Hello Folks,
sad to say so: I had last weekend a look over the fence and the Dodge WC63 6x6 wrecker is gone...
This was just because I was still thinking about to buy it (and to ruin my bank account with such a "barrel without bottom") - or not, if it would have been still for sale - and at an reasonable price (not for 8,000,- Euros something).
At the same time I had a closer look at the rear crane with the braden winch on the photos I took at my last visit. I just wanted to find out if it was a Army conversion or a civilian conversion that has been made lateron.
At first I tried to find a WW2 US-Army vehicle (crane or wrecker) with a similar construction. I spent some hours on research on the www - but no match at all.
Same frustrating result with French Army post war vehicles.
But then I had the idea to search instead in the "opposite direction" - and that was the turning point: in fact the German Wehrmacht used a very similar crane in WW2!
This crane has been manufactured by the Bilstein Co. - today a well known shock absorber manufacturer and supplier of motorsport parts. It seems that this is a sort of standard crane ("Einheitskran") in the 3 t. class - that has been fitted to many different Wehrmacht vehicles. Especially Büssing, a heavy truck manufacturer with 4x4 and 6x6 know-how seemed to have used it on it's vehicles.
For example the Büssing-NAG Typ 500 S 4x4 truck was in use with the Bilstein crane.
See picture no. 2 from top here:
http://www.kfzderwehrmacht.de/Hauptseit ... 500_a.html
That vehicle has been in use with the 15th Panzer Division.
As you can see on this picture is the shape of the winch unit quite different, compared to the Dodge wrecker. - That is because it was possible to turn this Bilstein crane in it's original design.
Having a closer look at the Dodge I found out that the boom and the fittings linked to it have a similar design. The Dodge boom has in addition at the end an indicator for the max. lifting weight, depending on it's position. The indicator is not 100% identical to the one on the Bilstein crane, but fitted in the same position with the same function.
See:
http://fahrzeuge-der-wehrmacht.de/Bilde ... r_04-1.jpg
The Dodge part looks like this:
http://www.steel-toys.com/Div/WC63c.jpg
More Büssing pictures can be found here:
http://fahrzeuge-der-wehrmacht.de/Artik ... _4500.html
So - to sum up my research:
1.Someone had in the end of WW2 - or some years after it - access to a huge amount of US-Army MV parts as a source for the conversion. So the Dodge has the additional rear Braden winch parts as well as the doors from a M37 truck. See:
http://www.steel-toys.com/Div/WC63e.jpg
Here is a picture of the M37 with those doors:
http://www.motoexotica.com/inventory/li ... -up-green/
The M37 doors can be an indicator for the date of the conversion (maybe early/mid 1950ies because the M37 production started in 1951).
Maybe the rear wings for Dodge are taken from a GMC, Ward La France or some similar truck too?
- And in addition this person(s?) used the remainings of a Bilstein 3 t. crane.
So those fact's could be an indication for a US-Army Motorpool conversion.
2.Because of the design of the US winch parts (driven by power take-off and a fixed prop.-shaft) it was not possible to use the turning function of original crane. So the decision was made to use it in a fixed position on the truck to convert it into a wrecker. Due to that was only the boom and it's rigging used - or should I say "recycled"?
The result was quite professional and the loss of the original mechanical Bilstein parts reduced the overall weight of the construction. = Increased the max. towing weight of the truck. In addition the Dodge conversion is using a diffrent cable pulley system to rise the lifting weight because of it's higher ratio (see theory for beginners at:
http://www.ropebook.com/information/pulley-systems ).
That's the Dodge pulley:
http://www.steel-toys.com/Div/WC63d.jpg
As you can see while reading the older posts above it is hard to say who designed that conversion and at what point in the history of this vehicle. But: whoever constructed it did have a detailed knowledge about the construction and did not simply a conversion - he even "pimped" the original design in a clever way.
But even knowing these details does not help, because the vehicle has disappeared now and I don't think that we will see it again.
Keep 'em Rolling,
Joakim
