fv1609

Wonderful to see, look forward to seeing that at a show. Would you feel that it has now upgraded to a Mark X* as it has dust caps on the wheel hub, as these were not originally fitted on the Mark X.

Seemed to be a creamy coloured rubberised coating but no idea of the specifications Tony.

Discussing jerricans in the article http://www.hmvf.co.uk/pdf/BRITISHARMYFUELSUPPLY.pdf I stated: “Since 1965 jerricans have been supplied in black or green plastic for use with water. Prior to this specially designed metal jerricans were used that were painted black with white identification marks. It should be noted that this colour scheme was introduced in 1961 prior to this water jerricans were painted in No.2 Camouflage Brown.” It been stated elsewhere that plastic jerricans for water came into service in 1966, in fact it was a year earlier as I have a black & a green one both dated 1965. That is the earliest I have found for British ones, although I have found an Australian plastic one dated 1964. This is not of great consequence but more contentious is the issue concerning black jerricans for water. It is traditionally believed that post-war water jerricans should be black with some of the detail picked out in white. However studying consecutive Regulations show that this colour scheme was not always appropriate. Several people have asked me to justify these sweeping statements. In the original Windscreen article I included references. But they were not on the web version. So I am happy to attach these below. The most tenacious inquisitor was our own Catweazle, who was greatly intrigued with what I had said & on the basis of the documents below decided to paint his jerrican in brown. Earlier in the year we were both at a show & saw a cheap can of military brown paint. It seemed to be an indicator that this paint needed to be on a jerrican. The only vehicle I have carrying metal water jerricans came into service in 1963 & would, according to the Regulations, have been black. However Catweazle's Champ is of era when a jerrican could have been expected to be brown. With this in mind he presented his Champ with a water jerrican painted brown at Kemble. I witnessed the reactions from total avoidance, to staring in disbelief & to “that’s the wrong colour mate”. Nobody was able to provide definitive evidence that it was wrong. Catweazle has posed the question on this thread but no hard evidence has emerged. I have to say until Kemble I had never seen a brown water jerrican. Because most jerricans I have seen have been ones restored in black or seemingly black in a black & white photographs. But I present the documents for you to decide. Regulations for the Army 1947 Pamphlet No.3 Supply of Equipment. Army Code No.1804 There were no amendments & the consecutive document states the same. Equipment Regulations 1955 Pamphlet No.2 Supply of Equipment Army Code No.10835 There were amendments to the 1955 document in 1961 & were incorporated in to the new Regulations which now stated black was to be used. Equipment Regulations Pamphlet No.2 (1961) Supply of Equipment Army Code No.13104 As these documents were consecutive I took it to mean that the change from brown to black was authorised in 1961. However it has been pointed out that this is contradicted by this. Equipment Regulations Pamphlet No.9 (1959) Marking & Painting of Vehicles, Army Aircraft & Equipment. Army Code No.12473 However this document is not relevant to the argument. Firstly it appears to be describing jerricans for fuel, as they are to be painted Olive drab or Light stone there is no mention of water jerricans. Secondly the reference at the bottom of the page to “Paint, finishing, G.S., gloss, brushing, Black” is actually related to the left hand column which is referring to “P.O.L. tanks & pipes (iv) ladders & platforms”. Given the Regulations of 1955 & 1961 perhaps we should see more brown cans? As I say my 1963 vehicle will have to comply with the Regulations & be black. I have to admire Catweazle for his investigative enthusiasm & weighing up the evidence that he asked me to provide. I suspect his jerrican will remain brown for some time or until anyone can produce documentary evidence to the contrary. He is a brave man indeed to lay himself open to unjustified ridicule & criticism. So anyone else tempted to go brown? I’m not necessarily suggesting you should, but there are the documents, you decide!

Peter I sent a pm asking for an entry form. But not received anything yet. So who is going & what are expected MV numbers? I'm not so keen on the shopping experience I just want to spend a weekend with fellow MV people with vehicles of any era before the show season just slips away. I have to say the Evesham event is looking more attractive as well as it being only 3/4 distance.

Bertie, I don't know where that book was published but as it has spelling mistakes on the front cover, I don't think you should rely on what's inside to be accurate!

I suspect on many occasions he actually did know the answer, but as you say this encouraged others to comment. I remember doing so with a mystery RUC Commer APC, but I am convinced he knew the answer all the time. I had the first 75% of the editions, but then discontinued it as I found the postwar content seemed to go down as time progressed, which seemed odd. Did anyone else think that? (Not trying to have one of those WW2/PW arguments, but the content balance between the two eras seemed to change)

Gareth do you have any pictures of the donor vehicle 91 MS 04? For the records it would be nice to tie it in with its BK registration.

