fv1609

Richard yes I can see the hereditary origins that fed to the Bedford Pig. It would be lovely to see the one that was at SEME restored, it was quite a massive thing, but I think they were looking for a donor chassis in better condition before attempting a rebuild. There was a Bedford Pig on here that turned up in the USA about 10 years ago in quite good condition. I think we put the owner right on its historical important but whether it got saved or "sexed up" into something silly I don't know. Many many years ago I met a Malayan vet & was talking about Pigs, but he had no knowledge of Humber Pigs, just the Bedford Pigs. He gave me a couple of nice pictures a couple of these Pigs & of a CT15A in use by the Malayan "Home Guard" as he called it. I sent them to a club magazine & were published but sadly never returned to me. I just wonder when the Bedford Pigs started production? I have a Soldier March 1956 with a Malaya feature that includes the Bedford but gives no details. In Soldier November 1956 it shows the Humber FV1609 "in service in Malaya & Cyprus". I imagine the term Pig was a soldier's nickname that eventually transposed over from Bedford to Humber. Although the first ever published reference to Pig for an armoured Humber was the Pig Squirt modification in 1976. But originally the term Wolf was specifically forbidden to be used that slipped into common parlance that eventually got absorbed into some semi-official documentation.

Paul I think its name reflects its operational role. But clearly uncomfortable for the crew if you read the alternative name in the commentary on this set piece demo of convoy procedures. Somewhere I am sure I read that The Bastard was based on a Chevy in support of two Ford 3-Tons that were armoured on a the sides & drove ahead of the Bastard.

Yes I thought you would enjoy that. I just stumbled on it whilst thumbing through some old Soldiers. Trying to find a further reference to The Bastard, which I'm sure I have got somewhere. Amongst these little gems are cartoons depicting racial stereotypes, a few ladies in bathing costumes, cigarette/Brylcream/jock-strap adverts, together with recruiting adverts for the police & mine workers, but it all gives a flavour of the times when I was in short trousers & knew nothing of cigarettes, Brylcream, jock-straps or ladies in bathing costumes.

That's fine Paul as long as it helped. My Wolf has a mish-mash of Bowman/Clansman fittings. I have modified one Bowman mount to accept a SO239 socket for my amateur 144/432 MHz whip. It has a stainless steel base & it is often pointed out that a shiny fitting like that would never have been used in service. I enjoy pointing that the offending chunk of stainless steel bears an engraved NSN, then the expert goes away : )

Stuarts & Honeys still in service in a modified form in 1952.

Was that any help?

I was replying to a Malaya thread on ARRSE & thought I might ask on here as well. Here is the only picture and reference I have of The Bastard that appeared in Soldier magazine November 1950. Was there only this one or were there other Bastards?

Not really, HF is not my thing. Currently playing with scatter on 24GHz.

NP 67 AA is the ERM for Truck Platform 4Tonne 4x4 (DSL) EURO 1 LEYLAND DAF NSN 2320-99-893-8860 Code DB 2091-3103 Here is a picture of NP 66 AA I assume your box is a BALUN transformer. It it used at the centre of a HF wire dipole (ie balanced) to match to a coax cable feed (unbalanced) to the radio equipment. Torroids are rather delicate and embedding in silicone gives some support. I expect there is a large torroid inside with appropriate turns wound through it. There looks to be an emergency spark gap should part of the dipole attachment fail then RF power could be dissipated to earth rather than cause a serious overload to the transmitter.

Paul no EMER, you need AESP 2320-D-128-811 Mods 11 & 20 https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/405637/FOI2015_01547_Percival_Landrover_Defender_Wolf_110_Annex_A_AESP_2320_D_128_811_2_45-O.pdf

