My M151 restoration

[elsasser7122]

shows bottom painted and in the process of masking everything and prepping for the application of the undercoating

[rickf]

If you are making this all original I am pretty sure they never undercoated the straight 151. I do not like undercoating, not only will it keep water out but it will also trap it in and then it will hide rust. With paint you see rust right away and can address it then and there. With undercoating you see th rust when a big chunk of undercoating and rusty metal falls off.

[elsasser7122]

If you are making this all original I am pretty sure they never undercoated the straight 151. I do not like undercoating, not only will it keep water out but it will also trap it in and then it will hide rust. With paint you see rust right away and can address it then and there. With undercoating you see th rust when a big chunk of undercoating and rusty metal falls off.

Well , Rick, I sure hate to disappoint you, but yes I am making it original as I can, I at first wasn't going to use the undercoating but since we want to make it more correct, we decided to go with it. If you will go back to page 3 where it shows the tub outside in the snow, you will see where it had peeled of, that is also where we got some samples to see how close to the original stuff we could come up with. I was in the motor pool and in the Battalion we had 140+ of these little characters and yes they all had it, they was all 2C's and 2D's. Do I like the undercoating, short answer is "NO" but ..............

[Bryan45]

It looks fantastic! Thank you for sharing this journey of restoration with us.

[elsasser7122]

Got the undercoating put on, Yes, I agree with you Rick, I don't like the undercoating either, for all the same reasons. Mine is a "62" can't confirm any of the other straight M151's but the 2C's and the 2D's we had in our Battalion had it, so went ahead with it. The water getting under it won't be a issue with me as I am not driving on any off roads or wet roads or even washed, as it will be hauled in an enclosed trailer to the parades and shows, and when I get done playing with it, will spend the rest of it's live in a museum.

[Fil Bonica]

You should be very proud of what you are doing
That beast is too nice to leave indoors all the time!!!!
Run it around and show it off to all.
I have an A2 that has been through a ground up resto.
Use it all the time in good weather The bottom is a bit dusty but then I dont care.
Just too much fun to drive!


Fil Bonica

[elsasser7122]

Waiting on some of the undercarriage parts to arrive, did get some parts on like the horn and air cleaner bracket and the main wiring harness

[halftracknut]

Wow it sure looks great....another one saved.....

[elsasser7122]

I want to thank all of you that have followed this rebuilt thread, and have offered encouragement, advice, comments and such, it has been a long journey. We hope to have it completed in about a month, sure am looking forward to driving it and taking it to parades and shows. I have learned one big thing along the way, it can be accomplished, just have to open the wallet a little farther.

[elsasser7122]

Have a few more of the components installed.

[Fil Bonica]

I have never seen black interior for a 151.
Kind of interesting.
Is this the way they were when you were working on them?

Fil Bonica

[Bryan45]

On a M151 just off the assembly line, were the screws that hold all the accessories to the dash silver or were they sprayed semi-gloss also?

[lpcoating]

Is it black? Looks green to me...

[elsasser7122]

The interior is all green, probably bad lighting, Paul takes these with his cell phone, and sends them to me for posting. The underside is undercoated and we followed where it was, we assumed it was still the factory original, as it was really bad in places and peeling of. The fasteners I don't remember from the day, we try to check the -P's and go by that. Some it says, like some were yellow zinc, some it don't say, so we go with silver, some were od, we tried to check underneath the heads when we disassembled and such to see if we could see anything, as in some point in time it had been repainted in a very sloppy way od on everything. We are sure we won't get it factory correct, but are trying to make it look halfway decent.

[Fil Bonica]

Had a discussionn with Muttguru and it was his opinion that 151s came from the factory with everything painted.
I have built two A2s ftom the ground up.
In both instances they were painted,assembled completely and then returned to ghe paint shop, carefully masked and painted for the final time
This allowed for full coverage and correcting any dings during assembly.
In addition all hardware was primed before painting.
Fil Bonica