David Herbert

The 'artisticly' placed upside down one is an Israeli conversion of a Sherman, fitted with HVSS suspension and the wider tracks and a diesel conversion (I think they were Cummins). I think that one was a M4A4 because of the bogie spacing but it is a bit hard to see. David

PM me with length, width and thickness and a phone no. and I will look in my store of pieces of metal that will come in usefull one day but havn't for twenty years. David

Surely what Thornycroft were trying to do with their one piece top bush and thrust bearing was to use the thrust bearing to take normal transverse loads as well as all the vertical load - sort of the opposite to a normal ball bearing which is able to take limited axial loads. Any large transverse loads would be taken by the plain part of the bush but that could have been designed to have a slight clearance normally which would noticably lighten the steering. Any shock load would simply make the balls of the thrust race climb their groves untill the kingpin contacted the inside of the top bush - you would only need say 5 thou clearance which would not hurt either the thrust bearing or the bottom bush. A pure thrust bearing has much shallower tracks for the balls as it is not intended to take side thrust at all. I wonder if it would be possible to re machine the old thrust races and use a size bigger balls. It is only turning very slowly after all. David

It's nice that they came out without too much of a fight. Is it possible that these are not actual Thornycroft king pins but replica ones? The army depots in France seemed to be able to make all sorts of parts so I would have thought that king pins would have been very simple. There would then have been at least another thirty years when making these sort of parts would have been regarded as normal. The two location groves could simply be a mistake. I think that you will probably be making nice shiny new ones in a much better grade of steel than was available then. David

Yes it has 2wd, see the bit where he is washing it in a pond. It has got to have a market here! David

On the question posed earlier in this thread "why Ford and Fordson names ?". As I understand it Henry Ford wasn't interested in building trucks and tractors in the UK, but his son was, so they started a seperate division. David

QUOTE=8_10 Brass Cleaner The front and rear wheels are identical save for the drums. Why have two patterns when you can have one. /QUOTE Ahh, I had thought that the fronts looked smaller diameter than the rears and they look like they have nuts on the outside which suggested something on the inside, bolted on. Probably a mud shield or similar. David

That trailer is nice! I can see that it has brakes on the rear axle, with drums bolted to the wheel by a bolt through each spoke, but surely it doesn't have brakes on the front wheels, so why does it have bolts through the spokes in them ? David

Could you get some pieces laser cut to silver solder onto your 'modern' plain grease cup lids to make them better reprisent the original ones? After soldering they could be cleaned up and then zinc plated and black passivated which would be reasionably long lasting and cheap. I ment to say in my last post that finding these wheels is amazing and just shows that it is worth following a lead however doubtfull it seems. David

John, I would have thought that finding wheels for your truck would be far easier than almost any other part. When a WW1 truck has been through all its lives, what is left seems to usually be a mangled chassis with four wheels and nothing else. You will find some somewhere. Tyres are a bit harder of course ! Is it possible for you to post a couple of photos of your louvre tool. I have some to make and they need to be quite a distinctive shape. I have never punched louvres and it would be nice to make a tool to get them right. What were the problems? Also how did you press the ridges round the edge of each panel of the bonnet? Good luck with the restoration David

With regard to water between the inner and outer disks of the wheel, I think that I would be tempted to drill some holes in the inside disk of the wheel near the rim to let it out. I know that this is not original but it should have been ! David

Thank you Frank, good point. I have now established that Soviet vehicles which went new to Iraq, Syria, Africa etc did have manuals and labeling in English, regardless of the country that they were going to. Enough were obtained by the British military for their own use and it seems that we hardly bothered to do our own translations. However the US military did do their own and if you have the right connections these can be found. Czechoslovakian production for export to non Soviet but sympathetic countries had KS added to their designations, which stood for capitalist state! They had less NBC protection and other simplifications. I eventually got a manual from Bosnia via Ebay (what would we do without it?). It is in Serbian but written in latin text (same as we use) so is much more accessable. It seems that Serbians traditionaly write in Cyrillic but were made to use latin text when part of Yugoslavia, adding to the resentment that boiled over when Yugoslavia broke up. Its a shame that Ebay is not big in Iraq. David

