My M35A2 Deuce and a Half

I have been wanting one of these trucks for a long time and finally found one at a good price that needed some TLC. It is a 1972 M35A2 made by AM General. I have been slowly working on it and bought a M-105A 1 1/2 ton trailer for it. What a great radio truck it will be, and a real kick to drive!

Now on with the rest of the story. I bought this truck a couple of years ago, and I have been taking photos of all the changes that I have made since I brought it home.

Here are a couple of photos of the Truck on the day that we drove it over to my Brothers home. At that time diesel was $4.00 a gallon, so $50.00 for fuel did not go very far. Two new Batteries and we were ready to drive it up to my house.

The local Search and Rescue Group heard that I had got the Deuce and asked if I needed a set of troop seats for it. So off to town for a set of troop seats that were in very nice condition just needing a coat of OD Green paint. The deuce is looking better all ready.

The next thing was finding a woodland camo soft top for the deuce, this made quite a difference in the comfort level in the deuce on cold or rainy days. But it was fun taking my wife for a drive in the deuce convertible. We also redid most of the paint on the truck at this time.

One of the other acc that I wanted for the deuce was one of the M-105 ton and half trailers. I found this one locally in very nice shape and it even came with the bows and cargo cover as well. Here is a photo of it behind my early Ford 4X4 pickup!

Last year (2009) was the first year that I took it to any kind of a show. This was the Living History Days May 16, the first photo at the top of this page is from that show as well. Here are three other photos from that event.

At that time I was having no luck on finding an orignal Cargo Cover for my truck, so I made one from a couple of the woodland camo tarps that I bought at Harbor Freight. Here is a winter photo of that cover. The sun was very low and a lot of trees causing shadows on the homemade Cargo Cover that I made.

Since that time I have been working on the deuce. First I found a military cargo cover and then raised the bows up to 65 inches of inside height and then started setting up the deuce so I could install radios in it.

I put antenna mounting plates on all 4 corners of the cargo box and built and installed tables and 24VDC wiring to power the radios.

At this time I have a couple of GRC-106's mounted along with a MD-522 and a UGC-74B so we can run Mil RTTY as well as SSB and CW. For the military FM radios I installed a RT-524 and a R-442 receiver.

Antenna wise I have a large hand made mount for a AT-1011 whip on the driver's side front of the box and on that same side on the rear is a whip mount for a 15 foot whip for the second GRC-106. For the FM radios, I have a As-1729 antenna on the front passenger side for the RT-524 and another whip mount for the R-442 receiver in the back.

The large gray box under the table in the front of the deuce is a 24VDC power supply. Here are a couple of photos of the radio setup.

Here are some photos of how I had the duece and M-105 trailer setup at this years Living History event (2010).

Last but not least here are a couple of photos of the duece and trailer ready to roll.

5-25-10