Brooks Van Ette restoration at Yankee Air Museum

[mtpopejoy]

If anyone is interested the Yankee Air Museum is starting a restoration of a 1941??? Brooks Van Ette line maintenance truck that was used on post at the Willow Run Bomber plant. This vehicle was found at an auction and was not purchased by the museum at time of auction. It was in great condition and purchased by a woman to be used as part of her haunted farm locally. It sat outside for 2 years and sustained minimal damage by being dragged around the farm.

It is a 1 ton Ford foward-control chassis with a body built by Brooks/Dearborn and was modified with dual rear wheels, a steel floor and 2 spots for vices in the back.


This is a Van Ette Junior. Just wanted to give an idea of what the inards look like.

Both doors still show the Willow Run Bomber Plant lettering.

Here is a picture of "our truck" taken with the 2,000th Ford built Lib.


I will be working on it with a group of 4 or 5 other Yankee members and will post pictures periodically of the progress of the restoration.

If you all are not interested I will not post anything. I know it isn't a warbird but did participate in maintaining and building them.

If anyone has any information in regards to these vehicles please feel free to post away as it has been difficult to find anything about them on the "intardnets."

Regards,
Mark Popejoy[/i]

Last edited by mtpopejoy on Thu Mar 26, 2009 4:33 pm, edited 2 times in total.

[Second Air Force]

I think it is a great subject for updates on WIX, Mark. I tried to buy a Cushman scooter a few years ago that had been used at the Douglas plant in Tulsa. This support equipment is very interesting to some of us. Perhaps if we get enough interest we could suggest a vehicle/GSE forum separate from the Maintenance Hangar somewhere down the line.

Post away with the updates, and I would really like to see a photo of the "Willow Run" logo on the doors.

I'll keep my eyes open for information that could help you with the restoration.

Scott

[N3Njeff]

Ditto, post some pics!!!!

[mtpopejoy]

I'll be out there all day tomorrow and will post pics tomorrow night of what it looks like and what we did to it.
Thanks guys,
Mark

[mtpopejoy]

Well I trudged through 6 inches of snow today 30 miles to get to the hangar to start work on the Van Ette.

First item on the list is to get the floor out to remove the body from the frame. Easier said than done.
The plywood flooring in the back is screwed down to cross braces with a million STANDARD HEAD screws.
The front steel floor is held down with STANDARD HEAD bolts with square nuts behind them.
Weren't phillips head screws available back then??? Jeez!!!
Didn't have the necessary tools with me to grind screw heads off of the steel floor in front and drilling the screws in the plywood was like peeing into the wind so I got out the ole PB Blaster and went to town.

Not much to show but I did get some pictures of the van.






The motor has either been replaced or rebuilt as they did not come from the factory in red paint. Originally they were dark blue or dark green. We will determine if the block and heads are original after further teardown when we can find and check serial numbers.




I was told that this is the government surplus number assigned to this vehicle when it was sold after the war. Any light anyone can add to this would be appreciated.


Stenciling on the driver door from the Willow Run B-24 Bomber Plant. Pretty Cool!!!

And I had a nice suprise when I got to the hangar this morning..... Will Ward's MiG is parked next door!!!!!!!!!!!!!


Higher res images can be seen here: http://www.flickr.com/photos/29510921@N08/

I won't be working on it for a couple weeks but I will see if the other guys will email me pics to post here on WIX of the progress!
Regards,
Mark[/url]

[Second Air Force]

NOW you know why the old Chevy six cylinder engines are called "Stovebolts". They used straight-slot screws on them too, though far fewer than Brooks did in the bodywork of your van! The old girl looks really straight, and I hope the corrosion is minimal. What a neat piece of history. Hopefully more wartime photos of the van will surface.

The stencilled WAA number is certainly interesting. I'll do some research on that myself.

Thanks for the update!
Scott

[mtpopejoy]

Suprisingly the corrosion does seem to be at a minimum. We will find out more the farther we dig but at this point it is all surface rust that is easily ground or blasted.

[N3Njeff]

How bad do you guys want a Willow Run built B-24???????????

[JDK]

...
The plywood flooring in the back is screwed down to cross braces with a million STANDARD HEAD screws.
The front steel floor is held down with STANDARD HEAD bolts with square nuts behind them.
Weren't phillips head screws available back then??? Jeez!!!...

Well, no. Welcome to the past.

I saw this, and thought of you. I'll restore your driver.

