1943 Dodge WC-51 Weapons Carrier

When will the madness stop? Ok, I know that looking on Craigslist and FB Marketplace were the downfall of my last two tractor purchases, but this new acquisition didn't happen because of my perusing the want ads. No, this deal was thanks to a fellow tractor club member. I guess I never should have joined that club. See where it's gotten me? Four tractors bought from club members, five if you count one that's been sold. And now I have me a Weapons Carrier.

What's that, you say? Weapons Carrier? Uh, is that legal to own? Yes, it is. And little did I ever think I needed or wanted one. But there's a story here. "Yes, of course there is," you say. Well, sit back and have a listen. So I have to go back four years. I joined the tractor club in 2020, right smack in the middle of Covid. I joined because I'd bought an aluminum can crusher powered by a 1917 2-1/2hp hit and miss engine. The gent I bought it from, Buck, said that the person who buys this can crusher should really be in the club, as it was kind of a mainstay of the club's shows. I told him, sure, I'll join, as I had a little Gibson tractor (yes, only one old tractor then) in the garage at home, and I was buying Buck's John Deere LA tractor also (another deal I couldn't pass up). I'd never been in a tractor club before. Should be fun. And now see where it's gotten me. But I digress.

Fast forward several years, and at one of the club shows, another member said to me he's always wanted a Gibson like mine. That planted the seed. I didn't have a real connection to the Gibson, so that thought of selling it to him began to percolate in the back of my mind. Fast forward to earlier this year (2024) and the same guy said he was going to sell his old WWII army truck. I innocently asked how much and he said, "I was thinking 35." Hmm, 35, 35... Thirty-five what? Hundred? Thousand? So I just had to ask, to which he said, "$3500". Wow, that seems cheap, I say to myself. I told him I was somewhat interested, and maybe we can work out a deal on my Gibson and cash. A little time went by and we came to an agreement. So now I'm down one Gibson and up one Weapons Carrier.

Can you say, "beefy"? Those wheels on the truck are called "Combat Wheels". Apparently they are meant to withstand enemy fire.

Specifically, this is a 1943 Dodge WC-51 Weapons Carrier. It's the immediate predecessor to the much beloved Dodge Power Wagon of the post-WWII years. When the war ended Dodge knew they had a winner in the WC when all those GIs coming home from the war wanted a 4-wheel-drive truck that was a war-proven workhorse, so Dodge made a civilian version of the military WC starting in the1946 model year.

The WWII (1942-1945) WC series had many variations (panel van, ambulance, reconnaissance, etc) that were either closed cab or open cab design. The WC-51 (and the WC-52 with a winch) is an open cab design with no doors or windows other than the windshield, and the cab and bed were usually covered by just a tarp. The below photo I grabbed from the net shows a WC-52 (with winch), with eight folks in the back. They look so comfy.... Yes, that's where the spare tire resides on a WC-51/52. Mine is missing the bracketry.

My WC has a post-war military aftermarket enclosed cab with doors (thus no spare tire mount) and rudimentary sliding windows. I don't think I would have gotten this truck if it didn't have the enclosed cab. After all, I do live in Washington State, where it occasionally rains. In the cab there's a tag on the passenger door that says:

Closure, Hard Top, For

Truck , 3/4 Ton, 4x4, Weapons Carrier

Oneida Products Corp.

Canastota, New York

Contract No. DA-20-089-ORD-13957 FS

Serial No. 135? Date 8  51

Ordnance Part No. 7720793

The truck is powered by a Chrysler 230 cubic inch flathead six-cylinder engine, putting out a blistering 92 horsepower, or something like that.

Mated to the engine is a 4-speed non-synchromesh transmission (colloquially known as a crash box). Behind that is a two-speed transfer case to power the front differential. It's supposed to be a single speed case but someone swapped in a (better) two-speed unit. The differentials have 9-5/8" ring gears, so are quite beefy (differential strength or torque capacity is usually equated to the ring gear size). Chrysler's in-house corporate bread and butter performance axle in the 50s-70s had an 8-3/4" ring gear, and the top dog then was the 9-3/4" Dana Corporation differential/axle (used in all hemi and some 440 cars, and 3/4 and 1 ton pickups). The differentials in these WC's are pretty heavy duty, which makes sense for military use. The ratio of the differentials is 5.83:1, so I won't be getting any speeding tickets in this truck. I think top speed is technically 52 mph, so 45 should be a nice cruising speed.