Yes it was ready made & supplied as: Ram, barricade pusher, FV 828611 Took 6 man-hours to fit

Ah sorry, totally misunderstood. I hate those rams & had a fixation about cutting them off!

Probably not. The pitfall is the "then unbolt" concept. You've really got to get in there with grinders or a torch & all the scafolding will get in the way. Also having supported it like that is fine but you need to able to tell quite when you are cut through & you need to reverse the pig. .. Let alone the problem of the aligning the pig to the scaffolding & then making decent welds to make sure it really does stay put.

I have now removed two of these. The difficult thing is to determine when you have made enough cuts of sufficient depth to release the thing. The first one was rather hazardous as once cut the thing wants to fall onto you. I learnt by my mistakes. On the second one, I attached it the steel rope of a hand operate ratchet winch that was secured to a vision block lifting loop. I put some railway sleepers under each end to support the weight of it, so that it didn't tilt. I tensioned the rope & cut away with an angle grinder. I think I used a large diameter one to get the penetration. But it was difficult to cut some of the welds in the middle areas. Once cut free, I gently released it with the winch handle. Why are you taking it off? Is it going back on again? - I hope you are a confident welder, because it is a very heavy thing, a struggle for two men even.

I have had a 3-way fridge box for a few years, as opposed to a fridge that is fitted into the furniture of a caravan. Last year it started playing up, then at W&P it packed up halfway through & I was using runny butter & warm beer. Most of them are 40 or 42 litre, I wanted one as small as possible as its only for butter & beer, the smallest that runs off gas is 35 litres. There seems to only one supplier that has 35 litre ones. If you buy direct from the supplier the carriage is £20! However they also sell them on ebay where carriage is £9.99. Every week they seem to release 4 fridges on to ebay. One is for £149.99 on a buy it now but another 3 are listed 3, 2 & 1 day finishes with a starting price of £99.99. http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/NEW-3-Way-Fridge-12V-240V-Gas-Camping-Fridge-35Ltr_W0QQitemZ270262001208QQihZ017QQcategoryZ19296QQtcZphotoQQcmdZViewItemQQ_trksidZp1742.m153.l1262 They then seem to run to £125-135. The panic element is thinking there are only 4 available, but each week another 4 appear. Mine has just arrived & works well on mains & gas. I never use the 12v, apart from all my MVs being 24v, I think the drain at 12v is 7amps. The night before I cool it down with a mains lead & then when I get to the show go to gas. I know you can buy second hand & there are no doubt bargains to be had. But with gas, fumes & a burning flame I wanted the reliability of something new. At W&P I wasted a morning repairing the thing & pratting around inside is not a good idea if you are not a service engineer. Having got it going I seemed to have a flame a little larger than it should be & a build up of gas caused a small fire to start in the 9x9. So that would have been a false economy.

Bertie I think your memory may be playing tricks. I assume you must be referring to OSDC Ruddington. In fact Humber GS Trucks reached £80-£100 & often sold for about £250 from the dealers. As for the pictures, I thought photography was prohibited.:nono:

The more the merrier:)

Tony all I can tell you is that the Asset Code No 304653-01-990 changed to 1625.0759 in 1967. I nearly bought a similar Rover 8 about 25 years ago. It was retained by a garage for non payment of bills. My worry was that if I restored I might suddenly find the original owner would appear from nowhere & attempt to reclaim it. So I walked away. I have some pics somewhere, external & under the bonnet. But don't think it was FFR though. That Provisional CES has cropped up somewhere recently on a forum, not sure whether it was here of EMLRA.

Firstly wonderful pictures, thank you. Particularly nice to see the number plates in full view. The Bridge Class of ‘8’ is clearly wrong. I wonder if someone got carried away & embellished it with the Tac Sign number which is also ‘8’? The thing on the roof of the Berlin pic looks like a conglomeration of those perforated aluminium universal carrying frames which sometimes manpack radios were attached to. The one with the unpainted wheels is RGX 493 which was the prototype for the batch of prototypes FV1609 with the demountable armoured roof FV337270. As Les quite correctly says it is a very early prototype because if you look at the roof armour in front of the hatches it slopes down. On the later FV1609 & production pigs the roof was of course flat here. VKM 252H is interesting to see in its original state. I have been watching this vehicle for 25 years. It often displays the no. 03 BK 41 which as a FV1613 makes it rare to see any pig ambulance especially a Mk 1. Unfortunately it has a winch which rules it out from having been an ambulance. The chassis plate reveals to actually be 13 BK 81 which is just a FV1611. Other clues are that there is not the double rear step that ambulances had & the rear doors only open as an APC would. On an ambulance they were modified to open wider to allow easier loading of stretchers. In addition the inside lacks the insulation padding & lining of a real ambulance. I know of 4 changes of ownership & it may be that the current owner is unaware of its assumed role. I saw it last year still marked up as an ambulance & I have to say the standard of restoration & paintwork was superb. It is now registered as KFF 962.

