Inside the Chieftain's Hatch: Dodge WC-51

by the time the Second Great War had kicked off in Europe dodge' been supplying vehicles to the US Army for over two decades going back at least as far as a Pancho Villa expedition just before the u.s. entered the war the quartermaster Corps contracted with dodge to build a series of half ton trucks known as the VC series they were modified little later to become the WC but the big change happened when the quartermaster Corps decided that the half-ton was a bad idea and instead what they wanted was a series of lighter 1/4 ton trucks and slightly heavier 3/4 ton trucks well the quarter ton truck was of course filled in by Bantam and their Jeep the 3/4 ton well that was dodge and what Dodge did was it took the WC design and they simply operated it for another quarter ton first it was in 1942 that the 3/4 WC series started coming off the production line a whole slew of variants were made but this is the WC 51 this is the weapons carrier it was officially called now this was basically a flatbed truck you could use it for anything not just weapons but that was the name confusingly there was another variant called the carry all what you would think would be a general utility variant but that is actually more of a 4x4 off-road sedan this particular vehicle was built in 1944 and I am back at the Rock Island auction company you may have noticed in doing a series of these things where it will be placed on for sale in the September 18 premier auction that they're having so this is a little bit advertising for them and a little bit of information for us two types of weapons carrier were created the W c-51 this one and the W c52 the difference is in the winch or lack thereof the 52 has a winch 51 does not now if you don't have the winch life is not all that bad for starters you got slightly better off-road capability the difference in the angle of approach is 54 degrees versus 37 also your vehicle is a bit lighter and most importantly if you do not have the winch you are not going to be the person tasked to go cover some other person who's gotten themselves stuck because they are terrible drivers one of the significant differences between the half-ton version of the WC and the three-quarter-ton is that they have moved the radiator cap it is now exposed and you can access it without lifting up the hood now these things had a reputation for being bulletproof and I am left to wonder how often you needed to access the radiator cap the making it external to the hood was considered worthwhile maybe it was so bulletproof because it was so easy to access the radiator cap and it just kept filling it with liquids but regardless there it is the cap is spring-loaded so if the pressure in the coolant system gets too high it will release through the cap now there are two types of radiator cap if you happen to be considering buying one of these vehicles and they are not interchangeable but there you go I have now completed a paragraph on a radiator cap moving on to the rest of the front this is a truck there's nothing amazing about this service lights behind the bush guards you have your marker lights vertical grill it's another distinguisher between a half-ton and 3/4 tony hawk's you'll note the small little hole here this is for your hand starter because on occasion you have to crank the engine over maybe it's been sitting there too long and you just want to do a compression test or maybe you're actually just your battery has died and you need to start it blackout light is on the far side and then we get to the wheels and so to the running gear their wheels there are four of them front and rear axles have common differentials and carrier assemblies that means that you don't have to carry as many spare parts makes maintenance easier supply is much happier they are mounted on a semi-elliptical Springs which are leaf springs to the rest of us and there are shock absorbers are on all four wheels which you do have to top up with fluid on occasion make sure that they're working correctly the wheels are limited in steering to about 28 degrees by hard stops on axles and this will give you a turning radius of about 21 feet the tires well the 9 by 16 normally inflated to 40 psi for hard surface roads through the valve and you will note this is old-school tire technology you got the outer tire and then you have the inner tube and it's all held together note this rim with the ten of bolts on the outside because this is the left hand wheel their left hand nuts this rim is what holds the tire onto the rim and it is under high pressure it is even engraved in the rim warning deflate tire pressure before removing nuts it's because if you undo these nuts and you haven't deflated the tires this thing is gonna be shot out at incredible warp factors and you do not want to be in the way if this happens there are videos on youtube and it ain't pretty and so we will get to the hood it is a butterfly type so you can open both sides at the same time held in place by two spring-loaded latches so you push down bend the metal out a little bit push down on the other one and you can lift up this is a six cylinder in-line l-head 230 cubic inch plant puts out 92 horsepower at about 3400 rpm there's a powerful enough to get the vehicle fully laden of a 60 percent grade and as you can imagine it is simple but rugged and reliable now an interesting thing about the WCC reserve for most of them the electrical system is only six volts the command car is with their radios well that went up to 12 the fuel system has a pump on the right side there's a filter exposed on the left if you do have to pull the engine and get a little annoying the fenders have to come out first then the radiator system it's got to come out and then finally it can access the engine and pull that out afterwards now that said there's a lot of space in here and with the hood open there's very little you can't access for routine maintenance anyway so it's not as if you have to pull the engine out to get it the starter motor so don't swish my auntie was a bit like that anyway enough of this let's move on the spare tire is located on the left hand side of course next to the driver and they do have a bit of a gap here from to be able to get in and out although actually what I've been doing is I'm getting in the passenger side just walking over the fuel filler is located left rear the tank itself thirty gallons is right in the middle of the frame behind the differential and in front of the bumpers now remember World War two you didn't have refueling trucks like we do today so if you go to a Hammett refueler you have this great big nozzle