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Is this part from a vintage fire truck?


wrenchguy

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I suspect that is a cap for some type of outlet on a fire apparatus. The horizonatal hole is probably for a chain that would be designed to keep the cap from getting lost.

The 1/32 diameter hole only goes to center of fitting. The round stock seen in underneath pic could more easy used to fasten clip and hook loose chain too. thanks 4 ur thoughts.

Edited by wrenchguy (see edit history)
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Yes gentlemen, you are all right on all accounts. Many of the caps on the fire trucks were pretty much the same for most fire truck manufacturers. What I will say that based on the cap that it is definitely a prewar cap. Today's fire trucks use a "rocker" type coupling system so you can tighten it with a spanner wrench where back in the day they used a "pin" style cap. I'm going to say that this cap is most likely pre 1930. I have never seen a cap with the flat pins instead of the round pins so this is definitely old. It may even have come off of a horse drawn apparatus.

Another thing that may also be a question is the thread. Today most fire departments use a National Standard Thread (also called NST). Back in the day many communities had their own thread. Believe it or not there are still some communities today that still use their own thread rather than NST. I think NYC may still use their own thread to this day. I know I've bought caps and nozzles for our fire trucks that I couldn't use because of threads.

From a history standpoint, NST was developed after some of the large fires over time. There were times in the past where a community suffered a large fire, they'd call in another community for help, these other communities would roll in to help, but then when they got there, they couldn't hook to the hydrants and fire hose so although they had the water, things burned to the ground. I have found articles where some of these communities would have major fires so in order to get help to them faster they'd load the apparatus (sometimes motorized, other times horse drawn) onto the train and haul the apparatus by train to the community in need.

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