Quick note for Wooden Ben Hur owners

[pfarber]

This may or may not be painfully obvious, and I'm not sure if the owner who 'restored' this ben hur knows it, but the wooden slats are supposed to be milled with a tongue and groove its in the TMs and on my own unrestored ORIGINAL (w/data plate) ben hur.

If your planks look like this:

http://yfrog.com/n1paradetennisandbenhur02j

Fire your carpenter. And no, this is not a $3k trailer.

I also think (not sure, haven't put much time into studying ben hurs) that rubber wheels were mostly steel body/early war items. By 43 rubber was a strategic resource and the steel wheel was put into production. My 43 has the solid disk type landing wheel.

[pfarber]

Pics of an original Ben hur. Note that after 60+ years the wood is still tight with no gaps.

Also not the skid strips are wood, not steel (like in the cargo beds) and that the sides are random lengths / widths.

[pfarber]

"The guy I bought it from was the one who restored it. He stated most of the wood was replaced and it is oak. He did a great job on it. HaXXXXXead"

No, he did a shitty job and you just want to sell it.

The new owner is gonna have redo that wood, its got gaps, is wavy and all the same length/width. That's not what a wooden Ben Hur looks like. White oak is expensive and so is the milling to get the slats right. If you pay $3000 for this expect to dump another $1000 in wood to fix it.

There are some pluses, the main one being that there is a tailgate and the top bows. That is not a $2000 improvement to a $1000 trailer.

To restore this trailer to WWII spec you'd have close to $4k in it. Run, don't walk from this. Maybe if the price was $1500-1800 (I would only pay $1800 if the canvas cover was included).

[pfarber]

Note the gaps between the planks. Also how wavy the wood is.

Also note that the original restorer forgot to round over the corners of the side panels. This rounding over prevents splintering of the wood. Here is a pic of properly made side panels:

Note how the outer edges are rounded over while the inner edge (near the stake) it still 90 degrees?

Also, if you look closely, the tail light mounting brackets are wrong. They are from a steel ben hur, not a wooden one. The wooden ben hur tail light brackets are simply bent metal, like the 1/4ton trailers.

I find it quite disturbing that while this is posted on the other MV web site, where all the 60+ year Army geniuses get together NO ONE PERSON has pointed out the flaws in this trailer. My guess is that its more important for them to get along (and post whore) than impart any actual information on the MVs we seek to restore.

That's more of a travesty than this $3000 trailer.

[pfarber]

Hmm.. owner says this trailer sold.

The buyer better have haggled him down to a sane price like $1500 or less depending on what a full inspection would have revealed.

Heck $3200 is what fully restored and kitted water trailers go for when they pop up. I'd rather a water trailer than a cargo trailer any day (well, ammo, gen-set, water, cargo).