1940 Dodge VC5 sheetmetal

[EJOWest]

I finally got the civilian closed cab off my VC5 and put the original style cab on and mocked up the sheetmetal to get an idea how it's going to look. The closed cab had the original VC5 data plates on the glovebox that match the frame number so fortunately the original data plate stayed with the truck even though it was swapped out for a civilian cab years ago. The open cab that came with the truck has a different data plate on it though so it is not original to the truck.

[Archie]

Awesome job. I love the look of the VC 4x4. Any chance of you posting a shot of the hood ornament?

Archie

[EJOWest]

The hood ornament was very plain on the military VCs.

[Ernie Baals]

I love it !!!!!
Of course I am a little biased

[EJOWest]

I found the hood numbers on the VC5 today.



Tailgate numbers.....

[Ernie Baals]

that is great Ernie
Your truck is 233 younger than mine
I am W 22378

Ernie

[EJOWest]

Ernie,
The Built Date on the build card is March 4, 1940 and the Delivery date on the data plate is March 12, 1940.

Ernie

[Ernie Baals]

Hi Ernie
I need to get a stack of cards, for many trucks.
But my dod is March 15 1940
SN 8542256 and my body number is 4090-80

Wally , yourself and I all have trucks with early dods, ( MArch 15 or earlier) and late frame numbers

[EJOWest]

That's funny I was looking at the VC survivors list and it seems like the frame number to date of delivery is random, not going in any order at all. It's almost like the made a stack of Frames and numbered them and randomly pulled from the stack for production. There's high frame numbers with early date of delivery and low frame numbers on later date of delivery.

[Gordon_M]

There is certainly a bit of variation, but don't know how good a lot of the info is.

They made about three batches of them, kind of large, medium, and small, and I'd guess the chassis plant just ran them all out one batch at a time.

I've always considered that the chassis came to the start of the line without a chassis number, and that was the first thing applied, otherwise the number of times the chassis was lifted and laid before it got to the production line would have the sequence all over the place.

[EJOWest]

What was throwing me off was when I was looking at frame numbers vers dod as a group T202 not as a model VC1, VC5 ect.
I went back and looked at frame numbers vers dod as models and started seeing more of a pattern. The VC5s started at 8642xxx in fairly consistent order and the VC1s started at 8640xxx in fairly consistent order.

for example:
Model dod frame #
VC5 3/12/40 8642209
VC5 3/12/40 8642332
VC5 3/15/40 8642256
VC5 4/01/40 8642520
VC5 4/17/40 8643050
VC5 5/15/40 8643018
VC5 5/10/40 8643453
VC5 5/20/40 8644168
VC5 5/31/40 8644154
VC5 7/05/40 8643381

VC1 3/09/40 8640306
VC1 3/21/40 8640112
VC1 4/02/40 8640391
VC1 4/04/40 8640471
VC1 4/10/40 8640539
VC1 4/17/40 8640838
VC1 4/20/40 8641217
VC1 5/01/40 8641331
VC1 5/10/40 8641362
VC1 5/22/40 8643492
VC1 7/15/40 8644399

[Gordon_M]

The model split is a little odd.

I think;

first batch had VC-1 to VC-5,
second batch had VC-1, VC-3, VC-5, and the 24 production VC-6,
third batch was all VC-1 and VC-5, and some of the third batch had T-207 engines.

It's probably more complicated than that - anyone have any info to the contrary?

[EJOWest]

From what source does the information come from regarding the T207 engines installed in the third batch of VCs?

[Ernie Baals]

Hi
Ernie

the other thing to notice about the 1st series trucks, is that the USA and reg number were white, not blue drab.
From what i can gather, the later VCs, ( that the grill trim was painted od, not stainless) had the blue drab.
I have a set of grill trim that is regular steel or tin painted.
the other difference is that later VCs did not have Dodge script tail lights.
All the above is just based from what i have seen over the years, and looking at Wally's collection of trucks and parts.
Ernie

[EJOWest]

Thanks for the information Ernie.

There's not a lot of information on the VCs out there and I'm always interested in learning more. I was wondering about the white lettering vers blue drab.

Ernie