Chevrolets

Lang the photo of the Army Chev is a 1941. Headlights are part of the mudguard, whereas 1940 are separate.

Yes that is true.

The Australian Army had the more pointy nose 39 models, then the 1940 major style change and finally the minor styling update (except the big elimination of running boards) in 1941 which remained the model for the whole war period. All three shapes continued serving side by side throughout. They did continue to produce both options of independent front suspension and conventional spring front suspension and the Army had both. Mine has the independent front which rides so much smoother.

Lang

Lang, so yours is the Master, with the knee action suspension?

Yes.

Pretty interesting suspension story.

As mentioned above I have two 1940 Chev vehicles. Both have the independent "knee-action" front end.

Here is a mystery. The black one, just painted, has lever action shock absorbers front and back as per the manual. The green one has telescopic on the rear with obviously made up mountings from recent times and you can see where the original lever type mounted.

But the front suspension has also got telescopics situated inside the coil spring like a modern vehicle and quite clearly factory castings to mount them. I have the 39,40 and 41/42 manuals and all state lever type. The knee action suspension components look identical apart from the rather complicate shock absorber mountings. Did someone in the distant past put later model gear on. Does anyone know about early Holden front end and if so is this what has been used?

Lang

Not Holden. Here is a photo of the early Holden suspension which is identical to my Chev. The lever arm shock absorbers are at the top of the springs.

Think I might have it. Chevrolet kept that lever arm shock absorber right into the 50's.

On the other hand Pontiac changed from that system to telescopic in the 40's. I strongly suspect this vehicle had Pontiac front end fitted (just a few bolts and probably less than an an hour's work to change the whole front unit over).

Lang, my recollection of the “Master” suspension had no springs or shock absorbers at all. It was a bulky fully self contained unit, and was very troublesome. I think it originated in 1934. BIDSTBC.

Original Chevrolet Master Dubonnet suspension

This is probably no use to you but it may be another source of your front end.
Vauxhall, another General Motors product, had knee action front suspension in their Master series in the mid to late 1930's.

The 34 diagrams are not like the system I have so it appears they went forward and not back for the conversion.

My post #219705 above shows what my original has and this agrees with all the manuals from 39-46 that I have seen. Might not be a bad bet that the early Holdens just had the Chevrolet front end bolted straight on. The Pontiac telescopic looks very close to the conversion.

Morris from what I can find the Vauxhall system is quite different with a sort of trailing arm and horizontal spring set-up.

Here are the two systems on my vehicles. You can see all the arms etc are identical. The first one is as it came from the factory with the lever shock at the top. The second is the Pontiac??? system with telescopic inside the spring. Although it is just a bolt-on conversion, the shock support casting under the bottom arm is very intricate and certainly a factory item. Would be nice to know what it came off before I summon the energy to swap them over.



The vehicle with the masking off. I have fitted 205R16 tyres from early Hilux with "flapper" whitewall inserts. Firstly to give me more tyre on the road and availability if I need one in Alice Springs and secondly to save the almost new $400 Firestone 6.00-16 whitewalls for a post-trip sale. Probably a bit narrow on the rims for the radials but as I am using tubes I have no worries about rolling them off on a 5g cornering maneuver.