Restoration of 1937 ME31 30 cwt Dodge.

My father picked up a new Dodge truck from Harden & Johnson, in Sydney on Monday the 8th November 1937 after having travelled down to Sydney on the Sunday night passenger train from Parkes. The truck cost four hundred pounds, one shilling and eight pence. The first registration cost six pound, seven shillings. Over the next 15 years it was used to cart wheat and wool from the family farm at Peak Hill.




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Sadly it fell into disrepair, to put it mildly but as Swishy would say "It should buff up OK"
Actually to be honest I pulled it apart in 1968 and was going to use the chassis to make a small pig trailer ( probaby much to my father's dismay) but changed my mind and built a dog trailer instead.



On 8th November last year my son and I decided that we now have enough spare parts to begin the restoration of the truck and hopefully to have it finished by the 8th November 2017 in time for the 80th anniversary of the day my father took delivery of it.



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Geoff
Gudday M8

Gr8 project
hope U take us thru thiz with u're box brownie

R the rears single tyres

always wondered wot an ol rusty cab would look like ifn u grabd sum red paint n rubd it on n off the rust with a rag

LOL

Me Jist Dreem n

cya

We thought if we are going to restore one of these trucks we may as well do two. So this is the practice one for the real one. (That is the Dodge). This is a 1938 FG459 Fargo we bought a few years ago and has just been sitting in the corner of the shed for about six years.

Hello Geoff,
Looking forward to seeing your restoration, certainly have it in bits, you may have already done this, I learned it is worth while dismantling the springs and getting the rust out from between the leaves.
Cheers, David.

David,

Yes, the eight spring packs from the two trucks have all been disassembled and each spring leaf sanded back to bare metal, painted and reassembled with new centre bolts, shackle pins and bushes. Nearly ninety spring leaves in total. A few weeks ago the Fargo was in as many bits as the Dodge is now.

Geoff.

Geoffa, Firstly I love the old photo's and the one of the line up at the wheat stacks is a ripper.
I am as well as few others will be looking forward to the progress of your restorations.
Colin

A couple more pics of the restoration. Cleaning up and painting brake shoes in bulk.

Over the years we have been collecting some Fargo and Dodge trucks for spare parts to complete the restorations.
The first pic is of an FG333 Fargo we bought at a clearing near Baradine more than 20 years ago. Some people wanted to have wedding photos taken with some "Old Stuff". We have plenty of "old stuff" so they took lots of photos with old trucks and tractors The next two pics are of one we bought in Melbourne about 5 years ago. The last is of one we bought at Warrren a few months ago.

Fantastic stuff going on there fantastic to have the old photos and history to go with it
I would have thought spiders would have not been very common back it was built

Paul