Luke Hamdorf has always had a thing for “stuffing around” with anything that has an engine, so when he got the opportunity to restore a 1942 Chev Blitz, he didn’t hesitate.
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The Chev isn’t just any old truck — it was used by the Australian Imperial Army during World War 2, and wasn’t decommissioned until 1965, during the Vietnam War.
When Hamdorf first picked up the rig, it was a dirty brown colour.
“It was covered in dust — it hadn’t been washed in years,” he tells Deals on Wheels.
“I did the old spit polish to have a look and saw it was green underneath, so I realised it was an army truck, like most of these models.
“Once I started cleaning the body with a bit of sugar soap, I uncovered some army decals and numbers.”
Hamdorf and a friend did some research, trying to get as much information as possible about the truck.
“We found out that it was commissioned in 1942 for the Australian Army,” he says.
“Unfortunately, we couldn’t find the regiment or the battalion number, but we can definitively say that it served a purpose during World War 2.
“It was based in Darwin and we believe it may have also gone abroad.
“America ditched a lot of their equipment overseas after the war, but we brought all of ours back. We’re a smaller country, so I guess we couldn’t afford to leave it there.”
Most army trucks were decommissioned after fighting ended in 1945 — but the Blitz didn’t retire until the ‘60s.
Hamdorf says the reason the truck was in service for so long was because it functioned as a mobile toolbox.
“It was a three-tonne truck with a canopy on the back, towing a three-tonne trailer full of equipment to fix anything from a tank to a light vehicle,” he says.
“It was a full-service vehicle and that’s why it spent such a long period with the army, because it was still useful, in the lead-up to the Vietnam War, for example.”
Hamdorf was commissioned to fix up the Chev to go on display at the Big Red Bash — an annual music festival held in Birdsville in Queensland’s Simpson Desert.
The truck is a replica of one driven by famous postman Tom Kruse, who was synonymous with the Birdsville track during the 1930s, ‘40s and ‘50s.
Kruse battled heat, floods, flies and breakdowns to deliver letters, parcels, food and farm supplies to Australia’s most remote town.
He came to fame through a popular documentary, The Back of Beyond, that first premiered in 1954.
“Tom Kruse owned a lot of these C60, long wheelbase, four-wheel drive Blitzes,” Hamdorf says.
“When a truck broke down, he would leave it where it was so there are a lot of his old trucks still around!
“They were like a parts store for him, he could rock up and pinch some parts to fix the truck he was driving.”
The truck Hamdorf restored was not owned by Kruse but has been recreated as an homage to what he would have driven.
“I have ‘Royal Mail’ on the front bar and the back of the tray, and I’ve kept that theme of the black and the faded-out patina.”
Hamdorf initially got in touch with Greg Donovan, Birdsville Big Red Bash founder and Managing Director of the Outback Music Festival Group, after restoring a Mad Max replica car.
“I know the people who own the Mad Max Museum in Silverton, and we built a post-apocalyptic-looking Volkswagen that sits out the front.
“It’s a sound and light show — it’s fully interactive and says quotes from the different movies.
“That then led me to building a Ford XB Coupe — the famous car from the Mad Max movies. It’s got the long-range tanks and the supercharger and that’s all blacked out.
“I approached Greg and asked him if he would like the car at the festival, because it’s so iconic and specific to that area.”
Greg loved the idea, so the car headed off the middle of the desert, where it was huge hit.
“We were doing doughnuts and yahoo-ing at the back of the stage, it was great,” Hamdorf laughs.
“So for this year’s festival, I was trying to think of something else that was synonymous with Birdsville, and I thought of Tom Kruse’s Chevy Blitz.”
Hamdorf eventually found a suitable truck languishing in a shed in regional Murrayville in Victoria, where it had been sitting for 30 years.
“The guy I got it off, his grandfather had bought the truck off a local beekeeper,” he says.
“We think the beekeeper was the original owner after the truck was decommissioned. There’s a lot of history there!”
Because the truck hadn’t been used in decades, it needed quite a bit of love.
Thankfully, it hadn’t been out in the rain — unlike many of the old Blitzes that had been left to rot in the bush.
“It was in rough condition but because it had been in a hayshed, it wasn’t anywhere near as bad as it could have been.”
The truck was 95 per cent complete, according to Hamdorf, but he realised pretty quickly that sourcing parts was going to be an issue.
“It’s an 80-year-old CMP, or Canadian Military Pattern. A C60 model, four-wheel drive, four speed, with a petrol six cylinder, straight-six 216.
“The engine was seized and we had a couple of stuck valves. So we pulled the motor out, and went through it.”
Hamdorf was lucky enough to find some replacement valve springs and valves, and purchased another second-hand engine.
The self-taught mechanic used some of the rods and crank from the second engine to get the original one up to scratch, then put that all back together.
The entire truck had been gutted, from the cooling system to the radiator, and Hamdorf rewired everything to a 12-volt system instead of six volt, for improved reliability.
He also upgraded the tyres from a 920 split rim to 1120s, as well as refurbishing the wheel bearings, cylinders and brakes.
“Whatever we couldn’t find new or second hand, we said we’d just restore the old one,” he adds.
He sent the head off to be refurbished, and took the rotting timber tray off.
To make the new tray, he went to the workshop of a local cabinet maker, who had all the tools for the job.
“We kept as much of the old timber boards as possible, trimmed them, did them up with all new fixings, and made the tray solid.
“It’s a mobile stage for the Big Red Bash, with a band or speaker on top, so we needed it to be safe for that.
“We also coated the tray with linseed oil to darken the timber and give it that old-school smell that really brings you back to that time.”
The interior was all cleaned out, and the seats were refurbished with new foam and hessian material.
“We’ve also got a very cool wooden steering wheel,” he says.
“For something that was an industrial-style tool at the time, there’s a great level of detail that went into making some of these key things.”
Hamdorf also beefed up the exhaust, with a three-and-a-half-inch stack up the side and a resonator muffler.
He adds: “It’s got a really nice note to it, for a petrol six-cylinder.”
He kept the weathered look of the truck, as an homage to its history.
“The whole brief with this truck was to keep the patina and that weathered look, but to seal it and make it functional.
“Once you paint a truck it’s restored, but this was more of a preservation than a restoration.”
He says the Chev Blitz is a popular truck that resonates with a lot of older truckies.
“A lot of these trucks ended up in the Rural Fire Service, and people used to say that the fire would be gone out by the time they got there because they were so slow!
“You’d definitely hear them coming anyway, because they make a really distinct noise screaming up the road.
“A lot of farms also had one, because they would just go forever. Put it in low range, four-wheel drive and then just drag anything around the property.
“They are a funny-looking thing, sort of like a precursor to your Kenworth cabover – because the side of it looks really cool but the front looks like a pug-nosed dog.”
Now the truck is complete, it will stay in Birdsville, where it will be rolled out every year for the Big Red Bash.
Meanwhile, Hamdorf is on to his next project — turning a ‘Mr Whippy’ van into a ten-second drag car.
“It’s going to be gloss black with a turbo-charged six litre LS-based motor,” he says. “It’s pretty quirky!”
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