datadawg

That was a great video, I can only imagine the dropped jaws from the rest of the traffic when driving along your convoy. I am in Philly, still trying to find out if we have a similar group. My Saracen should be shipping from UK within a month.

You guys have a Fox!? That's great. Mine is hopefully going to be here in early 2016, just started full restoration in UK and will ship it here when it's complete. I didn't think there were more than a handful in USA, it's nice to learn where some of them are. I am on the East coast, so too far to join the contingent.

Has anyone one successfully turbocharged or supercharged an B80? Or for that matter, is it viable to put something stronger in a Saracen, like Cummins diesel? I know this is off topic, but it's in spirit of "hot rod" discussion. Probably the cheapest and most viable option to juice up performance would be nitrous oxide kit. Don't know much about them, but in USA, a lot of racing gear heads put nitrous in their cars, just search youtube...

I wonder why they don't put up the results along with description. It wouldn't take much additional "programming" effort and would make the information much more accessible and transparent. They also keep the results for 2 weeks -- or so they claim. Why not leave results on their website forever? Would be a more customer friendly thing to do. I never did see the tender results from a few months ago posted to their website, and I was checking every few days. Withams royally screwed me at that tender. I was high bidder on a sight periscope, paid them immediately upon getting invoice and when I sent someone to pick up the periscope, they wouldn't release it. Used a nonsensical excuse that I didn't provide an "export permit." Didn't care about anything I had to say (periscope was being installed into a Fox that had an export permit and I would even get specific export permit for periscope before export was made if that made them happy, etc.). Methinks they sold it to someone else for more money. I have to wonder whether this has happened to other people (they "win" but don't get the merchandise). Maybe Withams' policy of (sometimes) posting naked prices is designed to frustrate these buyers from seeking info on sale and learning what their item finally brought.

Where in Texas are you guys? Just saw your video, very entertaining! Keep up the good work. I hope to have my Saracen on this side of the pond soon, it's like a British invasion!

Pavl, any more photos? Keep 'em coming!

The line with "Rachel" has also "auth" in it, so maybe it's a reference to the name of the person that authorized the action?

I had posted a similar query and there are a couple threads on vehicle history cards. My thread is here: http://hmvf.co.uk/forumvb/showthread.php?50381-Saracen-82BA77 This should be a good topic to make into a sticky, b/c the information is in bits and pieces all over the place and very difficult to find and analyze.

I know this is a revival of an old thread, but what I find absolutely jaw-dropping-incredible is that the Saracen's hull does not look deformed. If you look at the photo, the bottom of the hull is flat and would have caught the blast wave. The IED attacks in Afghanistan forced the Americans to re-engineer their armored vehicles to utilize V shape hulls. So I am puzzled, impressed and incredulous, all at once, how a Saracen had no penetration and only slight deformation of its flat bottomed hull. The only thing I can think of is that the bomb was buried to the side, in a culvert, and the slope of the culvert carried most of the blast energy along the bank of the culvert and over the Saracen. It's an impressive tribute to the vehicle that it was still able to save lives of its occupants. I just find it amazing that everyone survived.

Terry, In case you ever remove your fuel tank, I saw a post on another thread where someone said they found their hull # stamped when they removed fuel tank. It's post #25 here: http://hmvf.co.uk/forumvb/showthread.php?19375-Saracen-chassis-number-where-is-it/page3&highlight=saracen+hull+numbers "With the tank removed it was located under the paint on the floor of the vehicle in the rear right corner of the floor looking over the lip of the rear doors (as a point of referance it is on the floor straight down fromroughly where the gas tank vent tubeis located). It contained the reg number of the vehicle, a date (about a year before the"in service" date of the paperwork from Bovie) and some initials and numbers (QA maybe)."

I don't definitively know my hull number, and the shop restoring it tells me that it's actually stamped on armor beneath the up-armored layer. So it's not possible to view it, unless you cut armor - not something I would do. They did tell me that each of the escape hatches is numbered and the hatches are generally uniquely fitted to each hull. My hatches are numbered "404". That doesn't seem to jive with the sequence, if your hull # is 607, and your military vehicle id numeration (82BA29) is lower than mine (82BA77). My Saracen also lacked the official ID plate (making up replacement), so without forensic anthropology here, it's really hard to know what is factual. I considered the possibility that my hatches are replacements and the true hull # isn't 404, but then the hatches would have had to have been replaced by identically numbered hatches, and I can't really come up with a valid reason for this. Plus, assuming hatches were numbered 1 to 1,000, the probability of getting 2 identically numbered hatches is 0.1%. Low odds, so I think the hatches are original and correspond to my hull #. Still no rhyme or reason for the numbering gap on hull between our 2 units.

