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My 1965 WM300 Dodge Power Wagon
(Such As It Is)
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In 1981 my 1965 WM300 became the third Dodge Power Wagon I owned. I have not yet ever sold one
and don't currently see any reason to alter that. A friend told me about a Power Wagon for sale
down by the beach. I said there's no way I could justify buying another truck, then made the
error of taking a look at it. I was trundling past Bob's house tooting the horn in my new truck
later that same afternoon.
I bought the truck from a guy who was trying to start a hamburger joint at the entrance to one
of the big beaches here and needed the money to buy equipment. He had been doing a 40 mile daily
one way commute in the thing. I thought, damn, he's probably flogged it down the road at 55 every
day for months. He claimed no, and proved it to my satisfaction as I was driving us into town in
my old '67 Polara, cruising at a mellow 45, the 440 rumbling contentedly. He's got both feet
crammed on the passenger brake and keeps reaching for the dash, fending off some crash only he can
see. He wants to know if I'm in some kind of rush cause he doesn't want to die just to notarize the
title. That's what a summer of doing 35 mph tops in a Power Wagon will do to your perspective!
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To the right you will see featured one of my personal copies of the venerable Dodge Military
Power Wagon, also referred to as a flat fender and, just to thoroughly confuse the issue,
a civilian Power Wagon. The military part is actually a little misleading because only
around 2000 of them were used in the services as far as I can tell.
The military Dodge Power Wagon came into production immediately after World War II, largely
to take advantage of all the government sponsored engineering that had gone into the the
World War II VC and WC series trucks and the Korean War era M-37, not to mention all the
stock piled parts.
My particular truck had a really nasty oil guzzling habit, like 15 miles to the quart!
Smoked surprisingly little if at all once it got warmed up, unless you put your foot in it.
You learned very quickly to feed it the quarts one at a time because it would pretty
much burn whatever you put in it across that same 15 miles. I did a leisurely rebuild on
it through the winter one year. Now it's a pretty good truck, although the body needs some
attention pretty soon, and it might benefit from a set of new tires.
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My glorious '65 Dodge WM300 Military Power Wagon.
Note the grill is mounted out ahead of the cowl, an
indication that it's a later model with the 251 flat head.
Click on specific parts of image for close up views.
Engine Compartment
Passenger Compartment
Drive Train
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Anyone who thinks the rugged is only skin deep on a Military Power Wagon just hasn't had
the opportunity to put it to use. I bought a mid '60's W200 from a guy for the drive train.
Got it real cheap, but the deal was I lug it and a bunch of other junk off his property.
We cut the truck up with a torch and tossed it all into the back of the ol' WM300, minus
engine and transmission. We tossed a Ford Dana '60 in the back, and a home made wrecker
winch that had to weigh 300 Lbs, just to mellow out the ride. It did that, and made it
steer a little easier. Yah, the throttle response was a little subdued, but not nearly as
much as one would predict, and there was none of this ass dragging a contemporary so called
1 ton truck would exhibit under the same circumstances. It was pretty damned impressive.
I know from experience that a 925 Lb heliarc welder isn't enough to soften the ride. A capacity
load of logs is literally however many your ingenuity, engineering skills, and lack of common
sense will let you stack in the back.
Badittude is for new Dodges and anyone gullible enough to sucker for it. The militaries just get
down and do it. Of course, they expect you to do a little work too. Maybe that's what
these badittude guys don't care for, eh?
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Last updated 11-16-16
Email:
mechanique at wmol dot com
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