fv1609

Yes, I just go to the one that has been run in the area for the last 25 years or so.

It was indeed. I sold it to Mark Cook (of Lightweight book fame) who sold it to Tony Hayter (exMVT vehicle verification officer). It was Tony who fitted the VPK & was way ahead of his time, 25 years ago putting on a NI IS display with ambulance, Ferret & Pig in NI role. The ambulance has had many changes of ownership. In fact the current owner wants to convert it to a camper but wants to preserve the VPK. She realises the VPK is of historical value & has offered to swap bits with a non VPK ambulance so someone gets the benefit of the kit. She has posted this offer on HMVF & EMLRA, but AFIK nobody has taken up her offer. This is how it looked when I had it straight out of service. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v684/fv1620/30FJ2001.jpg

Yes interesting conversion, not that it ever went to Northern Ireland.

Phil you need to wade thro this stuff: http://www.hmvf.co.uk/pdf/PAINTINGpart1.pdf http://www.hmvf.co.uk/pdf/PAINTINGpart2.pdf http://www.hmvf.co.uk/pdf/PAINTINGpart3.pdf http://hmvf.co.uk/forumvb/showthread.php?7897-Post-War-British-Army-Markings

I think the reason the designation crops up on a range of different items is that it is analogous to No. 2 Mk 1 etc

Andrew yes the top of the coil assembly lends itself to transplanting to another coil. Where were you intending to put the new ballast resistor? I'm intrigued to find out what this will be & where you are going to mount it, if you are trying to make it as descrete a conversion as possible. If the fancy coil is a really powerful one then its going to be as little as 1 ohm. If its a 12v coil the ballast resistor must also be 1 ohm, therefore a current of 12A will flow. Therefore the resistor must have a dissipation of 144 watts, which is going to be quite something.

Looks like a: SHELTER, PORTABLE, UNIVERSAL ASSEMBLY 'B' J1/8340-99-362-4683

Will be pigging it for 4 days.

Andrew, pleased some good has come from my ramblings. It surprised me that a new fancy coil was supplied without a matching ballast resistor for 24v operation. I would be interested to know the resistance of it & the price! I would also be interested to know the resistance of the secondary winding, they normally seem to be in the order of 7 kilohms. The values of electronic ignition coils is even lower than I had imagined. Looking in a SEME instructional booklet, it quotes a conventional 12v coil primary as 3-5 ohms & an electronic ignition coil as 0.6 - 0.9 ohms. That should give a significant boost to the HT output. Although with this will come a greater chance of insulation break down somewhere in the screened system & the distributor with voltages it was not originally designed for. I have noticed that the leakage even on a NOS rotor arm can be halved by leaving it out in the sun on a hot day. Although in practice a hot engine would sort that out, assuming you can get it to run initially. The breather pipe had an awkward bend in the end termination to connect to the crankcase. As it was too short for its new role, I replaced it with a proper electrical lead with a termination that matched the distributor. But even so that was too short & you can see the join halway along its length. There is enough gap for it to breathe as it wants through the end. The crankcase breather port is just open. As I'm not doing deep wading, I just left it open.

This is how I got the 24v + supply to the module, by feeding it through & re-routing the distributor breather tube.

I haven't the foggiest idea. Not much more help when looking it up on fiche: Cleaning tool, breech block chamber, L2A1 Procurement reference: C-FL17955 Issue 2 Superseding M3/1015-99-941-6434

Robin, it is a Cleaning tool, breech FL17955 Note not FV, but FL from the MOD (Army) Army Scaling & Cataloguing Authority, Central Drawing Issues TMD 6. M3 is the DMC for stores common to artillery equipment

Andrew ok. I relented & reinstated the ballast short circuiting arrangement as I had some cold starting problems. The whole point being is that whilst cranking the voltage available is going to drop depending how well charged your batteries are & every chance should be given to get as good a spark as possible under these circumstances. Incidentally I have now disconnected my choke as it is no longer needed. Yes splicing into 'R' seems fair enough. It was easier on the Humber as I fed this wire through a pipe that was the vent from the distributor to the crankcase breather but instead I have directed it off towards the switch panel. He was keen to sell me a high performance coil. I don't know if a matching ballast resistor was suggested for use on 24v. But I have reservations about using such a coil on the B60. As I understand it the HT that you derive from the coil is dependant on the magnetism you can build up in the coil before the magnetism collapses as the points open. The magnetism built up is determined by the current allowed to flow into the coil which then has to be switched off by the points. There is a practical limit to how long points can last continously switching a current of several amps. So the design of conventional coils is limitited by the ability of the points. Once you dispense with points & switch the coil current on & off electronically then greater currents can be used. This means a coil can be made to produce more HT by carrying a greater current in the primary winding. A conventional coil in the B Series will have a resistance of 3.8 ohms, whereas a high performance coil intended to by used with electronic ignition might be 2.5 ohms. BUT if you use the existing ballast resistor you will have reduced HT! In the normal setup the coil resistance = ballast resistance, so that the coil receives 12v from the 24v supply. This ratio changes when you have a high performance coil with accompanying lower resistance. It means more current will flow, but that will mean more voltage drop accross the ballast resistance so there will be less voltage to the high performance coil. So that it will then give less HT than you were expecting. If you have a matching ballast resistance to the new fancy coil then that will be fine. Incidentally I would be interested to know what the resistance is for the new coil. If you want to use the new coil you will need a ballast resistance with the same resistance as the coil. But a replacement is unlikey to have the temperature characteristics of the original ballast resistance combination that presents a lower resistance when the engine is cold to provide a bit more HT when it is needed. Incidentally don't follow his advice about increasing the sparking plug gap, if you have RSN13P the platinum contact will ping off if you try to adjust it.

