Hi
Just spent the morning looking at the thread of photos on Militaryphotos.net.

Apart from the obvious and numerous toyotas of all types, a couple of landies and US pickups, these two pics caught my eye.

Dont know where or when they were taken. or if its the same vehicle.

Curious as to how they got there, any ideas



Also saw a black one.

regards

Peter

Hi Peter

Here's another one (looks to be the same as in your first picture):



This one has square headlights

Frenchy

Howdy Peter,

I assume that the white M151A2 in the pictures is the same vehicle. Note civi style mirrors and head lights and what seem to be a front guard(?) on this vehicle. That one and a photo of this unarmed black one are the only M151's I've seen so far. No idea how they got there.



Cheers,
/E

I spent a number of years at Dugway and Tooele in Utah back in the 1970s. At that time the Army was disposing of all of its fleet of M-151s by making a cut in the frame and selling them for scrap. The same disposal contractor had bid on them as scrap and had a re-weld jig in a yard just outside the base where he repaired, repainted, and remarked them. All were then shipped to sales activities located outside the U.S. (They were considered unsafe for sale to the U.S. public due to center of gravity issues). You can find the occassional survivor in just about any middle-east, south american, and african country.

The U.S. Marine and U.S. Army special operations folks kept a few, and even "re-acquired" a few for use in helicopter insertion activities, which were used up into the early 1990s. Most of these, however, were so worn out that they were actually scrapped by the activities on their home bases.

Here's another, ....in not so good a shape found in Misratah :







(from this thread http://g838.org/viewtopic.php?f=2&t=5112&st=0&sk=t&sd=a )

Frenchy

Good find.. this gives us more options to model various rebel vehicles.

By the way, I've seen several "civilian" Mutts here in Egypt.. especially in rural areas. I just figured they were probably old Egyptian army surplus.

Hisham

Definitely opens up new options for the Academy mutts!

Hi
Interesting a mutt with square headlights didnt know about that.
Id heard of mutts being cut up but cant work out the high gravity thing as they seem quite low compared to many 4x4s.
Looking at the pics that means theres at least 3 in country so probably more.
Had heard that 50 cals tend to break a mutt obviously the rebels havent read the same as me unless a dushka is different.
Peter

Here's one


Frenchy

Frenchy
Guess you could say that one definately needs a welder.
Peter

well iam a welder and you lot more than that
henk

Nice pics. Good to see some old M151s still running around out there.





The issue with them was not a high center of gravity. It was with the rear suspension.

The A1s had a central articulation of the rear suspension arms. The lowering of one wheel relative to the frame would make the wheel move inward, causing it to tuck under and abruptly overturn.



To help counter the problem, I have seen chains attached to the rear supension to limit the amount of travel and keep them from folding under.



The A2 changed the rear suspension to a trailing A-Arm type, but it still did not solve the problem. It made it a bit more stable, but still had a tendency to roll.




Due to this, the US DOT deemed that they were not safe for civilian use on public highways. That is the reason they had to be cut in half when taken out of military service.

Unfortunately, our governments in this part of the world don't care about public safety... You'd be surprised at some of the vehicles you can see running around here... some of them should have been dumped in junk yards ages ago.. but they're still running around our streets!

Hisham

We had a stencil on the dash that said "Max Speed 45mph, unsafe over 25" I was driving one on the Jersey Turnpike with the needle in the P of MPH on the speedometer. Standard military speedometers only go to 60 with MPH on the bottom at 6 o-clock.

They made us watch a jeep roll over class in basic, it was mandatory training.

Tom

i dont know what vehicle they were, i believe they may have been mutts, but my grandfather had a few. they were cut in half also. Ive always thought they were cut in half for shipping purposes.
we still have them within the family. between the ones that my grandfather had and my uncle, there are 3 of them that we have

In 1968 a soldier at Fort Bliss owned a Mutt. Idon;t know how he got it. It was painted gold.