There's a herculean Braden MU2 winch on the front of the truck, powered by a forward/reverse PTO driven off the transmission. This winch was standard equipment on the WC-52 (that had a longer frame than the 51) but a frame extension kit at the time allowed the winch to be mounted on a WC-51, which is what I have. To put a winch onto a WC-51, in addition to the frame extensions, you also had to install a PTO and associated control handle onto the transmission, and run a driveshaft from the PTO to the winch. It wasn't a trivial matter.

Many people think the  WC in the model stands for Weapons Carrier but it doesn't. The W indicates the year 1941, when Dodge introduced the WC model. The prior model was VC, the V indicating 1940. The C is a nominal 1/2-ton rating, which the first WCs were in 1940 and 1941. The military wanted a heavier duty truck though, so Dodge came out with a 3/4-ton WC in 1942 (WC-51 came without a winch, WC-52 had longer frame rails to mount a winch). Yes, Dodge should have used a different letter than W for the 1942 model year, and a different letter than C for the 3/4-ton truck, but they decided to just stick with WC for the entirety of WC production.

This 3/4 ton truck was meant to carry up to eight passengers in the back (reference previous photo), or weapons, or some mix of each. The cab on this WC is quite narrow and has room for only two bucket seats. It's quite cramped in the cab for me, being 6'2", but I think I'll manage.

These next two photos are of the rear and front differentials. They look surprisingly like the ubiquitous Chrysler 8-3/4 differential, but as was mentioned previously, they are beefier.

The engine currently doesn't run, but the previous owner said he'd had it running a couple years ago, so it shouldn't be too terribly difficult to get going. Maybe tomorrow....

Fast-forward to tomorrow, and yes, the truck now runs. And quite good, actually. The below video shows a little of what I did to get it going. What isn't shown is the amount of time it took, which was the better part of the day. One surprising thing was that I didn't have to go through the carburetor, although that would be a good idea. For a gas tank, I just plumbed in a small tank and zip-tied it to a support rod in the engine bay.

The hood on the truck didn't stay up very well so I just removed it. While it was off, I figured it was a good time to straighten out a hold-up rod spring thingy. The one on the left is bent pretty significantly.

Below is another view of the bent rod next to the good one.

This next photo shows the left rod bent correctly, or as correctly as I could get it. I'm thinking it was out of something else, as it was a couple inches too long. The part I cut off is balanced on top of the hood's edge.

While the hood was off, I scraped out the hinge joints.

I put the hood back on to test things out and the hold-up rod seemed to work. I then took the hood back off to work on the engine.

I was working on the starter and my arm brushed against the coil wire going to the distributor. I barely touched the wire and it broke off from the end terminal. I put a new terminal on the coil wire and tried threading the nut back on but found out the stud on the coil had been broken off and the nut that had been holding the terminal on was not correct. Someone had just kind of jammed it on the broken stud. I fiddled with the coil stud for an hour trying to get something to work but I finally just gave  up and soldered a wire directly to the terminal. It'll be fine. Really.

While running the starter motor, I found that a couple battery cable joints were getting warm, which means a high resistance point that needs to be dealt with. The first one was the ground strap connection to the truck bed. The second one was the positive cable that had a bolted joint. That's not good. I don't know where the battery is supposed to reside but I'm pretty sure it's not in the bed of the truck. Something I'll need to research (I later found out I think it is correct).

While poking around inside the cab, I noticed a strange rod thingy between the two seats. It would pull up a little ways but was captive in a loop dealy bobber, so would only raise up an inch or so. I wondered what it was, and come to find out, it's the seatback release. I pulled the driver's seat forward and found a nice little 2-acre mouse ranch. When cleaning out the ranch, I found a distributor points file. Good thing to have in an emergency.

There were also a couple of front axle drive caps (Superwinch locking hubs are on the front axle now) in the passenger side compartment, but not a lot of other goodies.

Those two pans are oil catch pans, so they're like 16 inches in diameter and four inches tall, overflowing with mouse ranch goodness.

This next photo shows the vacuumed-out cab. I was able to also pull out the map table/writing desk that resides under the glove compartment. It looks to be just a piece of plywood that slides on steel channels. And look at that steering wheel, it sure is in great condition.

Yes, this is going to be a project to get everything up to snuff. It should be fun though, right? Right?