Another A2 Project

[Floyd]

Stagg: You're one brave hombre welding and or cutting in shorts.

Floyd

[Stagg]

Nonsense. Its not bravery, its just nuts! Besides that is Curfman, Our resident welder, he is pretty good when he is not sleepy. My welds look bad and hold even worse.

I have my own version of crazy.
After one of our events I had to go collect up our concertina wire... I did use gloves for safety!

My fellow Combat Engineers understand.

I'm collecting up parts right now, hopefully we get some good work done this weekend.

[Stagg]

I'm late for pictures but work was actually done this weekend.



Grinding and truck bed liner


Rebuilding the fender

before grinding began

After the primer, this was as good as we could get it without finding a new fender.



Footwells, after getting the rails rebuilt below.




Hood is exceptionally nice, once you get the paint cleaned off... hours of sand blasting later.


Front prepped for paint


Tool Door was rusted through, but we put 2lb of wire into it and now it looks like a solid door


More priming


Fixing the rocker panels... kind of.


Almost new looking hood.


Now with Green paint.




Lots of painting!

Seats once we got they straightened out.

VRC-12 mounts. Or whatever a R-442 plus an AM2060 equals in VRC code!

[Stagg]

Now with 4 color camo... this weekend is getting long

Started out with Field Drab. Then did sand, and finally black.








Square mirrors don't look a good, but work much better.



Decals, and stencils are next.







The usual obvious information.


"A Good Driver" sticker is a must on these vehicles. And 65mph seems really optimistic. Speed limited by driver courage!


This one is not really true, but lots of fun to place near passengers in the back seat, because they are touching the radio and the usual bundles of cables.


I have what appears to be a Ford, but with an AMG motor. The motor data plate is still readable, but the sticker was shot, so I redid that too!


Pattern is a little off, but will get fixed as we touch up the edges. Our first batch of paint brushes started dieing and we couldn't make neat edges anymore.

Me putting the lights back in and pealing tape off all the lights.

Curfman showed up and put the US insignia on the bumpers.


Fresh paint on my A2. ASwayze's A1 is right next to it.
(He has pictures of his mutt, but has not been approved on these forums. Any help there would be great)


After all this work, new data plates are a must.


Swayze got the seats put back in today. Now all that is really left is a wheel bearing replacement, and some general PMCS and we are off to the races.


NOS top STILL has talcum powder on it. And will not scrub off for anything in the world.
Seems like we will sand the vinyl to pieces before the talc will come off! Any thoughts?

[Stagg]

Thats it for now. I'm hiding out in Ohio for a little while and will get back to work in a week or two.
In the mean time, I have to find the last couple pieces and get them mailed to KC for the final work weekend.

Then I should be able to take this one home, and we start all over again on the M718.

[toptiger]

Great job on saving another 151!

[toptiger]

JUST DON'T ASK THAT NIT PICKIN RICKF TO JUDGE IT

[Stagg]

They are indeed saved. At least for a few more years.

For now, we tend to think it looks great since we just did a bunch of work on it, however we are NOT kidding ourselves either. Obviously we didn't do a perfect restoration.... at some point I do want to do a perfect job of it. And that is where we do need a critical judge.

The reason we have so many of these is because we use them quite a bit. They are still working vehicles for us.
So they get scratched up, and occasionally dented doing light work. Our M35A2s work the same way. Have not destroyed one yet. In fact, over the years they tend to slowly get better!
As we repair them, however, we now see some of the long term problems coming. Mine will be stored in a garage for example to preserve it for as long as possible.
Allan's is keep under a tarp.
Dewayne keeps his in a building.
Others with less space keep the tops on them at a minimum just to keep the interior from rotting away from sun and rain.

This way they do not turn back into rolling rust traps. Some day they should be great candidates for a true restoration, and at that point we could stop driving them through the woods and start collecting them.

Either way, comments and criticisms are expected. It is how I know what I need to work on next

The real question now, is M11 Decon bottle or No bottle. And if Yes, then where?

[toptiger]

No decon bottle or other crap-just the pioneer tools- looks like an honest motor pool vehicle, perhaps not one in a line inf, cav or arty unit but it would fit fine in an assault helicopter company motor pool in 1968-70, in fact it would win best in show among my units vehicles.
great save, guys

[mrdibbles]

I agree... nicely done guys. Looks like fun was had and the Jeep looks excellent.

[Aswayze]

We always have fun doing this stuff!

Once Stagg gets back from leave, we'll get the last of the mechanical bits ironed out and this one is good to go.



I'll put an independent post up of the other East Wind related projects we've got brewing, suffice to say, we have no lack of things to do around here....

[rickf]

I think what Toptiger was referring to was my rather anal take on body repair. I figure if you are going to do it then do it right the first time so as not to have to do it over again. In your case I was looking at the left rear fender top which was not a hard repair but you just left it all bent to hell and welded the cracks with a ton of wire. No offense but you know that those welds are going to crack just about right away. That whole fender top is brittle from all of the heat. Now when you go to do it again that panel will have to be replaced no matter what. I made the comment way back in the beginning about welding over paint and rust.
Personally I think these are patch and paint jobs and not restorations, you even say that in another thread. I have had a couple of pm's mentioning that this type of work really does not belong in a restoration section. I am up in the air because there are a lot of good pictures that you guys took the time to take. My take is that saving a M151 is not the same as restoring one. The original intent of this restoration section was to document full restorations. Let me know where we want to go with this section, I do not want another "General" or "Favorite pictures" section here.

I hear Rainmans fingers burning already!

[Stagg]

Rick that is a pretty fair assessment! The cracked fender bit has happened already to Swayze's mutt once.
I'm certain that my tool box lid is not far away from the same fate. Those foot well welds are not the prettiest, at least I got them sanded down once. And the don't even look at the welds underneath!

That said, I can't weld to save my life. Not yet at least. I am getting there. I can generally tell a good weld from a bad one, but I'm not ready to start yelling at my help about it either. As you have already seen I will have plenty of pieces to practice on for a long while.

I will leave the where and what forum discussion up to the others. My dog in this fight is pretty small, since I can put pictures where ever you want.... someday I want to actually take this thing apart and truly restore it. Engine needs love and paint too! I have the money but not the time (and I want to do it myself, not pay for it to be done) and someday I'm sure the opposite will be true.
Either way at least now I have a nice mutt to start that project. It has taken me years to find a "nice" mutt.
In the mean time I have a fun toy to learn on and study.

[Aswayze]

It will get ripped off when the antenna hangs on a tree anyhow so no sense worrying excessively about it, like I said before, we are not really doing shiny show jeeps here, we are really only after functionality. It may crack and when it does we'll weld it again. Some time when we come up with a super deal on a nice fender, we'll just fix it right.

My fender got whacked by the antenna mast, not by welding, it had't really been fixed prior to that.

I guess the big question here is if this does not belong in restorations, where does it belong and would you be good enough to move it there for us with you super moderator powers? I agree what we do is not resto work, we're just making them functional again.

[rickf]

I am going to leave things the way they are until I get some more input from the others. I would say General discussion would work, or favorite pictures. Lets see what the consensus is and then I can move it as needed.

Rick