Stateside I was trained and licensed to drive vehicles up to and including the 5-ton cargo, except the Mutt which was specifically excluded. Strangely,a year latter in Nam, without any training, the Mutt was the only vehicle I was licensed to drive.

I thought I'd add this to my ever increasing collection of Libyan Rebel vehicles. It shouldn't cost much, since I already have all of the stuff necessary stuff.

It's based on Frenchy's first photo, which seems to have disappeared.

First I trimmed of the old headlamps:



then i roughed out the rectangular openings:



And now, this is why I never throw anything away. The rectangular light lenses are from a burned out Monogram Snap-Tite kit of the Police Impala:



I haven't decided whether I'll set them into the holes, or just cement them to the surface of the grill. The first option will require more finesse but will ultimately look better. Either way, I'll put a backing behind them and burnish foil onto the backings.
I'll also have to backdate this to an A1.

I've dug through my 1/32 car collection. Looks like I'll have to scratch that civilian mirror.

? I'd say it's an A2. The rear fender is A2 "style" although it lacks the lift rings. The front of the forward fender is cut off so one can't see the dead give away A2 light arrangement. If you PM me your email I can send the pictures.

Looking forward to follow this project.

Cheers,
/E

Thanks, that would be nice. I couldn't really tell what was going on with the original photo. I saw that the fender didn't have the big dip in it like the A2, but it also looked like it might have been damaged somehow. I have a thumbnail of the original, but it just pixilates when I try to enlarge it. Then I skimmed right over the side view photo - the first one in the thread!
Doing an A2 is obviously easier as that's the kit I alreay have. Good thing you caught that, I was going to snip off the rear light modules when I got home from dinner tonight, and think about a convincing way to graft in the older style modules from an old Italeri Priest kit.

hi
hope Frenchy wont mind

Peter

No problemo Peter I've just noticed this and checked out my Picasa album it comes from and everything appears to be OK...Very strange Anyway thanks for re-posting it !

Frenchy

Hi
Just found another photo of the white dushka mutt, hope its of use.
Iam not sure if its an a2 as the only way i kmow of telling the difference are the lights on the fenders and this one is damaged .



Peter

That's another great photo. It's an A2 alright. I should have known for sure last week - the front view clearly shows it missing the blackout lights underneath the headlamps, which is one way to tell. I was too caught up in trying to figure out what was going on with the fender.
Another way you can usually tell is the one piece windshield, which your newest photo clearly shows. That said,
the A2 Frenchy posted from Misratah is an A2, yet with a split A1 style windshield.
These are all good photos. I'm trying to figure out a way to get a civilian tire on these one piece wheels. The biggest problem is nothing fits. I thought of using the Tamiya Pink Panther wheels, but they're just a little too large. None of my resin or die-cast ones work either.
The black Mutt pictured above wouldn't be a straight build either - military tread tires on different wheels - note the curved slots rather than the holes.
Your photo also shows the push bar on the bumper (which need to be modified) to good advantage, so I can finally get to work on that. I may add some civilian seats to the existng frames as well;
At any rate, I know my fenders aren't 100% correct, but they're better than using straight A2 fenders. I know there's a lip on the front with a long tie down, but I like the look of these the way they are:

I decided the headlamps had to be recessed rather than simply added to the outside of the grill. Wow, was that tedious. Especially with no marks to go by, just trial and error. Of course, the first one is the easy one. The trick is in getting the second one to match exactly.

I found a tire that was close - from the Miitary Wheels UAZ 469 kit. The one with the good tires, not the awful plastic ones that first came out. They're slightly too large, but the closest ones yet. I also don't care for the tread on the sidewall, but I could remove that easily enough once I cast a few, should I choose to go that route. I cut down the kit wheel, but in my search for tires I noticed the wheel on AFV Club's M102 is a perfect match for the M151 wheel, with much better detail. I may have to bogart the wheels from it, the holes are done clean through, and the wheel is fairly thin, giving it a much more scale appearance than just drilling the holes out.
Anyway, here it is, unless I find something better. I've got all day tomorrow to visit all of the area toy stores. Maybe I'll find mirrors for it too...