Vintage Fire Trucks

It looks like a later-model Christie pumper engine. The original Christie engines were designed to be hitched to the horse-drawn pumper wagons, but this looks like a purpose-built chassis, with the steam pumper unit installed on it.

 

Beautiful work RMay, you did great on the detail! By the way has anyone heard from Doghead recently ?

 

I was just wondering that myself.

 

Dang! That thing is neat!

 

I can't tell, is that a '46 Chevrolet COE?

 

If it's not a '46, it's pretty close to it.

Interesting truck.

 

I copied this from the site I found it on. In 1958 the fire department members demonstrated Yankee ingenuity when they purchased, for a dollar, a 1944 four wheel drive fuel truck and converted it into a 1,000 gallon water tanker. Captain Roger Whitehill stated it took a considerable amount of time and effort to get this truck in service. Many volunteer craftsman from the department and most of the cost for material and equipment were all donated.

 

I assume it was military surplus then if it's a 1944. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I don't think there were any civilian trucks being built in 44.

 

There was very limited heavy truck production to serve long-haul trucking during the war, for war production use only, just as railroads were able to obtain locomotives to help with moving war materiel by rail. The trucks produced were older designs, and once the War Production Board released industry to return to civilian production, new designs produced during 1945 became 1946 MY vehicles.

 

A ladder truck and a Ford Sportsman

 

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I owned one of these in 1978.
1941 Ford 3 ton with the Marmon-Herrington 6 wheel drive powertrain.
They were used as crash tenders on air force bases.

I removed the rear fire tank-body .... moved rear tandems ahead about 5 feet , and used it as a hunting truck for remote off road areas.

Would cruise down the highway at 50 mph and I drove it a lot. In muddy conditions the 4 rear wheels would all turn , plus one front one , giving a true 5 wheel drive that could go through just about anything

 

If I owned one,I would've built an RV body for it. That kind of drive system could really get you to the middle of nowhere for hunting or simply getting away from it all.

 

My plans were similar .... I had picked up a Ford Econoline van body and was going to incorporate it to the cab and over the rear wheels but I never got around to it .... instead I had just mounted a pickup truck box to carry my supplies.

I had also mounted dual wheels all the way around on the back .... and for the front I widened the rims and installed a pair of New Holland bale loader tires .... they were about 20 inches wide and exactly the same diameter as original wheels .... it had so much flotation I could go through swamps .

Only had 2 breakdowns .... the bearing on the radiator fan failed ..... just my luck I found a replacement shaft in an abandoned farm yard and bolted it on .... the Ford flathead fan was an independent unit on its own shaft and held on by a couple of bolts.

Vapor lock in the fuel pump .... removed the glass sediment bowl and managed to drop a small brass check valve ... spent a solid 4 hours very carefully searching for it on the gravel road with no luck .... now that I look back the valve probably got caught up in the frame or chassis as it fell and I never thought to look there.

Removed the gas tank from under the seat .... strapped it to the roof and used gravity feed to the carb .... worked great for a while but I had used rubber hose from the vacuum wipers which disintegrated bits from the fuel and plugged the jets ... choke and fast idle drove the rest of the way from the mountains for 6 hours at walking speed.

The truck was surprisingly easy to drive and with the shortened wheelbase turned fairly sharp ... rode down the highway nicely but with a bit of humping from all the unbalanced wheels.

I moved away to train to fly helicopters and the property where I parked the truck was sold and the new owner called the scrap guys to haul it away .... my own fault for not making arrangements .

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