I don't whether many members on here also visit ARRSE but on there can be found a wide range of topics which often degenerate into posters attacking each other, but through all this there are serious threads that can throw up interesting less well known bits of history. The Op Banner thread is one of the more serious threads, where I have been moved to make a post. I'll post my bit here if I may as it illustrates I hope that MV enthusiasts have something to contribute & a reminder that amongst all the silly questions we get asked about our vehicles & sometimes with no great feedback, there are some veterans out there with good memories & do know the difference between a Humber Pig & a Saracen! In the thread in question, a chance reference was made to cufflinks. So I posted this picture of a pair that I have that were made in NI in the early 1970s. (Those with good memories may recall I used these on a Mystery Objects Quiz, but the explanation I gave at the time was rather brief) This is the story of the cufflinks, which is a bit long winded I’m afraid. I used to have a couple of Humber Pigs which I would take vehicle shows that would receive varying levels of interest from visitors with varying levels of understanding. It was always difficult to know what level of information I should offer whilst the vehicle was being viewed. I found it hard to engage with visitors who declared “You can’t tell me anything about these, I know all about these mate, the good old Sarican” yet other visitors had more reasoned interest. I had two visitors who seemed receptive, so I mentioned that at one stage in N.Ireland up to 80 Pigs were in the workshops with wheel station problems. I explained a bit more that all Humber 1-Tons had Tracta joints but armoured Humbers (Pig & Hornet) had stronger rear joints, known as Chobham joints. These Chobham joints had articulated pads that were held in place with clips, which had a propensity to snap off. It was such a problem that rear Tracta joints from unarmoured Humbers were fitted and even new ones manufactured although that was delayed by the gas workers strike in February 1973. Rear wheel station failures were running at about 150 per month. So desperate was the situation was that the now notorious Chobham joints had to be scavenged from scrap Pigs, with knowledge that within 2-3 months they would fail. It is commonly believed than the stronger Birfield joints were fitted in Op Bracelet, as the Pigs were converted to so called Mk2 status, this is not the case. Bracelet 1 ran from September 1972 to June 1973, but by then wheel station failure was running at 120 per week. Of the 487 Mk 2 Pigs only 383 were subsequently fitted with Birfield joints, but this did not start until March 1974. This continued until October 1974 when the supply of Birfield kits ceased due to a lack of steel from West Germany for the drive shafts. My visitors seemed to take this all in without question, other than when they left, asking me “Will you be here tomorrow, I’m rather amazed that civilian would know so much about Humber wheel stations”. The next day they appeared, it turned out that one of them had served in NI workshops during Pig wheel station crisis. He revealed they were so exhausted & peed off by the whole situation that in the evenings a few of them occupied their evenings with the machinery in the back of a Bedford by making six pairs silver-plated cufflinks. He presented his pair of cufflinks to me, thanked me & walked off. The next year I didn’t see him but I recognised his companion who informed me that his friend had a major stroke & now knows little about the world around him. What happened to the other five pairs is anyone’s guess, they are not something that would be recognised for their significance. I don’t know what to do with my cufflinks, they deserve to be in a museum as it tells a back story to challenges of keeping a fleet of Pigs in operational use under very difficult circumstances. But I don’t trust museums to keep, let alone display such artefacts, which I think tell a far more interesting story than perhaps a display case with a uniform & some medals. In case anyone wonders on the factual content of above I went through all the REME SITREPS held at Arborfield & I believe I have every EMER that relates to Pigs.

Agree with Nick, I went for the first time last year & was very impressed by the exhibits & the helpfulness of the organisers. But my advice would be to avoid tangling with the M25, it took me 8 hours to get there.

YWE ?

Obviously you have clean fresh fuel. Based on my experience of similar with B60 I would check that the fuel filter is not full of crud, check that the bleed valve on the fuel filter is doing a proper job & not allowing air in. Test or replace the distributor condenser, with a new one, do not buy a NOS one as by now they will be very old & the insulation will have deteriorated. Check that the CB points haven't closed too much. Check the sparking plugs to see the state of deposits around the gap. File & clean & adjust as needed, but do not attempt this on the RSN13P plugs as you could break off or weaken the platinum side contact.

Somewhere(!) on this site there is a thread with 7 MERLIN XLS documents. I did a brief search but it meant trailing through 30 odd pages of posts. You may have more success if you tailor your search more specifically. Bear in mind these are only the ERMs that are captured by MERLIN, there are great chunks of ERMs that are not listed where vehicles went out of services some while back. As for official proper ledgers Wally would have been the man to tell us but sadly he doesn't come on here any more. Alternatively I think the XLS also appear as the result of FOIs to the MOD under the auspices of "What do they know?" I think Abbeywood were only too keen to get all this in the public domain to relieve some of the workload of FOIs that they receive.

Not sure if you are after the allocations for batches of vehicles or after the details of specific vehicles within a batch. A lot of work was done by the Road Transport Fleet Data Society in 1970s-90s who produced booklets on most of the series. These were based I think on records held at Beverley, supplemented by observations of vehicles seen. The EK series was covered https://www.worldcat.org/title/223703067 not sure if that is downloadable though. For more recent allocations there were a series of MERLIN spreadsheets released as the result of FOI requests to the MOD. I think there were a series of seven that had downloadable links that were on this very forum several years (5?) ago.

With you on that, which is why I have 8 editions & all of them different! Apart from changes to the main sections, there were a series of Appendices from A to K. Some of these were amended & sometimes displaced by an entirely different topic. To add to the confusion in 1951 all Appendices were re-designated as Annexes. Then new titles for Appendices were added to chapters of the main text with some of these Appendices acquiring their own Annexes.

Nice result Bob I'm all for 'bloke in a shed' workshop ingenuity making the most of what they have available.

Not this year it doesn't. https://www.gdsf.co.uk/

From RE Smith's classic book of 1968 British Army Vehicles and Equipment.

You can just make out the FVRDE Wing No 5968

I think that is the T.V. 1000 from 1959 at the time thought to be the most powerful wheeled vehicle in existence.

Well good luck with getting that back home. I will be interested to hear how you get on & any pictures are of interest as I might have come across it before. I might be able to help a bit with the history, sadly when vehicles change hands often important bits of history never seem to make it to the new owner.

If you look underneath you will see a drive shaft passing down from the gear box to the transfer box in front of the rear differential. There is then another shaft that travels forward from the TF box to the front diff. Check that only 2WD is engaged so that the elbowed lever to the left of the gear stick has its main arm horizontal & not leaning down which is 4WD. What Mk of Pig is it?