when it goes wrong, it goes wrong fast

first, the pics....

Notice the full leather gauntlet, and what's left of the cutting wheel . In this case, I was bolt cutting when the cutting wheel failed....It jumped out of the cut, and ran up my glove, finally grabbing my long sleeve.

I wear these heavy gloves and a tight sweater while working so there are no loose ends...even so, this shows the result of a wheel failure.

This was lucky. I work alone 95% of the time, and all the work planning revolves around safety, it has to, help is just too far away. Each task is planned, tools and secondary safety processes, checked

Luckily, I'm a Fire and Rescue Tech. when I'm not rebuilding armour, so I have the Emergency Medical training to patch myself up, and the right trauma kits , including self use Tourniquets....I got off cheaply this time 

This work can be dangerous in the life altering sense, so lets all learn and make safety job 1!

Winter Soldier

Busy day here getting BOTH AX 160 engines packaged up and sent for rebuild . Frame will be following shortly for blast and paint, then we start adding things back on

so, we had to move the shop around, and the Ferret came out for some fresh -20 C air . You can see a bit of the stunning frost covered surroundings in West Quebec

Front Axle dropped out

well, that's off !

here are few details of the parts that go into the axle mount, note, the angled shim plate. One spring, the drivers side, had stencil on it denoting WHITE HALF TRACK, so, we are curious if this is factory, or wartime replacement, certainly, the recent find of damage in the steering worm makes us wonder .....what happened here ?

we will replicate this stencil when we rebuild the spring pack

Art Shot

Yes, ! its early and not on our normal Friday slot, but we are now getting into a stage of archival batching, artifact identification, cataloguing  and evaluation , so , our posts will be reduced to just a few times per week as we complete this necessary task of this aspect of curatorial work. Once this is complete, then the posts resume in earnest as we rebuild the M3 from the frame up

the artfully cast rear axel drain plug !

steering gear details etc...why dust covers work !

Into the front axle now, and for the most part, its a pretty straightforward tear down, but we found an interesting detail that will make one end of the steering arm hard to strip due to rust (its now soaking, on its end in light machine oil ).

As we were getting ready to remove the ball ends from the shaft, we noted that the aft end of the bar was covered in a lace up canvas sleeve. this now degraded sleeve, had kept water and dirt out of the mechanisms for over 70 years! leaving the parts in near new condition.

Contrast this to the rusted fore end of the arm, and you can see the advantage of the cover !

We pulled the sector shaft and worm from the steering box as well, and although in good shape, we noted what must have been a hard impact at one point, as the sector followers have quite the "divot" in them !

Happy New Year !

After our break, which saw record low temperatures here, and now snow, are back at it ! We have removed the last of the mods that had been welded to the hull and frame , in this case, the remnants of the "A" frame crane mounts that had been stick welded INSIDE the side bumper box section, which resulted in some interesting Yoga like poses with the air grinder to access these spaces ...we will spare you the pictures!

We are however finished with the rear axel removal and are now going to the front now the brakes are off.
Here are some detail pictures of the casting marks. Note the red paint on the spring shackle pivot, denoting that its a lubrication point. Its been hand painted on in wartime service, most likely at the unit level

You can see in the top picture, the suspension "Bump Stop" where the spring would bottom out on, its a very heavy casting welded to the frame