Hi fellas,
Did the M54 5 ton truck exhaust pipe ever run horizontally with the truck or did it always go vertically through the right fender?
If it ran horizontally do I then need to plug the hole in the right fender?
Thanks for your help.
Joe.

The original M54 with gas engine had the exhaust running down the right frame and exiting between the rear wheels. On the M54 there was no hole in the fender. The A1 version added the exhaust stack through the right side fender.

M54

Thanks for the info, Gino.
Any idea when the A1 version came out?

I never saw a gas engined M54 in country. All were multifuel deisels with the vertical stack that I saw. The ones we used in the states had Hydromatic transmissions, and may have been gasoline powered (been way too long). All the ones I saw in Vietnam were manual transmisioned trucks. The trucks in my unit were new in 1967 or late 1966 (probably), and came over with my unit via troop ship
gary

So, even as early as '66/'67 the M54 had a vertical stack. Okay, cool.
I've seen some pictures of the M54, particularly the gun truck conversions, where the exhaust pipe was sawed off & it exited out & down by the front wheels. Was this a common practice or was this method related to just the guntrucks?

It seems to be a guntruck thing, they didn't want to smoke out the crew.

The gas engine change and exaust stack change was in te early 60s. I recieved a duce replacement (from depot storage) at one point which had the side exaust.....we had that quickly changed!!

Rounds Complete!!

Okay fellas. Thanks for all your help. Looks like I'll be building this one with the vertical stack, then. No problem.
I'll be starting a build log on this one soon.
See you later.
Joe.