1946 GMC ute

Gives me some ideas Thank you.

Every Chev ute including mine has dents in the rear. What a stupid design - a working vehicle with no rear bumper bar.

I wonder why the pics make the hood lining look like an army blanket

 

I ran a quick search in the army registration books. Found a few GMC utes .

I'm no expert but I've worked out most of the abbreviations in the registration books. 

The far Left column is:  the Military District the vehicle was taken on charge i.e. 4 = QLD. 3 = Victoria and so on. 

A example: 44442 is a 15 cwt GMC GS Van  ( 115" wheelbase ) Chassis nr 4193 M 92 .   I think 4193 is the  GMH model code .  M = assembled in Melbourne . 92 = the 92nd GMC ute assembled at Melbourne.  It was sold to R Hutchings . SAN = Sales Advice Note 

What is strange is: the GMCs are listed as having 600x17 tyres . 

The red annotations indicate:  most of them were sold back to GMH .

 

 

Lang wrote:

Gives me some ideas Thank you.

Every Chev ute including mine has dents in the rear. What a stupid design - a working vehicle with no rear bumper bar.

And they carried the tradition on with Holden utes.
 

I can find absolutely no correlation between those army record numbers to my GMC vehicle (or previous Chevs of the same type I have owned). I wonder where they came from?

My serial numbers both stamped on the Chassis and on the firewall plate.

6-9311-10130

Model Number

46-4526

Both indicate 1946 model GMC  the standard GMH numbering system in vogue for many years prior to the war. My wartime vehicles still used this identification system. The only difference between it and Chev is in the serial number where 9311 would be 1311.

This photo shows GMH followed the Canadian numbering system. This example is exactly the same as mine (Except the Canadians did not put the dash between number groups)

Using this example my vehicle is 6 = 1946
                                                    93= 15cwt (GMC)  Chev would be 13 You can see this in your Army table.
                                                    11= Coupe Utility
                                              10130= Vehicle serial number. Obviously not production number, they never built that many, maybe they started with 10001 while the Canadians started 00001




 

Took her for her first drive around the paddock. That 4 speed gearbox is a winner.

Looking very nice.  During the filming of the Sullivan's TV series, one of our club members had a GMC that was used in the show. 

Looking good Lang

I mentioned above the poor design of the Chevrolet/GMC - a ute without a bumper!

Every single photo I have seen of this rear body style from about 1938 through to 1947 shows the dents in the rear panels. The photo of mine shows the start of my repairs but how dented the tailgate is. The shape of the body makes this the first thing to arrive at an obstacle.

I managed to adapt a Falcon tow bar. GMH offered no tow bar so every one you see towing a trailer has a home made bar. I am now set up to tow my little camper to Townsville on the End of WW2 military vehicle convoy in August. Unfortunately the more I looked at it the more ridiculous was the original set-up.

A whole day messing around with 100x50 channel I managed to finish up with a neat very strong bumper tied into the tow bar. I put a converter pintle/ball on it in case I have to rescue somebody's jeep trailer along the way.