Cross-head, cross-point, or cruciform
has a "+"-shaped slot and is driven by a cross-head screwdriver, designed originally for use with mechanical screwing machines. There are five types:

Phillips
Has slightly rounded corners in the tool recess, and was designed so the driver will slip out, or cam out, under high torque to prevent over-tightening. The Phillips Screw Company was founded in Oregon in 1933 by Henry F. Phillips, who bought the design from J. P. Thompson. Phillips was unable to manufacture the design, so he passed the patent to the American Screw Company, who was the first to manufacture it.
Reed & Prince or Frearson
Similar to a Phillips but has a more pointed 75° V shape.[citation needed] Its advantage over the Phillips drive is that one driver or bit fits all screw sizes. It is found mainly in marine hardware and requires a special screw driver or bit to work properly. The tool recess is a perfect cross, unlike the Phillips head, which is designed to cam out. It was developed by an English inventor named Frearson in the 19th century and produced from the late 1930s to the mid-1970s by the former Reed & Prince Manufacturing Company of Worcester, Massachusetts, a company which traces its origins to Kingston, Massachusetts, in 1882, and was liquidated in 1990 with the sale of company assets. The company is now in business.
JIS
Commonly found in Japanese equipment. Looks like a Phillips screw, but is designed not to cam out and will, therefore, be damaged by a Phillips screwdriver if it is too tight. Heads are usually identifiable by a single dot to one side of the cross slot. The standard number is JIS B 1012:1985
French recess
also called BNAE NFL22-070 after its Bureau de Normalisation de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace standard number.
Pozidriv
patented, similar to cross-head but designed not to slip, or cam out. It has four additional points of contact, and does not have the rounded corners that the Phillips screw drive has. Phillips screwdrivers will usually work in Pozidriv screws, but Pozidriv screwdrivers are likely to slip or tear out the screw head when used in Phillips screws. Heads are marked with crossed, single lines at 45 degrees to the cross recess, for identification. (Note that doubled lines at 45 are a different recess: a very specialised Phillips screw.) Pozidriv was jointly patented by the Phillips Screw Company and American Screw Company in the USA. Developed by GKN in the 1960s, the recess is licenced from Trifast PLC in the rest of the world.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phillips_screw

There were W.W.II aircraft built with crosshead screws, but mostly in the USA, and I'm not sure how widely they were introduced.

Elsewhere it was mostly slothead, so it's a good quick restoration check - crosshead? Shortcut.

[mtpopejoy]

How bad do you guys want a Willow Run built B-24???????????

I know I want one there BAD.

No photo updates today, probably next Saturday will be the next photo post but worked yesterday trying to remove the floor. I actually got 3 of the floor screws out with a regular old screwdriver. Figured I would give it a shot and they came right out!

[Django]

That's really cool. Ford power too! The flathead is an early one, so that is good news. If it was replaced, at least it has one from the right era.

Was the dually mod done at the plant or from the factory? Looks like they used '39 Ford fenders for the rear judging by the shape on the side. Do you still have them?

[mtpopejoy]

Chad.
Thanks for the info on the engine and fenders! We were wondering about what they might be from and yes we still have them. One was damaged pretty good on the rear quarter of the fender but we will try and fix it.

We assume that the chassis was manufactured by Ford and sent to the Brooks/Dearborn Coachbuilders to have the body done and at that point they did the dual rear wheels, steel floor and bench vices as well as the storage compartments in the back. We dont know for sure though.

Not too much info around on these things!
Regards,
Mark

[mtpopejoy]

Made it out to the hangar this Saturday with some new volunteers on the Van Ette.
Progress is being made. We have removed the wood flooring pretty much intact (to make a template for the new floor). All of the front diamond plate steel flooring has been removed intact as well.

Here is a pic of th interior as she sits right now:



Corrosion isn't as bad as you would think on a 68 year old vehicle that has spent most of its life outside. Here are some examples of the "rot" that will have to be fixed as well as a closeup of some of the damage it has incurred over it's lifetime:


Passenger fender


Driver's side inner rear wheel well.


Passenger side rear lower quarter.

We are pretty close to being ready to pull the body off the frame. We started removing the bolts that hold the body to the frame and most came off intact or did this:



A few left-over bolts and wiring hang-ups and the body will be off and the REAL fun can begin.

Oh, by the way. Here is a shot of the VIN tag on the frame. It is tough to make out (best pic I could get) but you can zoom in on the high res image at flickr.
Here ya go!


Any help on decoding it would be greatly appreciated.

Thanks all,
Mark

[Second Air Force]

I'll leave the serial number ciphering to the Ford experts!

I meant to ask you this earlier--what was the main mission for the van during the time Willow Run was in operation? Seeing it running across the ramp in that photo made me think it was a line maintenance or service van, or a hot-shot parts runner for the flight line.

Scott

[mtpopejoy]

Scott,
I think you hit the nail on the head with this one. We think it was, like you said, a line maintenance or machine/parts truck. It had some type of cabinet welded in the back to the floor that is since long gone and vices mounted near the rear doors.

It is really fun to be a part of the restoration and we are getting some interest in it from more volunteers coming in on the project.

More to come.
Regards,
Mark