fv1609

Electronic ignition. It cost £190 to do it to the Pig & £15 for the Shorland. I'm not certain whether there was an improvement in economy, I did it for reliability.

I've been meaning to use this one for a while. I actually bought the EMER over 20 years ago at a car show at Yeovil, it was just mixed in with domestic car books! Yes an evolution of wartime techniques with large amounts of Bostik, Prestikon (gunge), plastic bags, Scotch tape etc. The wooden struts are LV6/MT1/WPG/8058 Strut, stack supporting, FV320026. All the exploding stuff is in T3/TX 57 AF Kit 'E', exploding, waterproof cover, No.11. In an emergency if LV6/MT1/WPG/8058 Strut, stack supporting, FV320026 is not available parts of the packing case can be used.

Yes very good, well done Lee. Correct on all counts quick removal of screen from air intake of Saladin. From EMER WHEELED VEHICLES V 635 Waterproofing (Deep) Instruction No.1, November 1965. I was going to gradually feed images to help. Here is the one I had loaded up. The vertical supports are of wood jammed into the air intake. The base of the wood is wrapped in Cordtex explosive cord supplied by cables that exit at the top. The cover over the remaining air intake is blown by Cordtex around the edge. The Saladin could ford to 6ft 6in for a maximum of 6 minutes. Nearly 26 ft of Cordtex was used over the whole of the vehicle with 4 detonators.

Yup (I'll have to write this as it won't let me post "Yup" by itself as it is too short a message!)

Very good Lee, yes.

Nope. Incidentally the object is cut away to show the internal workings. If it helps the document is dated 1965.

Yes, it is from an EMER Nope, none of those but you are getting warm.

Nope but water is involved.

What's this all about?

Especially the clutch mechanism, just a linkage directly to the pedal. Excellent, just like a Humber. I should have taken a picture of the Series 1 "barn find" which was presented as found. I think it had been in the barn for 30 years. New battery, new fuel, bit of carb cleaning, in all 30 mins work & it drove just fine, apparently.

The best untill last This was just what was around on Saturday (minus most of the red Land Rovers) there were more MVs on Sunday, but I couldn't be bothered to walk around with a camera, it was far too hot! That's except the Humber which was only there on Sunday, which somehow attracted my attention.

Minerva under restoration Note NI registration, the contract for this conversion in early 1970s required the nose of vehicle to stick out as much as possible to try to make it look as unlike a MV as possible, apparently.

Well it was hot, pleasant, spacious & quiet, but very pleasant weekend. It didn't seem to be well advertised & visitors just stumbled across us. I think they have about 12 different types of vehicle shows there throughout the season. The heat perhaps drew visitors to the beaches or maybe to the several other shows in the area. I had to travel 100 miles to find a show I could attend Sussex & Kent people are rather spoilt, not just for that weekend but the week before & the weekend to come. So maybe visitors felt they will be choosey. It seemed a place for all the family with house & paintings (nice "real" paintings of I think 175 types of wildfowl worldwide), wildfowl & ponds, motor museum, walks, arts & crafts etc. I think entry was £7 which compares favourably with many other houses, museums etc. The house Female turkeys I think Motor museum this was the only thing in there that interested me (no PSVs let alone MVs) 1850 Irish horse drawn hearse. But why spoil the display of a super artefact with a ridiculous childs toy. Shame. This is better although I had to carefully try & avoid the plastic sheep plonked in front of it. One of two in-service Police vehicles on show. I had interesting & convivial conversations with 7 officers over the weekend, 4 of whom of whom were off duty. General line up on Saturday. I think were only 2 Jeeps & one of those was a Delahay. Lots of fires service Land Rovers, if you like that sort of thing. More to follow.

Yes much safer that way! Although if you are depicting after 1977 it shouldn't be yellow should be grey, although I don't know when your vehicle would have gone out of service.

