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Hello to all.
I recently purchased a 1953 GMC 450 Fire Truck with an American Fire Apparatus body. Here are a few photos of the truck for reference 1953 GMC 450 Fire Truck

The truck is outfitted with a Barton front pump (not sure of the model yet) and a mid mount gear driven booster pump.

Since the truck did not come with any manuals related to the pumping systems I am slowly charting the pumping lines and engine bay components related to the pumps. I think I got most things figured out but I still am not sure of the true function of the "surge/cooling" box which is mounted above the engine.

Would anyone have any ideas on how I might be able to find any information related to the engine bay components?

I also have a series of reference photos of the engine bay I can post if that would be helpful.

Thanks for the help- Bob

pictures speak many words. please give us a peek.
thanks

I saw it. very nice truck linked in the second line.
It would be helpful to post pictures of the things you have questions about though.

Certainly is true that pictures make things easier to understand.

Here is a link to set of reference photos I took of the pump and engine bay prior to starting any work:

1953 GMC Fire Truck Engine and Pump Photos

that surge box that you refer to is most likely an engine cooler. when pumping there isnt enough cooling taking place with just the fan. there should be two lines, one coming from the pump to the box and one from the box back to the pump. the box is a liquid to liquid heat exchanger. inside the box may be some type of coil to keep the pumped water from actually coming in contact with the trucks cooling system. if you trace them out youll see where they connect to the pump. there may be a valve to isolate the pumped water from the box. over the years due to corrosion the coil indie the box leaks and then you can loose all the water from the trucks cooling system. pic #32 shows how its connected to the radiator and the pet cock closed on top thus isolating the fire pump water. in pic #33 follow the red hose thats coming out of the box and trace it. in pic #35 it looks like the fuel line to the fuel pump is missing. #36 looks like the radiator is leaking or from years of splashing fire water in the front of the truck and the rust formation is from that. the reference pic and pic #1 looks like the pump pressure governor. in pic #3 the the little gear is driven by pump pressure and regulates the butterfly below the carb thus regulating discharge pressure from the pump. in pic #8 what do the gages read, pressure or vacuum and is that a temp gage on the fire wall? pic#23 looks like its a 500 gpm pump. there should be a tag somewhere up front on the pump itself saying what its rated for. pic# 26 looks like one line goes to the red box and the other line may be for the pump governor control. the engine should be a 302. hope this helps

Thanks for the info 51 ashton
You are right in pic 33 the top line on cooling box comes from the discharge side of the pump (after passing through a filter) and the bottom line on the box returns to the suction side of the pump.
But in pic 33 what is the function of the line with the pet cock on the top of the box? If this line is accessing cooling water why is it connected to the pump water side?
Again you are right the fuel pump line is missing. While driving the truck home the fuel pump weakend and we had to run a length of hose from the 6 volt electric fuel pump to the carb to get home. One of my items to replace.
Luckily in pic 36 that is not rust from the rad leaking but rust from the water tank. The water was drained from the tank over a concrete slab prior to us picking the truck up and lot of the rusty water splashed all over the truck. Not pretty but luckily not serious.
The guages in pic 8 read one for vacuum, for the vacuum primer, and one for temp.
The pump tag is missing from the pump but the previous owner indicated it was a 500 gpm front pump with a 250 gmp mid booster - so you are again correct.
In pic 26 these lines are connected to the cooling system. One line is connected to a port on the water pump and the other line is connected to a port on the bottom side of the thermostat housing. It appears these lines are for "cooling/heating" the pump.
Thanks for the insight.

That is a great looking truck! Nice job picking up that rig.

vwlfan:
It is rare for a truck to have both a front mount and a mid mount pump, could you send more pictures of the mid mount pump? The petcock that you mention could be to add water from the fire pump to the raditor. Good if you are overheating, bad in that you loose your antifreeze strength. The engine cooler has an internal coil so the pump water and engine coolent dont mix. If a hole were to rust through the coil again the waters can mix. I have a manual somewhere on those pumps if interested.

Tim

Tim:

Here is a link to some reference photos I had taken of the mid pump.

1953 GMC Fire Truck Mid Pump Reference Photos

If there is something else you would like a to see just let me know and I can take some additional pictures this evening.

If you have any manuals or literature related to the pump I would appreciate it greatly.

Bob

bob, its a 250gpm rotary gear pump. how about some close up pics of the truck where the pump panel on midship pumps would be. i see some controls in that area but are to distant to have a clear meaning for what they are.

