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M548

WillWagner

The Person You Were Warned About As A Child
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Well, I have been guilty of not taking pics and contributing to this place like I should considering the stuff that I work on on the weekends :sad:

We have been giving the M548A1 a face lift....the one in my avitar. A while back, Craig traded the guy from BMG parts 2, M49 rings for an M66 ring. The M49's had trolleys and all. When the M66 arrived, it had some broken parts and was missing some pieces. If you deal with this guy, watch it! Any who, I told Craig I'd fix it. I checked all over for a TM for the ring, but the one I needed was still a classified item. I found a copy, but before it could be sent off to me, the party wiling to send it to me was tragically killed in an accident where he was stationed, RIP DF. A set of ring mount legs was found and acquired. Time passed. Craig had some ROP kids come in and one of the projects that was decided on was squirting some fresh color on a few vehicles. The 548 being one of them. The students did an awesome job prepping the carrier. It was squirted with some fresh Cardinal paint in OD and finished with brown and black applied as per the paint and markings TM. We figured now was a perfect time to fix the M66 and mount it. On one of the trips out to the scrap yard, I came across a few M66 rings that were very heavily demilled, aka, torched. I took advantage of these demilled items by finding out how to disassemble the ring far enough to replace the items that were broken and unusable and acquire the missing pieces to complete the ring at the Museum. Myself and a new volunteer got the ring back together today and got it mounted on the carrier. The ring still needs squirting, but it looks AWSOME up there. I will snap some pics of the M1008 that the ROP kids painted and of the work to finish the half track I did the tracks and brakes on.
 

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WillWagner

The Person You Were Warned About As A Child
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We have the other two bows, the fixed ones that the hoist and beam anchor to. They are ready to squirt. I tried gettin with George at White Owl, but he doesn't seem interested in selling the parts from the hull he has..go figure, he has, we want, but won't return e-mails :-? He has the door window frames and cab bows. Carnac says he might have some parts. The only things we need to complete the carrier are the driver and passenger windows, the frames for them and the rear bow. A cab and cargo cover would be cool :cool: along with a few extra road wheels. If anyone has a lead on the aforementioned parts, PM me! I took some detailed pics of the windshield frames and the metal supplier around the corner broke the material for the frames. All I gotta do is miter the corners and weld them up. One of the other guys who frequents the Museum is a glass guy..also a SS member, DSD..is gonna cut and fit the glass into the frames after I get them fabbed up.

Dont think there are too many around that run. When they started de-milling them, they took the power package out of them. All that was left was a bunch of aluminum. I think they were scrapped. Some were used by municipalities for fire stuff and some were cut behind the engine compartment and used by loggers, kinda like halftracks.
 
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cranetruck

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Good work Will. There is a Vintage Video (#VHS151) that shows the M548 at APG back in the sixties. They were originally made to swim, but that was later not a requirement according to the later TMs, IIRC...
Thanks for the images/video, Will and Jeff!
 

TacticalTruck

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Mine is an original M548 with sump pumps and skirt mounting holes. I got some skirts off a M113 only to realize the M548 is longer. The A1's didn't have swim capability.

Jeff
 

WillWagner

The Person You Were Warned About As A Child
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Not mine, belongs to the Museum! You gotta stand in line. I am the son Craig never wanted!!

On another note, the M60 left on a lowboy today for the VietNam Memorial Wall in Lake Havasu, Az. I'll have pics in a bit.
 

WillWagner

The Person You Were Warned About As A Child
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Hey Jay, know if they have extra parts? I did up the windshield frames. I went to a local metal/fab shop and showed them a pic of the frame and asked if they could bend some flat. I work with them quite a bit on the repowers I do. John said it could be done, we started yacking and then he said since I was doing this for the Museum, I could HAVE the material! Very cool. I picked up the material, mitered the corners and fabbed the frames up, done deal. I did NOT take pics of the bare metal or the pre-finished product...sans grinding and flap wheeling, but here are a few of the finished, less hole for thumbscrew and glass. They are at DSD's glass shop now.
 

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