If you remember the conversation we had a few months back regarding the battery tray drain tube......well, I finally found a tray with the tube intact, so we can see what it looked like originally. A rubber hose went over the tube and was held on by a clamp....which I have not been able to identify yet. But at least we can see what the metal tube in the tray looks like.
Bob:
My tray had no tube. The area around the hole where the tube should have been was clean
as a whistle and did not indicate any weld or solder marks. Is the tube on your tray a "pressed fit" or can you see a weld?
Jerry
Sorry for the delay......I seem to have gotten the "flu" yesterday and was really feeling like krap. I took a closer look at the tube. It was put in the tray from the bottom and then the tip of the tube that goes thru the tray was flared. So it's not really a press-fit, more of expanded once inserted.
As for trays having no tube.......I can only guess that they came on later M37's....meaning the B1's....or the Canadian M37's....or both. My ORD 9 is dated January 1954, and it calls for the tray with the tube and a hose that attaches to the tube. So what happened after January of '54 I can't say. And it's also possible that when the trays were supplied as spare parts someone decided to get rid of the tube to save a few pennies.
While writing this I did a little digging around in ORD 9. In my previous post I said there was a clamp that held the drain hose on......I was wrong. What I thought was a clamp was actually the metal drain tube we're talking about. ORD actually lists it as a seperate part, but it says it is included with the battery tray when you look up the battery tray PN. The PN for the tube is 1269982. What I also found is the drain hose for the battery tray is the same part number as the drain hose for the cowl vent. They don't list the exact size, but say it's 11" long and rubber.
Bob:
Yep....... all that makes sense now. The missing thin wall tubes could easily have been lost because of the hose vibrating
in the wind and a little help from battery acid. Or just pulled lose when wrestling the tray and hose out.
Not likely the motor pool guys or civilian owners would bother to order the new tube and flair it in.
I probably would not have either.
Thanks,
Jerry
Can you give me the basic dimensions of the tray including the height? I will have to build a tray from scratch.
-John
Member of Dixie Division MVC
1953 USAF M37 wow, restored
1962 M151 Ford Production, on the rotisserie now
1953 USMC M37 w/w -in storage
1942 M6 Bomb Service Truck (sold to UK collector)
1967 M116A1 Pioneer Trailer
1968 M101A1 Trailer
S-89 Comm box
The dimensions of the tray on the inside (where it counts) are 10 1/4 x 11 1/4 inches. The sides slope out a little bit, so those dimensions are at the bottom of the tray, and are the minimum dimensions that the batteries have to fit in. I haven't looked into what current batteries actually fit the tray.....maybe someone can chime in.....but if you're making a tray you might want to cheat it out a bit if there's common batteries that would fit.
Thanks for the info. It's surprising that no one has repro'd these or that there isn't a substitute we can use.
-John
Member of Dixie Division MVC
1953 USAF M37 wow, restored
1962 M151 Ford Production, on the rotisserie now
1953 USMC M37 w/w -in storage
1942 M6 Bomb Service Truck (sold to UK collector)
1967 M116A1 Pioneer Trailer
1968 M101A1 Trailer
S-89 Comm box
It's probably one of those parts that will be re-poped in the future....just not yet. I don't know what the battery box looks like in an M35, but the M35A2 uses a steel or plastic box without a tray. The bottom of the box has thick ridges that keep the batteries off the floor of the box. I don't know if that box would fit in an M37........but they seem to be available. Anybody every tried........does an M35A2 box fit under the passenger seat cushion??
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