Here is a link to some photos of the mid pump controls:
1953 GMC Fire Truck Mid Pump Controls Reference Photos

Following the pictures in order I believe the functions of the controls are:

#1 : overview of pump panel
#2 : flow controls for top reels
#3 : flow controls for rear pre-connects
#4 : tank fill valve
#5 : electric reel rewind control
#6 : external connection
#7 : rotary pump flow control
#8 : tank outlet valve
#9 : rotary pressure control
#10: mid pump engagement on dash

vwlfan:
It looks to me this was a factory job not some add-on. I agree it looks like a rotary gear pump. These are positive displacement pumps, when you engage them the water has to go somewhere or something can break. Make sure your relief valve is working and not set too high. The few I pumped were noisey, I dont know if they all are. Front mounts in my area are less than 20%, factory front mount with a rotary gear mid mount, never seen one before.

Tim

Thanks Tim
You are right the rotary pump is noisy. Sounds like a full out grinder when running.
The mid rotary is also connected to the front pump (as part of the feed from the tank). It is interesting that governor on the carb has two connections, one to the front pump input and one from the tank/rotary input, with a control lever to select the source. This is helping to sense the pressure differential dependent upon which water source you are using.

Bob

Bob:
You might try to find a manual or someone familiar with this truck to make sure that the noise of operation is normal. A manual would hopefully give lubracation requirements. It might need a good shot of grease or gear oil changed. Never run any pump dry but a rotary gear can have serious damage if run dry, it uses water as a lubracant and coolent.

Tim

the 250 rotary hale that was on the rescue truck i had was also noisy. i never ran it dry because if i knew i was gong to be using the pump i filled the pump up to the connections and went from there ahead of time. if you change the bearings and pack them with a marine grease. it will be quieter but there will still be some noise, its the nature of the beast.

Thanks guys.

I don't think the pump has been run dry but I agree the noise is the nature of the gear pump drive.

Since I did not have any documentation with the purchase of the truck I took some time and charted how the front and mid pumps are integrated together in the pumping system found in link below:

1953 GMC AFA Fire Truck Pumping Diagram

Bob,

Terrific truck! I'm an American Fire Apparatus buff, own a '41 front-mount & a '51 mid-ship. your pictures are fantastic!

I agree with Tim - I've NEVER heard of a front-mount with a Mid-ship rotary. I do believe it's totally stock - all the controls on the side are pure AFA.

My mid-ship had some controls missing from the side, and a PTO lever broken off, and no PTO pump present. You may have provided the answer to what is missing! What Brand is your mid-ship? Can you find any markings on it?

On a mid-ship, it makes some sense to have a PTO-operated pump in addition to the regular, drive-shaft driven pump: It offers you pump-and-roll capability, very useful for wild fires. However, on a front-mount, especially AFAs with Barton pumps, you ALREADY HAVE pump-and-roll: It was one of there BIG selling items (lots of literature on this - search EBay for "Barton Pump" and you'll probably see some advertisements).

Only thing I can guess, is that, for some reason, the department felt they needed a Positive Displacement pump, for situations where they didn't trust the Vacuum Primer to do the job.

Speaking of which - I didn't scrutinize all of your photos; do you HAVE the kidney-shaped Barton Vacuum Primer somewhere on your truck?

-Michael

OK, yep, I see it now.

This truck has more Bells and Whistles than any '50s era front-mount American I've ever seen!

You've probably already figured this out, but the "Three-way Valve" relates to use of the governor, and where the water it uses drains (or not). Has something to do with the accuracy of the governor.

You probably also know this as well, but the piping to the front of the Barton pump is so (warm) coolant will circulate through a water jacket on the front of the pump, thereby preventing it from freezing in cold climates. Also provides additional cooling (for the coolant) in summer. Pretty cool. Guessing your truck came from a colder climate?

I've got a PDF version of a Barton Manual I can e-mail you: send me a Private Message with your e-mail adress (or just send me an e-mail to Mikestem@aol.com).

-Michael

Michael

I checked the mid-ship pump for markings. I could find no mfg name/plate on the pump. The only thing I could find was the following casting number (which is cast on each of the pump end plates:

2002-H A 8 B (or 2003-H A & B)

The casting numbers look to be of the same font/style as the casting numbers on the front mount Barton pump so it might be that this gear pump is a Barton pump also.

Before and after photos of replacing front wheel cylinders:

1953 GMC 450 Front Axle Brake Reference Photos

By-the-way, glancing at the Icongraphix book on American Fire Apparatus, I did spot another AFA truck with front-pump and mid-mount booster pump. Had a transverse booster reel. Can't remember what year or community.

