fv1609

Not trying to be a wet blanket but sending your own parcels is not such a good idea & its probably too late. The charity would be the way to do it. http://www.modoracle.com/news/detail.html?id=21898&refresh=B5FA37E7-5170-461D-8DA85DC0248CB437

Steve, thank you for sharing the pictures of the poor old Commers. To my mind, of narrow interests, it is the most desirable vehicle up there! Wheeled armour particularly of an improvised style I find very attractive.

Ah back to normal now. 88 emails, mind you only 5 were legitimate, including the one telling me my mailbox was full & therefore I can't send or receive PMs. Problem is although I prune my inbox to keep that down, I usually omit to keep an eye on the sentbox & forget that adds to the total mailbox count.:-) Richard do you want to email me about those EMERs? PS I see that most of the spam is from mail-daemon telling me that my messages couldn't be delivered! These messages have my domain but the first "word" is a mixture meaningless letters. Does that mean something has invaded my thunderbird & sending out spam from "me"?

OK Lee thank you for that. Doesn't seem to be a widespread email crisis, perhaps I was just being fobbed off? But I'll keep an eye on there.

Andy there were two configurations. There is a better picture if you click on ambulance on this http://www.austinchamp.com/03%20Register/01%20Champ%20History/History.htm I have no picture showing it but I suspect the spare wheel would have gone on the bonnet like the line layer. PS Best place to ask is on here: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AustinChamp/ I have a feeling that someone is in the process of constructing such a variant.

Richard it is very odd to be even ignored by spam! We all have people who might out of the blue want to make contact or people in intermittent contact might assume I'm ignoring them. Although I have a gmail account I don't want to blitz everyone in my address book with it & increase the chance of that account getting into the hands of spammers. Of course I get no notification of posts to threads that I am part of on various forums which is frustrating. But of course when the problems occur & they do from time to time with Orange, there is no info on their web page. I suppose it doesn't inspire confidence if you are a prospective customer.:-|

I've been surprised that for 2 days now I have not received any emails on either of the PCs or my phone. Gmail still works though. Apparently this is a widespread problem & Orange will have addressed the problem in 3-5 days. I thought it was the usual nonsense of account retrieval as the Orange email address has not been used for so many months. Anyway I rang the "help"line, there was a warning that because of the cold weather there were less operators available, I can't really see why as today as on every former occasion I am put through to India. It took nearly half an hour at my expense to find out that this is a widespread problem & I'll just have to wait. Apologies if anyone has been trying to email me, please use PM or my gmail account. Is anyone else getting this email problem?

Yes probably a good idea. Apart from the strain on the hinges, considerable effort would be required by the user to close the hatch down. If you look at that picture of Dale stood in the driver's hatch you will see the hatch cover is about 45 deg above horizontal. That requires minimal effort to close down, but where those stops are missing the lid will lie below the horizontal & require leaning forwards & giving quite a bit of upward lift before it can be swung down to close.

Wayne it would only open further if the lump on the other hinge was missing. Can't see that removing these stops would have any benefit, it would just put additional strain on the hinges. I've no idea why its missing.

Generally they are 6 page documents but there are no drawings, these are given as FV codes but are not integral with the Design Specification document itself unfortunately. Was there anything in particular you were after?

Wayne ok 1. Inside mechanism missing/rusted away for a 'boat hook' type catch to hold hatch open. I have some new ones of these but in brass. 2. Projection to limit extent of hatch opening. 3. Missing above. 4. Facility for downlead feed for aerials when using an external radio mast. All Pigs had these whatever role. They were used in NI as mounting points for the quadruple barrel CS projector (Discharger Grenade No 11 Mk 1)

Wayne that's not original original just a previous owner's improvisation. My LtWt had lace up leathers but at least that's better than my FV1601 that had layers of thick polythene bag over the joints! (Private comment, you need more than just the chapter & page of the Penguin;))

Wayne WV N252 covers GS, Pig & Wireless Light. A fan was also employed in Wireless Light but not an armoured one. Oh that's a swizzle then. I thought that was complete as it was as bought from one of these manual companies, I can't see that Dale would have removed any pages. If you want to trade that back for an original WV N252 I'm happy to do that, but your reprint also contains some repairs (N253, N254) that I don't have all the originals for.