I would say black. I think this is Aden. Bertie I really don't think brown is very likely at all

Adam I think that was about £12 each about 12-15 years ago. I tried to encourage others to join in the group, but was met with apathy. Either because its purpose was not understood or the belief that it can be done free hand. Trouble is you don't know whether you have destroyed the effectiveness of the seals until it starts leaking & have to inspect the seals again.

Adam. The sleeve I had made was: ID 6.6cm OD 9.1cm The improvised one was made from: ID 2 5/8 in OD 3.0 in This needs to be covered with one layer of thick gaffer tape force fitted into ID 8.0cm OD 9.0cm Around this a further layer of tape. The clamp in the picture is applied so that the sleeve can be withdrawn, what is quite useful is a Mole type welding clamp. The sleeve is about 12 in long. I'll PM you re visit

Well yes, whilst I'm holding forth I suppose I could mention the lubrication of the hubs. To get around the ineptitudes of not using the proper sleeve, often owners pack the hub with grease to avoid the embarrassing loss of oil or they have been told by someone who has seen the EMER that it says use grease or they have seen the oil filler plugs replaced with grease nipples. When the hub was replaced, the 1954 EMER said it should be filled with oil. This was modified in 1956 by stating it should be packed with grease (LG-280) This has been taken by some to mean that oil is no longer needed. The fact that many pigs in NI had grease nipples fitted to the hubs reinforces this belief. If this was so then all subsequent instructions would advise how to top up with grease, not easy through a thread with the filler plug removed. In fact they don't, all subsequent User Handbooks describe how the hubs are topped up with oil. Some NI pigs had lubrication nipples fitted for ease of rapidly injecting oil into the hub. In fact the very last NI Servicing Schedule requires oil, mentioning that the oil & grease are perfectly miscible. The question of the lubrication nipples for the wheel joints themselves is another situation where if any lubrication is done, grease is erroneously used because they are interpreted as being grease nipples. Given the failure rate of axle joints generally in Humbers, it is important. There is nothing new, the 1953 provisional User Handbook for the GS Humber & all subsequent User Handbooks, explain what has to be done but it is widely ignored by owners. Yes I know none of my business what people do with their vehicles of course. Painting a vehicle in some colour scheme to the owner's fancy can always be reversed by a subsequent owner but internal automotive damage is more difficult to correct or even identify by a would-be purchaser. Surely we must do our best for these vehicles for them to still be running in 10, 20 or more years time?

No. But if you ever dismantle the hub assembly. Please use the hub assembly sleeve FV252151 or similar. Without this you will permanently damage both hub seals. I have seen so many hub seals destroyed by failing to follow the procedure in the EMER. I know I have no right to get annoyed about what people do to their vehicles, but I feel sorry for the next owner who unwittingly buy a vehicle with 8 hub seals that are damaged. One of the seals is still obtainable, but the other is not. 15 years ago I bought all of Budges stock. But I think I'm only down to 2 now. This sleeve fits on the stub axle, then the hub assembly is pushed over the sleeve then two sharp rims on the hub align into the large & small seals. Unable to obtain FV252151 I measured the required size & had an engineering company make up three & shared the cost with two other Humber enthusiasts. Amazingly other Humber owners I approached couldn't appreciate the value of such a device. Before having made this I improvised a sleeve by using two off the shelf sections of tubing wedged inside each other. It did need a layer of gaffer tape around the outside & a layer to wedge the tubes together. If you're interested I can give you the measurements for either.

Adam I was getting worried that you had broken something & could see first hand! It is widely believed that Op Bracelet also upgraded the joints to Birfield, in fact Birfields came more than a year later. There are 104 Mk 2 Pigs not fitted with Birfields, I think every Mk 2 owner I have asked tells me they believe they have Birfields. But that is nearly a quarter of the fleet that never were upgraded, I'm sure some at least are in private ownership. The original requirement was to put red paint, most usually red oxide on the brake drum. This was not a very permanent indicator & may have changed to a more durable red on the wheel station. But the desire to use red paint on knobbly bits on the pig in service & preservation knows no bounds. So sometimes red is painted on because another pig has been seen painted that way.

Are you sure Adam? Have you had them out to see?

As far as Service Brown No.2 goes I was trying to find it myself. I thought it was in Army Water Supply but it crept in http://www.hmvf.co.uk/pdf/BRITISHARMYFUELSUPPLY.pdf page 14 referring to jericans. I can't comment on another writer's interpretation of the Regulations but if any one wants I can post the documents that required brown to be used.

There is also some coverage of US & German systems here: http://www.hmvf.co.uk/pdf/Tabby02.pdf