Thanks for the info. Lack of punctuation made this a difficult read, but I want to make sure I understood what you said correctly: "first class" is at end of service life, so presumably it was worse condition than "third class"? Somewhat counter-intuitive, the way the cards are printed, the box for 3rd class is to the right of 1st class, so you'd have to fill out the card from right (3rd class) to left (1st class), to show progression from good condition to worse. Unless you Brits fill out paperwork from right to left, this seems strange!

My Saracen's history card lists "UIN" as F7834a. According to this informative post, UIN stands for Unit Identity Numbers, and there is specific information conveyed by the UIN. The post explaining it is at this link: http://hmvf.co.uk/forumvb/showthread.php?49270-RAF-UIN-Unit-Idenification-Numbers The only thing I've been able to decipher on my own from the UIN of F7834a is that the prefix "F" signifies Ministry of Defense, Royal Air Force. Why my Saracen, an armored vehicle, would be attached to the Air Force is beyond me.

Chris, Where did you manage to get paperwork and is there a source of records for other vehicles? If a given Fox had over a dozen engines, would that mean that every time engine got replaced, the removed engine was repaired by someone with expertise or just some random guy? What I'm getting at is if a given engine had 20 repairs, odds are there are tons of little screw ups still ongoing, unless the repairs were made by an expert each and every time. Just seems the odds of having a lemon for an engine now are extremely high.

I am sure you are right, people on here have tons of knowledge, and I bet someone either has a "code" to all the cryptic information on these cards or knows how to decipher it. The theory that missing information for a given period reflects service abroad doesn't make a lot of sense to me, especially if the missing information is from the beginning of service. If the theory were true, wouldn't they still put something on the card as soon as the Saracen went into service? I mean, it's not like it rolled off the production line and then got teleported somewhere. It probably went to a depot, sat around, the planners figured out what's needed where, then it got assigned to some unit, loaded for transport, brought to a port, went on a ship, etc. It would have to have had history during this time, otherwise someone could have just taken it for joyride and no one would miss it. I am really interested in figuring this out. Part of the allure of preserving my Saracen and giving it new life is learning about its history and what happened to it before. Everyone of them has a rich story to tell!

Thanks! Would anyone know which decals would be appropriate/accurate to get for a Saracen?

Here are a couple photos of the Saracen, as it sat when purchased. I bought it from Bob Grundy, sight unseen. I am excited to bring it (her?) home when the overhaul is done.

I just got history cards for my Saracen from Bovington. Would love some input on the following: What does any of content mean, things like EIN, Class 3, UIN, TXN, etc.? Why is there a 12 year lag between 1955 date in service and 1967 first entry? Any significance to different cards (pink and white)? Why would some lines have text in both blue and red colors? Why does white card have redline with "R" on top, yet pink card have green line with "C" on it? My vehicle has RFC and is an MK6, yet cards state MK2. Wouldn't the cards reflect upgrade history when it would have been up-armored to MK6? In case the cards are hard to read, you can click on them to open picture in new frame and then click twice more to maximize the image in a separate tab. It's a lot clearer than if looking at imbedded image in the post.

I recently received the cards from Bovington for my Saracen 82BA77, but they list no chassis number. The numbers on my escape hatches are "404". What's weird is that cards list it as MK2, but mine has RFC and would seem to be an MK6. Wouldn't the cards reflect the changeover when vehicle was uparmored? Also strange is the fact that date in service is listed as July 5, 1955, but first activity is from August 22, 1967. Does this mean it just sat for first 12 years of its life? Or perhaps there is a missing card? The latter option seems less probable, since there are 2 cards already, so if one was missing, there would have been 3 cards?

What is his ebay name, I tried searching by "matt black" and "mattblack" and nothing came up. Better yet, if you can post a link to a current auction, I can find him that way.

If someone stole this, it's likely not a typical thief that steals cars, but someone that has an interest in MV. Most "normal" people don't care about this stuff at all. Hope they catch him.

If they were selling stuff by the palette, I imagine some of the buyers got some sweet surprises... I mean you open a crate and wow, it's full of Uzi's. Holy crap. It would take years to go through this and figure out what's what, but I guess selling it as a tidal wave was the only way to go.

Awesome, just awesome. Can you give detail on the electrolysis process? What was in the bucket? How much voltage/amps did you apply to the solution? I might need to do this at some point.

I hope you figure out what's wrong. Any chance you can post photos of what you do from now on, so the unenlightened (me) can learn from this? Yes, I am clueless

Thanks for posting, is that all you have or are you posting additional photos?