fv1609

Thats unusual to have the single speed gen (Generator No.1) (12A output) in a Mk2 rather than the 2-speed I showed you (Generator No.2) (25A output). Your Generator Panel No.1 is simpler than the No.2 with all the covers & cutouts. Interestingly that Mk 2 there also had a Generator No.1, which was black suggesting it was the original dynamo fitted in the 1950s. It is commonly believed that all Mk 2 Pigs had the 2-speed generator. Both these examples demonstrate that this was not the case if the pig was a FV1611 the single generator system was left alone. Until it failed as there seemed to be no reconditioning of them they were then upgraded to the 2-speed generator. Similarly not all Mk 2 Pigs had a double servo, this was changed only as & when the brake system needed reworking or the pig was having a major overhaul. Actually there was Generator Panel No.1 for sale around on the Champ Camp. The panel looked as it had been removed from a FV1601. Good luck with the new diaphragms & you have drained all that petrolly oil out?

Adam when you look at some Hornets used in the desert you can see the 'bonnet' armour is held open by nearly 2 inches by supporting struts welded halfway down each side. Not only are they likely to be static for most of the time there is an almightly great rotary converter under the bonnet. This generates plenty of hot air that can be switched into the cab providing warmth for the crew. Given the expected theatre of enagement for these vehicles, it seemed an unnecessary facility! So you could rig something up to temporarily open the bonnet a bit. I assume you have original removable windows you could wear goggles & let the wind blow you cool. Or at least hinge the bottom of the window on its widest setting to give you an inch or two of space for a downdraft. As you know the thin sheeting that insulates you from the engine is thin. I suppose you could put some felt there, but not quite the thing really. Hot air does come up your legs from the foot pedals. I have put very large washers over the clutch & brake pedal. I have made a small plate to reduce the hole for the accelerator. Using short bolts it fits into existng captive nuts. Very often the sheeting doesn't mate together very well & there are air gaps. But even so there is too large a hole for the steering column. I have made up some plates, smeared them with sealant & screwed them in. If noticed they could just look like a field repair. Where the dynamo & headlight cables come in, I have packed some dense black foam pieces that aren't noticed really. Then finally I have put silicone sealant around all the crevices & small gaps then painted it. So now there are no areas that feel as if a hairdryer is running it is just conduction through the thin sheeting. Having done Kemble at 65 miles it has made an improvement. I just hope its not sunny driving 115 miles to Beltring. As you have probably found opening the roof hatches doesn't help, it just means the sun beats down on your head, especially those bits where the hair is thinner!

I shall be there in the pig. I will have my megger with me so if you have any spare distributor condensers that you want testing let me know. I have a DC clamp meter. This means, without making any connection to the wiring, I can measure the current drawn from a particular circuit. Useful for measuring current drawn from starter motor, charging rate from dynamo/alternator, current drawn from light & ancilleries, testing leakage currents etc. No catch, no fee. I will have the instruments with me, only takes a few minutes to do these tests!

I have the Provisional User Handbook Feb 1953 The engine, carb, coil, distributor, starter motor are black (looks gloss) but not the dynamo or oil filler cap & its mount. There is an EMER somewhere that shows the engine black, but not the carb, starter motor or dynamo. Possibly everything was originally black & the lighter coloured stuff I presume to be Sky Blue represents replacement items fitted later. The Provisional User Handbook for FV1609 March 1956 shows engine & all items fitted to it as light. No black at all on engine components. As mine is a FV1609 pig I felt I had to do it all in Sky Blue In contrast I have the Champ Provisional User Handbook Oct 1953, that shows a light coloured engine but with black dynamo, coil & starter motor. No, I'm afraid not. The pig is a rudimentary AFV not a staff car. If you want to try to make the hatches & doors more water tight this is the dodge I did. Around the edge of the flap or door smear lots of grease. On the frame of the flap or door pack in body filler. Shut the flap or door fully & wipe away the excess. Come back when it has set & trim away the excess. Then you have a custom made fit. You will need to sand it a little to allow for thickness of paint. Before you apply the filler you must block off the gaps in periheral frame inside the flap or door with tissue parer, otherwise when it has set this will break the stuff on the frame on the vehicle. Just do a small bit at a time say 10 inches. The reason for this is that by the time you have got the gunge in place it will be starting to set, become poorly adhesive & goes flaky. Also if you find that once it has set it & it doesn't turn out to be closing properly it can be very difficult to quite work out where it is too tight. So do a little bit, get that trimmed & sanded & opening & shutting ok, then move to another bit. There are various types & makes of body filler, go for a cheapo version as that won't be too hard to smooth down. You might think maybe it would be easier to get the filler to stick on the edges of the flap or door rather than the frame on the vehicle. You would use twice as much filler as you would need to try to disguise the thickness of the filler by taking it under the peripheral flanges. Besides my rear door & 6 pistol ports have no flanges as the were to Police spec not Army.

Unfortunately everything in the engine bay was heavily covered by NATO Green paint being sprayed in a relentless & to me pointless exercise. You can see remnants around the oil filter. I am gradually eradicating that. There is still a lot more tarting up to do. But I just cleaned & painted some things whilst they were removed to get the head sorted. If it was winter times I could have spent more time on it. Now it makes the carb look grubby but it works & for now is best left alone. If you look at very early engines they were black except the electrical ancilleries. I was tempted to do that, but most people wouldn't understand. Besides it seems only to be early engines & although this is a very early pig, it was built from trucks that were towards the end of the production. I don't know what you mean by door & hatch seals?

