1943 Dodge WC51 Speedometer/Odometer Repair and Battery Tray

I really should work on something like the Farmall C that needs a lot more help than this truck does. I actually did move the Farmall off the lawn and into the garage today though (I'm sure to the delight of my wife), so it will be easier to work on it. I got a couple large bearings for the front pedestal so I might have enough parts to get the front wheel assembly put together and mounted on the tractor. That will make it so much easier to move it around in the shop. But enough of that, back to the truck. 

The speedometer cable had been disconnected from the speedometer when I got this truck. I took a look at the end of the cable and the square drive piece was missing, like it had been twisted off. I felt up behind the dash and found the stub still in the speedometer. I tried to turn the spinny part of the speedometer (not sure what else to call it, the part that is driven by the cable) but it wouldn't budge, which is precisely why the square drive had been twisted off. I pulled the speedometer out of the dash and decided to delve into it. Without too much difficulty, I got the spinny part of the speedometer to turn so I chucked up the stub of square shaft from the cable into a drill motor and started things spinning. The speedometer worked but the odometer and trip meter did not.

1943 Dodge WC-51 Repairs and Updates

A couple of weeks ago I was happily working on my "new" Farmall C kit (basket case, really) project, but then the brakes were put on it when this WC showed up out of the blue. Of course I had to do some fiddling with the new-new project, since the Farmall is merely an old-new project now. I got several things done today on the truck. The first thing I worked on was to oil the flapper doors on the little heater cube under the glove compartment. The heater isn't hooked up under the hood so I don't know if the heater core leaks, but I did get all the flappers working. Do you see it under the map table in the photo below? No? It is peaking out there. And that map table is made from particle board, so obviously it's not original. I'll make one from solid wood at some point.

1942 License Plate Restoration

I picked up a vintage license plate on eBay for the 1943 Dodge WC51. The plate is 1942 and the truck is 1943. In Washington state, and many other states during WWII, steel was in short supply, so the normal yearly issuance of license plates was curtailed for 1943 and most of 1944. That means a 1942 license plate is correct for my truck. I was fortunate to find a plate specifically for a truck, as all other 1942 plates on eBay were for cars. In fact, doing an online search, I couldn't find a photo of any other 1942 Washington truck plates other than this one. These first two photos are the condition of the license plate I got. It's not ideal by any stretch of the imagination, but I think I can work with it.