Early Ford V8 Club #109

1951 Mercury M3 (1 Ton) Truck

Owner:                             Tony Cond, Esquimalt, BC

Restored By:                   Owner

Engine/Running Gear:  255 cu in. original flathead V8 block, bored .060”, 4” Mercury crank, original 4-speed “crash” gearbox with PTO port.  All running gear is restored from original parts to original condition.

History:      This truck was just a cab with an A-Frame boom and a 10Ton military Braden winch when Tony found it on Bob Cameron’s lot on Craigflower Road, Victoria in 1981.  Bob had previously used the truck for 20 years at Langford Auto Wreckers.  The condition of the truck cab was deplorable: bent out of shape, full of holes, and with a rusted-out floorpan.  The original flathead engine was still in the truck but only running on 7 out of 8 cylinders. The running boards were “stove-in” 2” along their length.

Tony used the truck in the as-found condition to build a log building on his property in Sooke until 1985 when he moved to Esquimalt.  The truck was then completely dismantled in preparation for a ground-up restoration when Tony and his family moved to Ottawa.  The truck had to be moved with him in dozens of boxes and a bare frame.  The truck was slowly restored, body straightened and re-assembled over a period of several years.  It waited for years while the family moved to London, England and Toronto, incrementally getting small bits restored in the meantime.

In 1993, when the family moved back to Victoria, Tony built the box from old parts and new-metal sides into which he welded original inner fenders from parts found in Ontario.  The rear fenders were cobbled from five different fenders and refurbished all in solid steel.  There was a lot of welding, hammering, filing,  dollying and picking to do: no body filler!  Tony re-built the magna-fluxed, balanced engine with milled heads, new bearings, camshaft, pistons, rings and valves.  He converted it to 12 volts for reliability.  Syd Moorhouse contributed by installing a modified distributor.  Tony did all the initial bodywork welding and body preparation in Ottawa but later in Victoria, got assistance from Early Ford V8 Club member, Al Price, to complete the finer body work.  Paint preparation was done by Tony and the paintwork was done in 2002 by Bill Oldfield whose shop is on Spartan Road, Victoria.  Al Price was a great teacher.

In 2015, Tony decided that his truck was too noisy, too wasteful of gas, and too slow for use on local roads.  Bob Cox, one of our long-term Early Ford V8 members donated an F250 rear end with a 3.54:1 ratio.  Fraser Kaye and Tony installed it.  A few months later, still not satisfied with the improvement, Tony and Fraser installed a T5 manual transmission in the truck and connected it to the new rear end with a big, new torque tube.  This made all the difference in the world:  Range, mileage, sound and speed were all improved.  Tony’s wife, Debbie, exclaimed, “we can even hear each other now!”

Tony now makes use of the truck for household errands, with caution (of course), and proudly drives it nearly every weekend, weather permitting, for Club events and socials outings and sometimes for the simple pleasure of driving it around for an hour our two:  such an improvement.