Graeme, you're right its not original in the pure dictionary definition meaning going back to the origins, how first conceived etc. But it certainly is authentic & I think most of us feel comfortable with legitimate mods that have some provenance rather than something to the owner's fancy/fantasy. I'm sure you can have a great deal of fun, displaying the vehicle with such unexpected embellishments & then reveal to your critics or advisers the legitimacy of you restoration! There have been several occasions where I have presented vehicles that appear to most people to be "wrong" but I have clear evidence that I was right. It is great sport seeing who people in there various ways from being almost aggressively critical to the kinder "I'm a bit puzzled by.." The first was my Shorland it was that painted a strange RUC green. When it was later issued to the UDR everything (including springs!) was painted high gloss deep bronze green with disruptive matt black. It rubbed it down carefully photoing & measuring the distribution of the black bits. I repainted it in this scheme, reproducing the paint pattern to with an inch of where it had been previously. But show after show I got so fed up that I could scream like Alf Garnet "It ain't bl**dy wrong". That was all I got so I gave up, the fun had gone out of it. Again this happened with my RUC pig for about a year in 1962 they were painted Light Admiralty Grey. I got the usual "Still in the primer then?" ribbing which is ok, but it just got dismissed in people's minds as a fantasy & not to be taken seriously. What really hurt was people familiar with RUC vehicles saying it was far too light, but what was fixed in their minds was the dark slate grey used on later RUC vehicles. Yet I could find traces of LAG on it. But I gave in & painted it Olive Drab as they were later painted. Now with the present Shorland restoration I am determined not to give in! A very authorative book says they were painted Olive Drab, I have the original record card that says Olive Drab, I have seen a few colour pictures of similar vehicles which could well be Olive Drab. But mine has not a trace of Olive Drab whatsoever. Before the UDR painted it DBG the only other colour underneath was a shamrock/emerald green & nothing else. Given that this was stationed in Belfast itself I suspect that the colour was more of a political statement & as such would stand out as a very obvious green thing in a grey urban environment. I removed the wing with a large area of this green revealed & had it professionally matched & mixed. This cost me £103 pounds for 5 litres & when it dried it just did not match well enough. The criticism was made that this sample paint could have changed due to UV fading anyway. Well I removed a large piece of metal from the inside the vehicle where the sun doesn't shine & the UDR missed with their paintbrush. I have spent a long time matching it to this sample. I now believe the vehicle is painted correctly for the period. Whether the other 9 in that batch were painted that way I can't say as they were cut up in 1974. But mine is correct. I'm not changing it for anyone, no matter who they, who they served with & how they remember it. I'm not going to fake history for the sake of peace & quiet!

Simon broadly speaking yes. The last document I can find that uses the fractional system is dated 1954. The earliest using the "C" is 1959. Note that "C" is for use in combining the classification of trailer as well. If there is no trailer normally used there is no "C". It is just the classification of the vehicle. Marked large enough to be read at 50ft by day. I have a 1963 publication giving the bridge classifications of vehicles, there are a significant number of vehicles which had not at that time been allocated a classification. Of the AEC 0859 & 0860 four variants are described but only one has been allocated a classification at that stage. 384115.72.604 bridge classification 20 That asset code is the old system which changed to a 4 digit + 4 digit system in 1967. Somewhere (!) I have a later catalogue of bridge classifications, but I can't find it at present. The other point to consider for what theatre are you depicting your vehicle? If it was the UK it was not normal practice to mark the class on the vehicle. The class of bridges themselves were only to be marked in time of war, therefore it was pointless for normal UK vehicles to display a bridge class if there was no indication of the classification on the bridge itself. So problem solved if you want to restore it as UK only vehicle

Nano, I had a Dutch one as well. Although I found the 22 fuses rather tiresome! Shorland see below, site is not built up yet but gives an outline: http://www.shorlandsite.com/

Joe. What you need is Army Code No.22152. He does copies & it is listed in here about halfway down: http://www.mark.clubaustin.co.uk/new_page_3.htm I do wish people would describe publications with their official designations, but at least he does quote the AC No.

But I think you will find that it is correctly marked, it is just complying with later regulations. By the early 1960s the fractional display of tow vehicle over trailer changed. The tow vehicle displayed the combined bridge class of vehicle & trailer denoted by a large "C" eg This was to conform to a NATO standardisation (STANAG 2010). The bridge classification no longer referred to the weight of the vehicle. It was calculated from a method laid down in DEF STAN 23-2 that took into account a wide range of the vehicle's characteristics, not on weight alone. In a similar way bridges were to be classed according to the way loads were to be distributed on them. The complexities of allocation of a vehicle bridge class can be seen below:

Hello Nuno, nice to see the Lightweight. Is that a Dutch one? Do you happen to know if any of your security forces/police still use Shorland armoured cars?

Joe. I have the IPC in front of me for Rover 10 & 11. It is dated 1973 & includes the late 2A with headlights in the wings. I don't know whether CL Rovers were used that early, they certainly were for Series 3 - probably won't matter anyway as most people will think it's S3 because of the headlight position! Saw you on the intro thread, I can picture your group now. I was with EMLRA in the LH field just before the bridge in my Shorland.

Joe, is it FFR or GS? I have UH & IPC.

Mark, yes its opening for me now, just wanted see if there was anything I was missing. I see in the advert a couple of blokes with their Jeep. Not dressed up as soldiers, just casual clothes T-shirt etc. Refreshing to see that you don't have to be part of "living history" just to display your vehicle. On the other hand the horse drawn fire appliance is greatly enhanced with crew in period uniform! OK See you on sunday (I may be in uniform or not, depends how extrovert I am feeling, my level of hay fever & the weather!)

I can't get the link to open. But never mind. I will be there with Shorland.

Jack, what I usually take is the Hornet FV1620 (Malkara missile launcher) I no longer have that. It used to tow my cipher trailer there, but it was a bit scary trying to get up some of the hills or keep holding it on the brakes whilst edging up the queues on the hills. 2996 OI is the prototype Pig FV1609, that's not been to GDSF before. It isn't fitted to tow, so I shall be roughing it in a tent. But should be less stressful travelling there & back. Of course there were no Hornets in N.Ireland. Well that is not strictly true, they were so desperate for spares that one Hornet was re-bodied with armour from a scrap Pig.