My first military build 52 M38 CDN

Greg09wr · Post by **Greg09wr** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 6:36 pm

Hello fellas, Im new to the board and new to owning a military vehicle but have many jeeps. I started to get into the military vehicles when my buddy has shown me his 53 m38a1 and then he bought a 68 M715 which i am giving him a hand on redoing now. So long story short i wanted to build a GPW, I love history and anything to do with the second world war, plus it was also a ford so it was the perfect jeep in my books. I was waiting to find the right one maybe something down state side with no rust but last weekend i happened to be driving through a small little town about an hour away from my house and lone behold i saw a flat fender sitting in a fellas door yard. I came back the next day asking if he would sell and the old fella told me to come out back. I thought it was a 3a or something from the road but upon looking at it i saw it was a 52 M38. So after telling me he worked on the base of gage town for years he ended up with this buying it from a friend in 1985. It has not left the yard since and just lived a life of plowing the driveway. He told me he had a load of parts in the garage for it and the original top and doors in good shape along with all the lights and such missing off of it. I also thought it was neat that it had a PTO winch from the factory on the front. Still 24 volt and he never did anything to it beside put a skim of bondo, some paint on it and taking off the blackout lights . It is by no means a 100 point show truck or even close but i am going to do my damdest to bring it back to military standards. Its a good start and for 700 bucks how can ya go wrong right!? Just waiting for the ground to harden up and grab it from his place, ill add more pics when i pick it up and i might be able to answer some more questions as well as i hope some of you can help me with mine!
-Greg

4x4M38 · Post by **4x4M38** » Fri Apr 24, 2015 9:31 pm

Greg,
You still have a lot of work ahead of you but if you get everything
you listed for 700 bucks you better go get it tomorrow before
he changes his mind!

Congrats and welcome to the madness.

Xamon · Post by **Xamon** » Sat Apr 25, 2015 6:29 am

Interesting you say it has the winch since that one is a WO/WN on the dataplates, that is a without winch, the ones with a winch from factory would have W/WN on the plates. very nice looking unit though good find. that is also an early unit, 2135 are believed to have been made they start at serial f-100001 so yours is the 803rd unit made. Once you have it, check the drivers side frame rail forward of the shock mount there should be a number stamped into the frame, this is the CAR number and was usually painted under the doors on the Canadian units.

Greg09wr · Post by **Greg09wr** » Sun May 03, 2015 7:35 pm

Well the jeep is still sitting in the ol fellas yard for now. Its still quite wet and he doesnt want his lawn torn up, so hopefully a couple more weeks of nice weather and ill have it home! Anyways I stopped by just to check and he found the old registration for it and found some old manuals he gave me, not sure how easy they are to come by but most of them are in pretty good shape!

4x4M38 · Post by **4x4M38** » Mon May 04, 2015 5:51 am

You've probably got a couple of hundred in US dollars in paper.

Nice.

Xamon · Post by **Xamon** » Mon May 04, 2015 6:19 am

very nice, the TM ones are readily available in pdf form but those are the first copies of the Canadian manuals I have seen. Any chance of you scanning them in for Wes to put up here?

Post by **wesk** » Mon May 04, 2015 7:16 am

Greg has already graciously agreed to do just that. The original bound CV-32 is very nice to have. I believe there are currently two sources for reprints of the CV-31 & -32. Brian Asbury & Alex Blair. 31 covers the M38CDN but has no winch/PTO info. 32 covers both the M38CDN & the M38A1CDN

The CDN-OM9-804 & -804-A I have seen before and look like recent reprints.

The TM 8-8012 & -1804B are out there and in original government printing run about $30 to 50 each.

Greg09wr · Post by **Greg09wr** » Mon May 18, 2015 8:12 pm

Well today was the day I finally picked up the old girl! Much better shape than I had originally thought. Got talking to the old fella and he had told me that his buddy had grabbed the Ramsey winch off another jeep on the base and put it on this one. It is the correct model 50 along with what looks like the proper fair lead set up. I was also happy to see the abundance of parts he had dug out for me as well! A couple remaned generators, spare drive shafts axle shafts, a couple pto shafts, brand new old stock carbs fuel pumps water pumps, I would say pretty much anything he could get his hands on he brought home. He even had the back seat and the original drivers seat and gas tank. Still haven't looked too hard through the boxes yet, I was just happy to get it home! Pictures to follow!