[rotorwrench]

They are the Timken Detroit rear axles. They were only used in 1-tons and larger after the war till the Bonus Built trucks came along in 1948. The war halted all civilian production and it took Ford a while to get back into full civilian production again after.

Folks have to remember that all the old guys that ran things at Ford before the war were gone after the war and it took the new team a while to retool for some of the stuff that had been slated for introduction in 1943 or 1944 but didn't make it. Henry Ford II had a whole new team but many of the designs were already completed in clay before the war shut things down. They had to produce cars & trucks to get America rolling again and only then could they retool for the 8BA era. It's a wonder that it only took them three years to do most of it. The Bonus Built trucks were ready to go in 1948 but the Ford, Mercury, and Lincoln lines of cars had to wait another year since the bugs hadn't quite been worked out on them. The Rouge plant had been changed a lot for the war effort so all that stuff had to go and new tooling had to be set up by guys that didn't have the know how of Pete Martin, Charles Sorensen, and above all, Edsel Ford. Henry Ford was likely not all there like he had been before the war. That's why Hank the Deuce was brought it to run things after his father died. The US War Department had threatened to take the place over if he hadn't been able to come in and run things like they wanted.