what ever hapend to the equipment to produce the tucker 48

[CLIFFORD BARTRUM JR]

i was curious about what ever happend to the mahinery and equipment that produced these cars.did any body track down this stuff. the dies to make the body for the car,extra engine componets the stock of auto parts that were on hand to build the car at the chicago plant.

[leadleader]

I had asked this question a few months ago. Not much in the way of information came of it. You could do a quick search for stamping, or dies, I don't remember which. The main jist of the responses were there present location is either unknown or unshared information.

One attempt to contact an old supplier was mentioned, that was the hubcap producer, but that effort was futile.

I hope your post will provoke more conversation on the topic as I would love to know more, but I am pretty certain that there will be limited follow up posts.

In regards to extra engine components and parts, they can be found in fact distributor caps and brake drums were available on the classifieds sometime back. I am sure there have been attempts to track this "stuff" down.

[plancor 792]

Most of if not all of the tooling belonged to the U. S. Government and Tucker had to go through piles of equipment to select what he could use in the production of an automobile. All of the Government equipment was sold at auction. Also all of the items Tucker owned were sold at auction. Tucker had just started receiving stamped body parts from an outside source and I do not recall who that may have been. As to many of the parts used to build the cars Tucker got them from current industry suppliers. The ignition system was Auto Lite. Brakes parts and drums Kelsey Hayes. Other parts came from Kaiser Frazer, GM supplied the steering column, Ford the steering wheels, however these 50 steering wheels were to be destroyed when Tucker started receiving their own units, and some items were in house.
This is all that is known about Tucker's sources. I have been told that Tucker stuck with the "589" engine for so long due to the fact that they had government equipment in the plant that was capable of being used to make many of that engines parts. Such as the pistons. They were capable of being made on the same machines that Chrysler/Dodge had used to make the aircraft pistons. I have never really looked into this.
Richard