Tim welcome. I have an interest in official military documents. I have an Army Medical Report for 1884, of some 277 pages, this covers the whole of the Empire & includes details of Units, their strengths & where they were stationed. Casualties & desease levels are listed, most falling prey to STDs & enterric disorders, together with sanitary & water supply problems. Let me know if there is any particular area of interest I can help you with. I also have similar reports for 1903 & 1913.

Stencilling looks a bit amateurish! It should have a MOD classification & a NATO one. http://www.hmvf.co.uk/pdf/POLcompact.pdf

Presumably you will go to the Tangmere Museum "Ferret & MV Event", to launch, if that is the right word, their Vigilant Ferret? Another one-day effort I'm afraid, I would like to go in something interesting but in view of the distance it will have to be in a Land Rover.

These one day efforts might suit classic car people who have relatively low fuel costs & just like to turn up at 10am & shove off at 3pm, or sooner if the sun doesn't come out. But we & our vehicles are made of tougher stuff! Its not just the time & fuel, much of the fun is walking around in the evening with a beer, looking & talking about this & that when the public have gone home.

I was taliking to John Newton yesterday who usually goes with his Pig as he is nearby. I would certainly go with my Pig if it was a 2-day show, otherwise it's just not cost effective. All I want to do is kip in my vehicle. I don't expect a beer tent, a rock band, a Glen Miller tribute band, showers, catering, a plaque or even toilets, I am totally self sufficient. I just wish a few smaller events would consider extending to two days to entice those who have to travel a fair way to get there & are happy for just for one night to survive on a tin of baked beans & few bottles of beer. I suspect organisers may be intimitaded by those who feel that if they bring the wife & kids they might expect all facilities to be laid on & that may well be a justifiable expectation for the high profile, higher attendance shows.

Some updates mainly to the restoration of SB301 prototype, which now is at Dunsfold. http://www.shorlandsite.com/WhatsNew.htm

I have learnt to no longer give my phone number on milweb. I have an advert running on there at the moment. There are the usual dreamers who reply & there are often mischievous ones, who try to set you up with people who know nothing about the advert. But there are always some who are keen to discuss the finances written with unusual grammar, yet seem strangely disinterested in the "item" for sale, let alone come & look at it. These I either ignore or reply in Borat speak.

HAL/1/58 is a bit of a puzzler. HAL doesn't seem to relate to any depot or any abbreviation used in ordnance depots or vehicle storage depots. I have a number of MAOS & RAOS that cover the period & HAL is not used. Besides I don't think it can be a place because the first entry already states Ruddington. Although the second entry on the same date omits Ruddington, I imagine that was a clerk cutting corners. /1/58 looks like a date but the formal entry of dates on the card are entered like this 4.5.55. Yet that seems to be an entry written at the same time. As Richard has rightly said it was struck off on 4.5.55, why would a vague date nearly 3 years later be entered in the line at the same time? My suspicion is that HAL/1/58 is either a reference code on a document that is the opposite of a receipt voucher or it is a buyers code or contract number. Interestingly the 1955 entries refer to MoS Ruddington, but the 1962 entry calls it WD Storage Ruddington, that was of course because the MoS was abolished in Oct 1959.

Dave, yes mine's going out round the block tomorrow for the first time in a year, I need to get the torsion bar settings to bed in for a final adjustment. I serviced it the end of last summer for its only show then found the bolts holding the torsion bar mounts were shearing for both rear wheel stations. Of these 6 bolts, 2 were very bent but the others had sheared off. It was a slow process drilling them out to get a bolt extractor in & very nerve racking applying sufficient force to get it to turn without the extractor itself shearing. A bit of heat helped, but I ran out of acetylene on Friday. Went to the depot & they are out of acetylene & not expecting any for weeks yet. Apparently an acetylene plant/depot blew up, said the man whilst drawing on his fag :shake:

Richard Farrant put me onto these people. They seem very helpful & achieve amazing results in a variety of materials. http://www.vintagebrassplates.co.uk/

Tom, what about one of those old colour tune kits. It allows you to have a sort of glass sparking plug thing, so you can look at the spark. Then you can see if conditions are favourable for a combustion.

Tim, yes you are correct it does indeed give a degree of protection, but being only a cast alloy it is not very robust. It also gives protection in the form of waterproofing for wading and it is an integral part of the screening system to try to minimise RF interference. If I've got it right the point you are making about wire resistance is that of the HT cable. As it is such a high voltage but low current the effect resistance is not very significant. Civilian suppressed HT cable per plug lead is typically 10 k, which even that high has minimal effect. I have measured it with high voltage instruments & can't really see much difference. But I don't like that stuff, particularly if you have to crimp on a terminal. I much prefer copper wire, just seems more reliable & having unnecesssary resistance just doesn't seem right I have to agree.