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M3 Halftrack Serial Number 6342 / USA 4019401
The Vehicle is a M3 Halftrack Serial Number 6342 / USA 4019401, it would have been built by Autocar in July, 1942As far as I know this Halftrack was used by the Greek army, not sure if it saw WW11 action with them, but it and another large number were to be scrapped in the 80's luckily some got saved and were imported into Australia, by James Swan
It was used in the remake of the film 'Sahara's filmed in the Stockton beach area near Newcastle.
I found the vehicle in 2005, just in time to do some work to get it to the celebrations for VE day. (A very quick paint job to camouflage the German unit marking that had been used for the Sahara filming)
It was missing the Hydrovac unit and the exhaust manifold was cracked. We sourced a Hydrovac unit for Corowa and got the engine running some what better.
The track then sat for awhile, sourcing parts and motivation, the motivation came in the form of the Pacific mini series, the producers needed a track, so several very busy weeks saw the vehicle cleaned, tuned ,sandblasted and then undercoated. The day we first backed it out of the shed we broke one of the tracks, so we had to replace that straight away.
It was used on the Queensland set and the Geelong set, I was lucky enough to spend nearly a week at Geelong driving some of the vehicles, but never drove my own vehicle.
Since getting the vehicle back we have done a few more jobs, the hydraulic lifters were removed and replace, we sourced a new inlet and exhaust manifold and fitted these, this made a vast difference to the vehicle, also the starter motor was replaced. We had the mine racks but had never fitted them, they were used on the Pacific set, but then taken off to be painted, so these were fitted only last week. The unit markings were also painted on last week, making the track look fairly complete, if that can every be.
The next step will be to work on the crew area in the rear off the vehicle, the Greek army had fitted a Anti aircraft mount in the rear, so some of the crew seats and chain lockers have been removed. A local engineer is going to make these, we will then fit some seats in the rear.
I am waiting on an original seat base to arrive so that we can get some more made. We are also waiting for some small armour panels for the rear of the track, around the taillights, these were missing, and we made up some ply wood ones for the filming, which surprisingly have survived quite well.