You DO know about that book, yes?

Also - what did you use to clean up your brake lines and wheels? Wire Wheel? Sand blasting? Chemicals? Always looking for better ideas . . .

-Michael

Michael

I picked up a copy of the book you mentioned while I was at the Hershey AACA meet this fall. The book is a nice visual reference for the AFA trucks.

Other than a few pieces of brake line that had been changed recently I have or will replace about 95% of the lines. Once I invested in a good set of Ridgid tubing benders and a double flaring kit I find it quicker and easier to bend and install new tubing rather than trying to rehabilitate old tubing. And the tubing on my 1953 GMC did not have too many compound curves so it was pretty straight forward to bend new lines.

Bob

Finished replacing the wheel cylinders on both of the back wheels and remounted the duals today. On to bleeding the brake system next. Reference photos of the rear brakes:

1953 GMC 450 Rear Brakes

Great pictures!

I could not find a replacement fiber/paper gasket for the front axle caps. So today I set out and made my own:

Making Front Axle Cap Gaskets

That was the last step in finishing the brake rebuild on the 450.

The weather tomorrow is forecast for sunny and 65 so tomorrow looks like a good day for a road test.

I started my winter project of working over the paint on the truck.

It takes me 5 total passes of dimishing compound and polish to get a fair revival of the paint.

Paint before


Paint after

WOW!! That shined up nice!!

Thanks Rich,

The shine is not so much from my work but from today's paint products. I think you can find a paint product for any type of paint condition you might run into.

A few pictures of the fire body and controls after rubbing the paint and polishing the chrome:

Driver Side Fire Body After Rubbing Paint


Pump Controls After Removal and Polishing


The old paint restores fairly well. It looks really nice from 10 ft away.....

Looks great! It really cleans up nice.

Just adding a link to some reference photos of the cab interior:


1953 GMC 450 Cab Interior Reference Photos

vwlfan:
Your cab is showroom clean with what looks like orginal paint. Looks good. In picture three is that a battery selector on the left? I have never seen one in a vehicle that old. What is the switch next to the steering colum? Also as a Motorola fan I noticed the two way radio. Is it connected, did not see any cables coming out the back of the head? Thanks for the pictures.

That is a rotary battery selector/disconnect in photo 3. The truck has dual 6 volt batteries which are selectable by this switch. There is also a push button switch on the dash which connects both batteries together for easier starting of the engine.

The switch to the left of the steering column is a multi-speed switch for controlling the electric fan motor. Appears to control the speed of the motor via thermal resistance.

The Motorola radio is no currently hooked up. All of the electrical and atenna wiring is present so I may at some point try putting power back to the radio.

It got to be tedious and a general pain to keep posting project/truck photos to my web server as small separate web pages. I need to give my arms a break from buffing the fire truck paint so during the evenings the last few weeks I worked on installing some photo gallery software on my web server.

You can see the new web gallery for my 1953 GMC 450 here:

1953 GMC 450 Fire Truck Photo Gallery


Using a photo gallery will let me more easily sequence photos to match the sequence of a project and at the same time makes it easy to add captions and descriptions for each photo.

Bob

After getting some good information from VirginiaFireTruck about the side mounted electric lanterns on his truck I found the following web post in which the poster collects vintage electric lanterns and thus includes a lot of good information about the various electric lanterns that might have been available:

Vintage Electric Lantern Post

Bob

I finally found a used portable deck gun. I have been looking for one for over a year. I found an Akron Brass 3420 portable deck gun with portable ground mount/base. I plan to use the portable deck gun at shows and musters so I can connect the hose, set the angle and then pump water. Certainly not a "new" looking unit but solid and a fraction of the cost of a new one.

Not sure I even want to make it look new. I think the well used may look better with the truck.

Here are some photos of the portable deck gun as I bought it:

Akron Brass 3420 Portable Deck Gun

I took the truck out for it's first spring run a few weeks ago and ended up getting stranded a few miles from the house. It turns out the original gas tank had a ton of rust and varnish which plugged off the fuel filter after a few miles. I decided to eliminate the problem once and for all and did so by installing a new tank and all new lines. I took the truck out yesterday for an hour drive and all went well, my problems had been dirty fuel.

Here are some pictures of replacing the old tank:

Replacing fuel tank 53 GMC 450

Bob

good to see her running again!

New tank looks good!