Great info !! I have a few other things that would be fun to put out there. The strait m151,s that I have had and seen over the years of demilling them have had differences some have a hole in the rear for the Jerry can upper strap to go through and some mount to the top like the standard 151 a1 and a2 , I've seen some with four latch battery box covers and some with the standard two. Everyone talks about there being no serial number on the body , that I do agree with but did you all know that the m151a2 body kits in the crate and it seems the last run of the a2 had a serial number plate welded to the body next to where your right leg would be where the fuel return and vent line is located. We cut up about 1500 new a2,s at camp Lejeune right out of supply , they had all the gear packed in them. All of them have these serial number plates on them . Do you all remember when zecon in Augusta Georgia hand the 300 plus a2,s for export only ? They where all rebuilt usmc a2s , they had the new body kits and rebuilt parts installed on them and they all had the serial plate on them. This numbers always matched the one on the dash. One last thing , I have welded on these late bodies before and I have found that the gage is lighter , the welds will blow through a lot faster then the none data plate bodies.I have a large collection of stamp data plates that we took of of the jeeps we cut up and I also have ford a2 data plates with the serial numbers on them of jeeps never built . As you all know ford lost the contract to amc/amgeneral but ford had already started gearing up to build the a2 . My father and George Pearcy from highland auto truck parts went to ford and purchased the left over stock , that's how I got the ford a2 data plates. The last a2s that amg built were in 1986 , they were for Pakistan . There were 1014 jeeps consisting of 1000 m825 106 canon jeeps and 14 m718a1 ambulance jeeps. We supplied axle shafts ,steering yokes and some transmissions. I was lucky to get to go to the south bend plant and see the last of the jeeps being built ! It amazed me how simple and hands on the line was that had built some many jeeps over the years . It could have fit it in most large high school gyms . I also got to see the circular line that built the bodies. Remember the plant was 3 million square feet !!! The sad thing was no pictures. I had to keep the photos in my mind !! They then took us over to the Mishawaka plant that they had started building hummers in , what a big difference ,it was a modern production line like you see on the history channel . The raw aluminum came in the door and out came a hummer at the other end. When I was there they were building ambulance versions for the Olympics in soul Korea . My father and I went back out to bid on the remains of the jeep production line , what a sight to see basket after basket on new parts , body parts , you name it ! It was hard to figure where some of the body parts went as when you brake one of the bodies down there are a lot of little parts that make up that body. Once again no pictures !!!! We bid on it all with highland auto truck parts and as you all may know king William from red river truck parts won the bid and all of the body parts went to the Philippines along with a lot of the parts. One last thing I will never forget. When I was inspecting all the parts to be sold, off to the side was a caged area about half the size of a basket ball court . This was full of all the data plates and the elusive 3m reflectors that we all can't find !! They told me this was not in the sale and slated to be scraped . O well . I hope you guys find this interesting please respond to any of it or if you have any corrections or things to ad. Thanks John Murray .
Murco@tnjmurray.com
It is my personal believe that they picked up making M151s to fill the void left from not making military jeeps after the M38A1 when out of production but that's just my humble opinion. Thanks
