Evening all, as my main interest is VN vehicles, with mostly softskin and support vehicles, I was wondering if there is a general reference for doing the hood/ registration numbers? Most of the time reference pictures don’t show these very well and I know some on here are very picky about these details. My interest is mostly the trucks and as I said, I don’t know how big a deal this is, but I thought I’d bring it up for discussion. Also, how hard would it be to make up individual numbers? Wayne
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The hood number is the truck’s Registration Number with the military. This number was assigned when the truck was produced and stayed with it for the life of the vehicle. The number is usually a seven-digit number (e.g., 2XXXXXX or 09JXXXX) painted in matt white 3-inch lettering on the sides of the hood. The letters “U.S. ARMY” (also 3 inches high) are painted above the registration number with a 1-inch gap. I don’t know of any specific number sequence for M54 or any other series of Vietnam era trucks.
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I was wondering if different models had a different number since all the M151s in the squadron book have numbers starting with 02 or 2 followed by letters to show the manufacture batch. Also the M37s were 03 or3 the M35s seem to start with 04 or4 and the M54s seem to start with 05 or 5 and the M123s were07 or7.
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I work a lot with restorations on real military vehicles and hood registration numbers are one of the topics that gets brought up all the time. For vehicles in the cold war period, there are three distinct ways in which the vehicles were numbered. The first was the old style 7 or 8 digit system that was very similar to the WWII system where the first 3 digits made up the class of vehicle it was. This was replaced in 1954 with a system that added a letter and the vehicle class was reduced to 1 number. Then in 1968 it changed again and now added the year the vehicle was accepted into service as the last 2 digits. Here is a great video that explains all about the registration numbering system. https://youtu.be/9xt44bx8t9U?si=0eJ-mMh7xZYIcc4M
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