Doesn't specify Mk at all :-)

Nope it was meant to be a standard fitting for Mk 1, generally a pair but sometimes none at all. Look in your Technical Description EMER WHEELED VEHICLES N 252 Page 161.

PM me with your email & I'll reply with the pages PS I've scanned them & ready to send.

Yes It could be argued like that. To ROF thinking it was a Mk 1, they seemed to be unaware that the MoS had already designated the Sankey FV1609s as the Mk 1. Whether anyone at ROF twigged that some of the chassis plates that were fitted showing it as Mk 2 we shall probably never know. So one might assume that Sankey were aware of their earlier efforts with Mk 1 & at least their production Pig bodies would be marked as Mk 2. Unfortunately most cab plates have the Mk left unstamped. But I have seen a Sankey body stamped Mk 1 not Mk 2. All terribly silly that they don't know what Mk they were actually making or the Army knew what Mk they had actually got. It is of no great consequence really & best just to call Mk 1s & Mk 2s by the commonly held interpretation of what they are. But knowing you Wayne to be a stickler for detail with your vehicles, I wanted to warn you that what you might find on the chassis plate is not what you might have expected. So at least you have a means of showing off when you come to display your vehicle. Anyone who tries be difficult or too clever can be caught out on the Mk by you deciding which particular plate you show them!

Like the majority of Pigs my style of plate is not identified with a Mk. But here is its User Handbook. Wayne this is a chassis plate of the same type as yours from Contract No. 6/VEH/27455 except this one is for a FV1612A. I will now refer to Mk 1 & Mk 2 in the normally accepted sense! Someone might say ah but the plate I am showing is from a Mk 2 & was changed when it was uparmoured. That cannot be so because the Asset Code No. 3100119-01-777 is for the old 11-digit system that that was replaced by the current 8-digit code introduced in 1964, predating the uparmoured Pig by some 8 years. Furthermore the Asset Code No. 310119.01.777 became 1760.0501. The Asset Code No. for the equivalent Mk 2 FFR was 1765.2501 there was no 11-digit code as that was no longer current. I would be interested to see pictures of anyone's chassis or cab plates that are marked with a particular Mk.

Nope it a Mk 2! The reason is the real Mk 1 is the FV1609. Yours was made under Contract No. 6/VEH/27455 & on those plates it was marked Mk 2. Most other chassis plates make no reference to a Mk. When the Army uparmoured 487 Pigs in Op Bracelet they forgot/didn't realise that these Pigs were already Mk 2 & should have called them Mk 3. Although I have been aware of this for some while I have to speak the language of everyone else rather than talk about Mk 3s. Now if that is confusing, the body plate under the passenger window has provision for Mk although usually it is never stamped. But confusingly on yours it's stamped Mk 1!! The reason for this I believe that as your body was a ROF one they thought they were making Mk 1s as they were the first ones they had made. Whereas the real Mk 1s had been made by Sankey & one would expect Sankey Pigs to be marked Mk 2. I suspect that the chassis plates were provided by MoS, whereas the body plates were provided by Sankey or ROFs.

Wayne you'll need to do some gentle rubbing down with a Scotchpad or similar. It is too cruel to make you have to wait but I think you with find that it says: TRUCK 1 TON ARMOURED 4x4 MK 2 HUMBER FV1611A

Ted well I have compared the two FVRDE Specs line by line & they seem to be identcal. Something that might help as the Data Book only gives the internal dimensions of the body. The external dimensions are: Length 172" Width 88" Height 82 9/16" at top of camber excluding roof ventilators. One little touch I like, "A Storemans folding stool shall be provided."

Ted, difficult to say I haven't time at the moment to read through the two FVRDE Specs but the Ford was Spec 9518 issued in 1952 & the RL Spec 9536 issued in 1953.

Wayne well that's more sensible. The stampings on your plate are well pronounced & should take a good rub. I think you will find that particular style of plate is double the thickness of those used on other contracts. This type has a deeper embossing of all the text, which makes it much more legible & the stampings are a larger size than used on the other contract plates. You might be very surprised (not nastily) about the wording on the second line!

That looks right Wayne, I think there were a number of those under the tarpaulins. Didn't know you wanted any, looks like I missed a retail opportunity! But you did very well for 99p, hope the P&P is reasonable.