Elwood wrote:When I received my factory build card (http://www.g741.org/PHPBB/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=6071), someone at the Chrysler Historical archives generously thought to include a few photocopies of M37 photos from the Chrysler engineering collection. As reference material, or just for general interest, perhaps these will be of use. Here's the first one:
I wonder if "M37 CARGO CARRIER SIMPLIFICATION" in the original photo caption meant that the instrument cluster was a delete option?
Anyone else have some of these M37 Chrysler factory photos?
Wonder what the seats are covered with? Some kind of grainy leather or plastic?
JB
I think they call it Naugahyde, its Vinyl. I had it on the seats in my truck when I first got her. I seen it used a lot in older trucks when I was in the service.
The green vinyl seat covers are interesting. I didn't know they existed until last week when I got an NOS driver's seat back from John at Midwest. When I opened the box it was green vinyl, not canvas. Then yesterday I got a used passenger side seat back and it had the same green vinyl covering. The passenger seat back used the grommets and white cloth rope to hold it on, while the driver's seat back used hog rings. So best I can tell, vinyl replaced canvas on seat covers somewhere late in the game, meaning as spare parts produced later and not as original equipment when the M's were made.
The vinyl seats thing on Army trucks is a bit of a mystery. Since most of the pubs were made very early in the M37's production you can find many errors or things that just didn't make it to production...maybe the vinyl seat covers fall into that category. I still think, but can't positively prove, that Air Force M37s came with black vinly seats from the assembly line. Reason I say that is I've seen a number of AF trucks with the black vinyl seats, and my AF M has them. Of course many seat covers could have been replaced, but the reason I lean toward the black vinyl being stock as supplied by Chrysler is dur to the originality of my AF M. When I bought it I didn't know anything about M37s or what was original, but now that I understand the hobby better and have looked the truck over.......everything on the truck is original, and even the field mods that occured to most Army trucks were not applied to my AF M. It still has all Auto-Lite electrical components, distributor filter box on firewall, thin shackle mounts on front bumper, etc, etc. Seems no field mods or improvements were ever done to it. And when I look at the seats......or what's left of them.....they have black vinyl covers held on with hog rings. They appear to have never been replaced (but surely need to be now).
So I'm not sure about the whole vinyl seat thing, especially in regards to Army trucks. Chrysler may have proposed that initially, an then Army testing showed them to not be durable enough.....and the pubs were already made up.....or maybe something like that. Maybe some of the guys who overhauled these trucks back in the day can chime in and tell us if they ever saw vinyl seat covers on M37s.
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