashyers]

The fun has started...
Ordered some parts today and will be looking for more. We removed all of the brakes there was one oddball set of shoes the PO put on so that started what I expect to be an avalanche of parts orders.

Unfortunately it looks like the front diff is toast and the rear's tired. I'm going to be looking for gears/center sections. Not a show stopper, but irritating and $! How does setting one of these up compare to an 8.8 Ford/12 Bolt GM passenger car rear? Any suggestions for gears?

Looking forward to the weekend so I can plan next weeks adventures!

Andy

[52 M-42]

Well, Andy, you're confronted with a major dilemma that most owner face further down the restoration path. The question is: To Restore or To Modify (improve, update, modernize, etc). The stock gear ratio is 5.83:1. There is a set of 4.89:1 gears available. These trucks really do not have the braking system to handle higher road speeds. So, if you put the 4.89 gears in you might want to look at the disc brake conversion. Once you start down that path, you may end up changing lots of other things over time until you have a modern truck on an old frame with a old body. The other path is to restore the truck as it was designed. It was designed to keep pace with tanks (the slowest vehicle in a convoy or in the field). It was meant to carry heavy loads and tow a trailer through ugly off road conditions with the troops. It was not designed or meant to win races or zip around freeways and city streets.

You need to decide what kind of truck you want before you rebuild the third members. If you stick with a stock Restoration, the manuals are your friend and never lie to you (they may have errors); but you will go slow (by modern standards). Some people just can NOT handle going slow. If you decide to build a modern truck, the world is your oyster and you will have a wealth of choices (but it cost you $$$$). You may eventually end up with a truck with all the mod-cons (power steering, disc brakes, bigger engine, higher road speeds, automatic transmission, etc.)

So, you need to decide; "to pick up on one and let the other one ride".

[jim lee]

flux capacitors are somewhere along the path of trying to make 'em go faster.

-jim lee

[ashyers]

Progress (!?) continues. I spend an insane # of hours Sunday washing the truck. It's amazing how durable the wonder mud is, nothing short of point blank with the pressure washer would budge the stuff. At least it's easier for us to inspect and work on.

While we are waiting on some parts and planning our next move we have been playing with the engine a bit. The lack of a T-stat and wonky carb settings was not helping. Tomorrow we're going to flush the cooling system well, install a T-stat and cap, and do a little tune up. Yesterday the kids did a compression test on 4 cylinders (teenagers combined w/ 55 minute classes...) and last I'd heard things were looking OK, of course they took the notes home! 145psi was what I heard...

The diff situation has me a bit bummed out, but we have plenty to do while I sort that. I don't have any intention of massive modifications on the truck. I'd love to stick with as much of the factory drivetrain as possible and increase the reliable cruising speed a bit, maybe 55-60mph. I'm guessing this may require gears, a bit of compression, and perfect brakes.

So far we're having some fun. I'll try and post some photos this week.

Andy