Patrick Tipton

I love the way you always seem to hit these projects before I do. Mine needs to be painted white and I figured it would be easier to take it apart. I was wondering what I would get into! Thanks John! @OZM29C

Appreciate it John @OZM29C! As you know so well and demonstrate time and time again, one little step at a time, done well.

I am cleaning mechanical parts and fixing the last bits of metal work. One issue I have/had is that I did not have a correctly early rear floor panel without the front access hole. I did have a junk piece of an M29C floor panel though with reasonable intact beads and another nice one to modify. Fired up the TIG welder. The metal on the donor piece was so pitted that I cut just about everything off but the bead. This made it easy to get the bead lined up correctly and installed but means more seams to hide. I will be out in a bit to work on this a little more. Should come out pretty well.

All of the M29C's were painted in OD. That white and black camo is post war.

I have an M29 project for sale to a good home. The hull number is T24-2003 which makes it at the end of the first gen M29's - very similar hulls to the T24. Norwegian mods. The good: Undercarriage appears to have been gone through and all of the bogies and springs etc. appear to be in good condition and in need of only routine maintenance. Missing bogie set in picture will be replaced. Comes with decent examples of most panels other than the engine cover and the rear floor panel. I may be able to supply those two panels in poor condition, but no promises. Complete or nearly complete engine in need of rebuild. Internal condition unknown. Two WW2 era 20" tracks. They are in need of repair and banding and may have breaks, missing road pads and bent grousers. That being said, they could be nice if banded and a few grousers replaced. Final drive appears to be in good condition and turns freely. Original hull tag. The dataplate is a repro and has incorrect information on it so useless by my calculation. The bad: The T90 transmission looks ugly (rusty) but might clean up. Parts are readily available for this transmission. The hull needs extensive work. Hull was skinned on the front and rear panels by a PO and then had those panels removed (rear) and partially removed (front) by another PO. I believe the front is salvageable but will need repairs. I would probably replace the entire rear panel. I do have the removed sheet metal which has the pioneer tool brackets - they look homemade to me. There is a good amount of rot on the floors and hat channels. I would expect to replace these floors and most of the hat channels. The hull has side skirts. I have not spent enough time to know whether this hull should have them (think no, but?) and whether they look original. Adding them certainly makes the job of installing a new floor pretty easy. You could probably do some quick repairs, band the tracks, rebuilt the motor and transmission and go play. Or, replace the floors and do a little work on the front and back and have a sweet example of a 1st gen M29. $4000 OBO

I think the soldier sitting on a soon to be unobtanium surf shield and very expensive windshield should probably move and/or the gunner needs to work on his muzzle awareness 🤣

I'd say it looks a bit different. Looks fantastic John....although I do kinda like the white and black camo...but maybe I am biased!🤣

I have several NOS flywheels. Some have surface rust, but no pitting and the ring gears are perfection. $80 plus shipping while supplies last.

Looks great John! I hope you are getting to enjoy it!!!

We can't legally post it without permission. That being said, I am working on a couple of projects with the publications editor for the MVPA - so let me see if we can get permission. It is good for the MVPA to get their content seen!

You are very welcome. Thanks for participating. Forums are valuable because of member participation so I really hope and want all of you guys to view this as "your" forum. Patrick

John - always learning something! I am assuming this goes on the inside...the engine side of the instrument panel....? I have never seen this part.

Are you looking for the detonator itself?

Absolutely right John! I got all the debris cleaned up. After all of the prep work, I still managed to get out nearly a cup of dust/debris. Unbelievable! Wet sanding the inside of a Weasel hull is a staggering amount of work and I did the finish coats without moving the hull at all - I let it dry totally and then moved and repeated. I did not achieve a Ferrari finish, but then again, it isn't a Ferrari. I think I have developed OCD.

Congrats John! One more box checked off.👍

I have been at the painting game for 3 days....painting a Weasel is a ton of work. The biggest issue is getting all the restoration debris out of the hull - really a pain. We must have vacuumed this hull 50 times, plus blow it out, flip it over, etc. I still managed to dump a bunch of sandblasting residue into the matte clearcoat so I have some repairs yet to do. The inside and bottom of the hull is finished thru clear cloat...with a lot of flattener so there is a little gloss, but not much. There are a couple of areas that need a little fixing, but it is supposed to rain tomorrow so I am going to get the hull back on springs and off the rotisserie and back in the shop. I am also going to start laying out the camo so I can paint a really flat clear coat on Sunday/Monday and call it a day. There is still a lot to do, but it is nice to see the hull in white! IMG_8486Small.mov

I am sorting through my T24 suspension and finding lots of subtle differences in components between the T24 suspension with its 15 inch tracks and the various later versions of M29/M29C with different variations of the 20 inch track. There are several different leaf springs used on the T24/M29 series. The T24 has 3 part numbers: an 11 leaf front spring, two 9 leaf middle springs and a 13 leaf rear spring. The later M29 and M29C were shipped with 8 leaf spring packs, although the front and rear have one part number and the center springs have another part number. I don't know what the difference is between these springs. There are a lot of Weasels running around with tracks that don't run well. Lots of reasons for this, but incorrectly placed springs could be another because it ends up causing alignment issues. The other thing to note is that there are lots of changes to the various arms and yokes etc. over the course of production. If you have alignment issues, it may be mix matched suspension components.

Dave...Weasel's are like cereal box toys...you need to collect them all. I see a T24 in your future!🤣

Once you loosen the jam nut and then unscrew the set screw, you need to unscrew the pulley sheave itself. Counterclockwise. If it is stuck, penetrant and you can insert a screwdriver or something into the holes in the sheave casting to get a little leverage.

Appreciate it John! ...and thanks again for all of the tech support!

Nice Dan! Thanks, that looks like a great product!

I finished the repairs to the hull over the weekend. I have one insulation tab to add by the drivers feet and to finish and install the battery tray - it is mostly ready for install, just needs to be trimmed and the rear battery hold down strap installed. I am going base coat/clear with a 2K epoxy primer. My paint guys said we could not add flattening agent to the white paint without getting a chaulky mess so this will be a first for me. I don't like spraying period but I am going to spray all of this outside - not the greatest condition, but I would rather have stuff in the paint than be inhaling this junk. The clear can be made fully matte so we shall see how it looks and wears. The nice thing about the epoxy primer is that I can use a little glaze before I base coat it if I have any areas I really don't like. I added a couple of pictures of my spot welder. It works great on new metal...much harder on older metal unless it is perfectly clean. Speaking of clean, I Tigged up a broken rod on the brush guard...hard to clean it completely and got some nice porosity🤪 if there is such a thing...I like to tell myself it looks original!

Many thanks Bryon! I am very excited to see paint this week....little more cleaning but Wednesday looks like a go!

Great to know!

That is great Dan - thank you for the information. I too have been looking for an original....they don't seem to come up at all... I did a little research and it appears that many 12 volt systems aim to have 6-8 volts at the points to reduce arcing and wear. Thus the internal resistor in the coil or the need for an external resistor. Back to @RAS1 Dave, you may need to run a resistor because your coil may not have an internal resistor.... apologies for any confusion!