ww2dodge.com Forum

Hello.
I disassembled the bonnet to make it easier to paint it and put the sticker template when I arrived. Looking at it, I have realized that the star I want to put on it is the landing star, but its circle is wider and it enters the supports of the window or windshield of the vehicle.



These supports have rivets and I don't know what machine or how they are put on, the current common ones can be put on, these are not.
How have you done it or what ideas can you think of to make it easier or more comfortable? One idea is to just remove the closest rivet, and then rotate the support piece so that it frees the area to put the circle sticker on. The bad thing is that when turning the piece it scratches or drags paint in the turn of the remaining rivet.
I await your ideas whatever they are or how you did.
Thank you even if it is only for reading in advance and I will be attentive to your answers.
Regards!!

You are over-thinking this and not doing what was originally done, tackling this like it was a restored shiny car, and not a Dodge army truck.

These trucks had stars applied by the using troops, and the quality of the work was horrible, you won't see original wartime images of tidy user-applied stencils. Around invasion time all vehicles had stars which had originally been applied as stars in a broken circle ( the breaks being for the stencil ) as invasion preparation they just painted over the existing stars again, covering the breaks, and the repainted circle was normally wider as they weren't too careful.

The only stencils that would ever have been neat on your truck would be the USA numbers and the 'S' for suppressed as they would be factory-applied, everything else like stars, bumper edges and codes and the like would be very approximate indeed. In general terms vehicles before the invasion period had small white blackout markings like bumper edges, but so many people were killed or injured because of blackout precautions that more and more white paint was added for visibility.

Hi Gordon.
Thanks for answering.

A friend of mine said to paint the marks with a brush, since at that time it was what was used, and not spray, which is what would look better and more uniform. But I see the images of other cars and I see the numbers and the symbols(stars) perfect.
The latter makes you doubt; Do I paint my car in the "original" style but which will be less "photogenic" or do I do as I think, the majority and leave everything cool, and so it doesn't clash? Well when I get the stickers to paint, I'll tell you more... I really want to see it like yours.
Although mine, I still need to put the rear tool kit and the spare wheel, the latter will take me a while because I don't know if the wheel rim is the m37 that I saw on a website to buy the right one, and later buy everything else... and even one day to be able to put the support of the central weapon, but this is already a bit of a dream, due to the prices that there are in the market of the whole set.

Regards Juan Carlos.

I guess I painted my invasion star a little smaller, so didn't have the problem of the hood rests interfering with the stencil:

zepher11 wrote: ↑Thu Dec 01, 2022 1:31 am I guess I painted my invasion star a little smaller, so didn't have the problem of the hood rests interfering with the stencil:

Beautiful work, my congratulations.

My hood suffered slight damage when disassembling it to prepare it, I was alone disassembling it and I didn't count that when I finished loosening it, it would just come off, to the opposite side, falling to the ground. Luckily the previous owner told me, he gave it two coats of paint and one of them special more resistant and it hasn't been much (although I was close to crying, I felt angry with myself for it ) I have doubts whether to paint it all again Or just give it to the affected areas.

As I read, regarding the star and painting (please correct me if the sources are not correct) the star with the complete closed circle, is how I want mine, it represents the landing or that year, and later, it underwent changes to that date , having the holes in the circle, I think in two different formats.

Regards!!

If you plan on using a self adhesive painting template, just cut away the template with a knife or scissors, to allow it to fit around the screen rests. Then just use masking tape in and around the screen rests to make up the missing part of the template.

Otherwise, draw the shape on the hood in pencil and paint it in with a brush. Mask up the star with tape if you want very straight edges and freehand the edge of the circle with a small brush.

Leno wrote: ↑Fri Dec 02, 2022 11:51 am
Beautiful work, my congratulations.

My hood suffered slight damage when disassembling it to prepare it, I was alone disassembling it and I didn't count that when I finished loosening it, it would just come off, to the opposite side, falling to the ground. Luckily the previous owner told me, he gave it two coats of paint and one of them special more resistant and it hasn't been much (although I was close to crying, I felt angry with myself for it ) I have doubts whether to paint it all again Or just give it to the affected areas.

As I read, regarding the star and painting (please correct me if the sources are not correct) the star with the complete closed circle, is how I want mine, it represents the landing or that year, and later, it underwent changes to that date , having the holes in the circle, I think in two different formats.

Regards!!

I believe the solid round circle without the cutouts is the invasion star for the Italian Campaign. I believe the broken circle with the cutouts is for the Normandy, June 6, 1944 invasion.

Not that difficult to paint the entire hood. I did do that recently for my WC52. I welded on my hood and warped it pretty badly, so had to heat shrink it back into shape as it was in really bad shape. Here's some photos I saved of the problem I had:

https://forums.g503.com/viewtopic.php?f ... h%27s+WC52

zepher11 wrote: ↑Sat Dec 03, 2022 5:34 am
I believe the solid round circle without the cutouts is the invasion star for the Italian Campaign........

I've seen quite a few US 8th Air Force vehicles in the UK with solid rings around the star. My two Jeeps are copied from 100th Bomb Group vehicles which both had the solid ring.

Hello.
I have searched and I think that perhaps this is a link to a website that sells and paints badges for our vehicles, it should have good information sources to carry out its work.

http://expode.nl/category/posts/

According to this source that included a link, it says that there were breaks in the circles, but does not specify the date, as each reader (in my case) interprets, which depends on who painted it with the means they had, left spaces for the template that used.
This is how I have understood it.

Regards.

armyairforce wrote: ↑Sat Dec 03, 2022 9:42 am
I've seen quite a few US 8th Air Force vehicles in the UK with solid rings around the star. My two Jeeps are copied from 100th Bomb Group vehicles which both had the solid ring.

Right on. For some reason I was thinking the solid circle was used for a different invasion area. Good to know now that the solid and broke circle was ubiquitous within the ETO.

Good afternoon, according to what I've been looking at... there's a profile on Facebook that posts photos of our vehicles.















In these photos, due to the date they date and according to what was painted on the hood, most of the broken stars appear to be after 1944.
You can even see some photos with the star alone or star and circle after 43.
If anyone has more information and wishes to share it, it is always welcome to confirm or deny and thus learn more about this theme.

Regards Juan Carlos.

Had me curious regarding the solid and broken circles on the ETO invasion stars. Found this excerpt from a museum's website. Seems it would make sense that early on the circle dashes from the stencils were filled in, but later as the war progressed time wasn't taken to fill in the broken sections as noted below as they should have. They call the broken invasion circles "lazy circles." See second paragraph below. Just a theory:

Very curious , then we could deduce that both the complete ones, as well as the lazy or broken ones, are from 43 but filled or not, they would belong to the same approximate period. What I think is that both the star and the full circle are different in size (I think 26" ) than the star and lazy or broken circle (I don't know if they were 20" ).

Regards.