looks a little bit like what you have your gas station today in mobile to you doing things from jerrycans so what they've done in this is they have placed a little extender inside the fuel filler area and you simply pour straight from the jerrycan this way this is great this means you don't have to rely on funnels that will get lost or broken or what-have-you so when you done just shove it back in and on you go we're the vehicle again it's a pickup truck so you're not going to find anything particularly unusual small little bumpers here around each side of your towing pintle taillights and of course a drop gate the drop gate is what contains your Pioneer tools as you can see you have your axe shovel and pick can't really talk very much about the flatbed because there's not much to talk about there's a little access port at the back there which is used to access parts of the fuel tank system such as gauge there are a couple of stowage compartments inside the bench seat enough to carry a few useful idles of course the middle doesn't open up because that's where your wheel arches are total capacity well it's a 3/4 ton truck surprise surprise it's 3/4 of a ton and this is enough to give a quite a good bit of versatility so that's why you have let's say the command car variant while you were able to convert this into a tank destroyer vm6 good motor carriage seating well you can get at least 8 maybe 10 folks sitting on the back here I mean this is a good general purpose vehicle and frankly that's why it was so important in the war the axles can be removed for maintenance without removing the wheels and this is great so you can push it around a little bit if you have to or just engage the other axle the brake system well it's hydraulic and there are drum brakes on each of the four wheels to shoot spur drum these are not power assisted brakes and it's not power assisted steering there's no power assisted anything this is a simple rugged vehicle and no frills at all so the passenger side well the seat will fold forward so you have a little bit more utility space for your small tools or what-have-you allow me also to demonstrate the safety features of this vehicle keep your arms and legs inside the ride at all times of course it's not a safety belt it's not going to stop you if you get involved in a collision or they haven't helped your rollover but it will keep you at least in the vehicle if you end up on a severe side slope or the driver takes a corner a little bit too fast driver's seat nice and comfortable it does fold forward in the same manner as the passenger seat but there's no adjustment that I can see for the backwards controls are a lot more basic than some other vehicles of being in us for sure dimmer switch clutch brake accelerator starter pedal transmission it's a 4-speed transmission handbrake and the transfer case now the transfer case is not a high-low range transfer case as most vehicles would be familiar with all this does is it engages or disengages the front axle so your top speed is going to be the same in theory no matter what way your transfer case is going on the other hand of course he really shouldn't be doing 55 miles an hour with all four wheels engaged it's unnecessary where and if the going is that good why are you in four-wheel drive as you're driving along double-clutching is necessary now if you don't know what double-clutching is and I've mentioned this in the past a few times here's how it works especially if you're one of those I think it's like 80% of Americans who don't know how to drive a manual transmission what's wrong with you it's a lot more fun but anyway I guess there's a great anti-theft device here's how it works so let's say you're driving along and you are in first gear and you want to go into second gear well what you do is you first push down the clutch to disengage go into neutral lift up on the clutch and this will synchronize the speeds of the various parts a little bit push down the clutch again and then you can go into second gear lift off the clutch and away you go so there is double the clutching for you looking at the - well you have your panel here - chosen your maximum permissible Road speed at any gear so sure enough fourth is fifty five and reverse is seven the headlight switch this is pretty typical for loved vehicles in this particular collection and it's got your lockout button all the different types of switches do have lockout buttons and they exist to stop you accidentally turning on your headlights in the front line so you can go to black out markers without any great hassle but to go to let's say full headlights you gotta push in and then rotate off to the right and pre draw pressure speedometer fuel tanks I mean this is obvious stuff over on the co-driver seat he's got on I'll call it the glove compartment door the bill displayed which tells me that the vehicle was delivered in November of 44 to the right of it is the publication's plate now you see this in fair few of the US Army vehicles at the time it's got an actual engraved plate on it says this is the publication number you're supposed to use with this vehicle there's a little piece of wood here kind of cover it's a pull-out table so you can have your map out or you can be taking your notes a very neat little feature you don't often see underneath you're gonna have the fire extinguisher and then another stowage box if you're driving along if for some reason you want to remove the windshield from your vision for whatever reason there are two ways of doing it one is you can undo these locking screws here lift up and it'll fold up and forward you can stop it at different levels depending on how much ventilation you would like to get it is also possible by use of these locking handles down here to lift these up and shove the whole thing forward it's a little bit tight right now so I'm not gonna try it and you know risk cracking the glass there is of course the soft top which is available there will be bows that you could use he put a soft top over the cargo compartment as well and well that's pretty much it the vehicle was fairly ubiquitous and it's very common in private collections today with over two hundred thousand of the May between 1942 and 1945 this is hardly surprising the legacy continued after the war with the Dodge three-quarter-ton m37 series but watch out for another video on that one as ever hope you found it interesting and I'll see you on the next one

Channel: The_Chieftain

Views: 93,741

Rating: 4.9552484 out of 5

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Id: X06cIUT2VCE

Length: 15min 26sec (926 seconds)

Published: Fri Aug 31 2018