If you are going the cellulose laquer route you do need to experiment a bit to get the right thickness to give the 'structure' of the transfer and then to know how soft it should be when you are applying it. If you are putting it on a flat surface or if it is very small, it can be much harder than if it is going on a domed surface or even worse one with bumps in it. As the water dries it will tend to pull itself down as long as the edges are tight but it makes a huge difference if you can get the last bit of water out from behind it by pushing it out with a very gentle scraping action from a soft but firm straight edge, I always use pieces of dry blotting paper about 2" square with cut edges. When building up the laquer, start with a couple of quite thin coats to 'fix' the ink, when these are fairly dry you can be more enthusiastic with a couple of heavier coats to get the thickness and a good smooth finish. A fairly small spray gun helps as one suitable for painting a whole car is really too big and clumsy. If you get the transfer too wet with overly thinned laquer the artwork can look like its melting and you have no way back. Obviously the surface that you apply it to must be smooth and clean. When you are sealing it after it has had 24hrs for the water to dry out, give it a good coat of laquer as if you wanted a gloss finish. That will bond the edges together and make it all homogeneous. If you want it matt, let it half dry and give it a mist coat of laquer which can be done anything from eggshell to sandpaper grade with practice. Have fun ! David

The original decals were sometimes called 'water slide transfers', exactly like airfix kits had. The artwork is printed onto the glued side of paper that has a clear water soluble glue coating. They are then given quite a thick clear laquer in several coats to give the transfer 'body' and then allowed to dry. When needed they are wetted to soften the glue and carefully slid into place. The water under them is expelled by very carefully pushing it to the edges with the edge of a piece of blotting paper or similar and then left for 24hrs for the glue to dry again and clear laquered to fix them in place. It is still possible to get what is called 'gummed paper' from art shops etc. If you have artwork you can colour photocopy it onto the GLUED side of the paper with a laser printer. Don't use an inkjet printer because the ink is water soluble and will go fuzzy when wet. Alternatively if you just want blocks of colour (large letters or a big arrow for instance) you can spray paint onto the paper and then cut out the shape you want. As you can put one transfer on top of another you can build up several layers into one transfer before or after applying it to the vehicle. The key to all this is the type of laquer / paint that you use. Airfix used something with a plasticiser in it to stop it going brittle, but of course it was not expected to survive outdoors. I have always used cellulose laquer / paint which does go brittle so you need to lightly re-laquer the transfer about 5 mins before use to soften it but not make it sticky on the outside. Cellulose also has the advantage that when re-coated each layer melts into the previous one (as long as the water has gone) to the point where you need sandpaper to remove them. I know that cellulose is not available for car work any more but I believe it can still be got if you try hard. It really is a big help that it melts into the previous layer. I hope this helps, PM me with a phone no if you want more info. David

For those of us not familiar with them, how did the twin shaft design work? I am imagining two pairs of bevel gears and a prop shaft for each rear wheel, directly replacing chain drives, with the diff in the back of a normal chain drive style gearbox. Alternatively a diff with its axis in line with the c/l of the vehicle and driving two shafts, one either side of it but still parallel to it, which drive seperate prop shafts, each to a crown wheel and pinion for each rear wheel. Still a crazy way to do it! David Thank you Charawacky for answering my question two minutes before I posted it, that was very clever !

PM sent David

Andy, I have just read every bit of the website that you linked to. It is absolutely astonishing ! Anyone with an interest in engineering should read this and bow to this guy. David

Did the driver forget to get out when it was blinged ? David

Don't forget that this is not a Halley engine but a Continental, if he finds a Halley engine he gets to rebuild that too! Also Dan hasn't got any con rods for the Continental engine, so he will just make some to fit the Fordson pistons and the Continental crank with a length to give the right compression ratio. Simples David

Sorry Richard, I can't help with your question but you might be amused that when I had my MWR (bought for £25 and driven home in 1970) you could buy a correct silencer for it from your local Bedford dealer as the same part was still used on the small Bedford TK variants. David

[quote name=Redherring ,And another link here http://63528.activeboard.com/t18384802/german-armored-vehicle/ /QUOTE] Good link, I'm persuaded it's a Durkopp. I wonder what happened to the one sold at Aldershot. Presumably scrapped when its wheel fell off ? David

You have a pattern, you could make the other half and then pose the loyd on top of it. Actually you could recreate that photo where a loyd has fallen down the gap in the middle - that would be different ! Hope this is helpfull David

I had one on the front of my 1977 Dodge M880 pickup. The one on the rear did rotate but I think that the rotating bit was integral with the hitch itself rather than joined to it with a flange. David

I'm pretty sure that the Canadian built Valentine now in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa is ex Russian and was fished out of a river in a very similar state to the Polish one so probably had a war record. David