M2A1 "Hell Hound" project

[steve1973]

Wow, That's great Pat! Glad to hear yours is up and running. After you run in your engine in a bit you should re torque your head bolts to 75 ft-lbs. This will prevent a future blown head gasket. You going to try and get in a veteran's parade in a few weeks?

Steve A.

[67tank]

Petaluma Vets day parade.  One of the bigger Vet day parades around.  Should be 2-3 Halftracks in it including Mike France.  There's a bunch of us at work that are combat vets - mostly Desert Storm, OIF and OEF that are planning to ride in the track.  Army and Marines will ride inside - May hook my little M416 trailer behind the track for the sailors........

[steve-0]

glad I could help but it is very minimal compared to hard work you have put into this project.
looks great and now it drives.   

[8683jb]

Great job Pat. Congratulations!

[mfrance]

Petaluma vets parade we should have Tim S. m2. ..Jim B m3.. Dave A. M3 ambulance.... Michael F. M16a1... And your m2 pat... and  with peter f.   Scout car

[yd328]

The halftrack looks and sounds great. Excellent job.

Gary

[67tank]

Good friend of mine who has been an extra set of hands on this project gave this zippo lighter last night as a Congratulatory gift.  Zippo from the 50’s when White and Autocar merged.   He found it on EBay and sent it back to Zippo for a rebuild.  Turns out Zippo rebuilds old lighters free of charge.  Adding this to the track as my lighter for cigars.

[spec4don]

Jealous!

Don G.

[67tank]

As I said earlier the 2nd AD halftracks in Normandy had the extra large invasion circle on the hood.  The issue is that the Rick Larsen couldn't produce a stencil large enough that matched what I wanted to accomplish.  Rick sent me a 36 inch star and then thanks to Tom's (Tapper2) suggestion to try a beam compass to complete the extra large circle, I think I may have matched the original pretty close.  There's some overspray and cutting tape with an exacto knife isn't as clean as a machine but considering that the soldiers in England did this by hand as well, I'm pretty happy with the end result. 

[Darth_Kitten]

I did the exact same thing (except I had to make my own star).

[yd328]

The stars look great, nice work.

Gary

[Tapper02]

Nice job Pat...glad the idea worked!

Yours too Darth...no one says they have to be perfect...they're combat vehicles after all!

-Tom

[67tank]

Petaluma Vets day parade 2017.  First public showing.  Did not break down. Michael France does an amazing job getting everyone together.  He had three other Halftrack owners out making it a total of 5 tracks.  Great day

[attachment deleted by admin. sorry all images over 3000  kb where deleted automatically

[R.E.Co.]

Jeepers those pictures look amazing! Love that track, its obvious you took alot of time to make her look that way.

[mfrance]

http://www.northernrecongroup.org/Petaluma_Vets_Parade_2017.html
Above link to Petaluma parade some photos