Head gaskets have sold for £20-£60, but I had some in stock. I also had some exhaust valves, all sealed up in boxes. Unfortunately I found that the collet arrangement was quite different. I wasn't sure whether to get the longer collets, but the may be even more difficult to fit or being longer they may be easier(?). I wanted minimum downtime in the middle of the season, I just needed to get on with what I knew about so I just got a new valve of the same type. Bannisters had both items in stock. The valve + postage + VAT was appx £20. It is now running very smoothly, ticking over at 350 rpm with the slow running screw removed! The dynamo was noisey so I replaced that while I was in there & also checked the oil flow rate into the dynamo which is appx 2 pints a minute. Test drive tommorrow!

Well it all takes time. The pig I use the most has been under restoration for 10 years, it will a few more years before the thing is completed. But it gets me round the shows. But a lot of that time has been not just restoration, but servicing and coping with repairs. Most repairs show themselves when you start running it more in the show season. I have just replaced an exhaust valve after some routine checking. (Spot the new one!) Have you checked your compressions yet? Worth doing it to get baseline readings & compare in the future especially if something doesn't seem to be running right.

This was the official test rig. There was a simpler test rig. If you could operate the level at the rate of 160 impulses per minute it should prime itself in 30 secs & lift fuel to a height of 3ft 6in & deliver 1/4 gallon in one minute. Some years since I did it. But the lid has passive diaphragm to smooth up the effect of impulses. Lift out the main diaphragm & compare it with the Rover one. As I recall the Rover one has a central spindle that has to be removed & this releases I think large metal washers on each side of the diaphragm. I'm pretty sure it is exactly the same size & the peripheral holes are in the same place. I can't remember quite how the David pump diaphragm is laid out, but I think you can take it from there. SAE30. This was originally specified as OMD-110, this became obsolete then OMD-75 used (SAE 10W/30) it was replaced by OMD-85 (SAE15W/40) & then replaced by OMD-80 (SAE 10W/30). I may have got the sequence of obsolence wrong, but the multigrades were only used due to obsolecence of OMD-110. It is obtainable so use SAE30 engine oil. Remember the gearbox also uses this oil, not OEP-220, EP90 etc

If it's coming from the carb, take it off. There are only 4 x 9/16 nuts & look in the inlet manifolds to see if you are awash with fuel. I once fitted a new foat to find that it sunk as was not quite fully soldered together. But if it starts on the button. I would have thought your original suspicion was correct that it is a failure of the main diaphragm in the David fuel pump. If that goes it will drain into the sump. It can't drain externally as it was intended for wading. There is an unofficial mod to allow it to drain to ground in the event of failure, but then you can't go paddling! Who tested & how did they do it? Were they testing for pumping action alone rather than leakage? There must be some pumping action still to allow the fuel to get to the sump. I would dismantle it & have a look inside for yourself. Its fairly straightforward inside. You can modify the diaphragm from a Series 2 or 3 Land Rover. Same diameter & holes in the right place even.

Not sure what you mean by the owner. I'm the owner of the copyright & supplied Mark with a number of pics which he used. The vehicle was not privately owned, it was in MP service. The car on the left was an MP vehicle & the MPs themselves seemed quite happy for snaps to be taken. But anyway that's not the reason. That reminds me I'll post a pic I took of an Italian MP Defender, now that was not quite so easy!

Adam this was taken near Salisbury Plain in 1994. The vehicle was a runner at the time, it may have been one of several that went to C&C services. But I don't think the pigs sold very well & most were cut for spares. I wish I took more pics, but in those days it was rolls of film. Note the strange step, looks like 2 Saracen steps. On a Mk1 Ambulance, there was a normal Mk 1 step but on both sides. Somewhere I have a pic of a Mk2 Ambulance that was in a yard in Crediton. He bought a vast amount of AFVs about 20 years ago. Whatever you wanted from pig to FV432 it was £1000. Those were the days. Although they weren't really! The real bargains were like my other pig sold off in 1967 for £40. Or maybe £40 was worth £1000 in 1967!!

Yup, any idea why the publisher blanked out the number plate? I asked Mark this & the answer rather surprised me.

Anyone recognise this one?

Adam don't forget you will need a hammer for the medical kit.

Neil I'm sure it'll be nice in the end. But don't assume that with a fancy kitchen that the food will taste any better!

Neil. You're probably better off than you think. The builders came here in April & they are still here or I should say they are not here, which is more to the point & half the property is uninhabitable. Forgot to say that was April 2007.:argh::argh::argh::argh:

Don't understand Neil. I'm not talking about the FV600 series, only the Saracen variants. The thread is entitled "Wanted Saracen info" :confused: BTW Salamander had various guises FV651, FV652 & FV6001

Without going into all the letter suffixed variants & their sub variants. FV601 Saladin FV602 Saladin (West Germany) FV603 APC, Saracen FV604 ACV, Saracen FV605 Ambulance, Saracen FV610 Armoured command post, ACoP, RA, Saracen FV610A Armoured carrier, command, GPO/CPO, Saracen FV610A Armoured carrier, command, GPO/CPO, with Radar No.9 Mk 1 Robert, Saracen, Mk2 Paul’s original post refered to FV610. My list of wireless installations was merely those that I knew of & were just a summary of the EMERs I have.

I did a few weeks ago. I wondered why I had not had a reminder that my cover was about to expire. I was told that as I had cancelled it there was nothing to remind me about. I was told I cancelled my cover on the same day that I took it out & I had not actually been covered during the last year. I was hopping mad as they took the payment from my card & I had paid for no cover for the last year. I was also told it was vehicle specific & I had to have a policy for each vehicle. Later on in the day I was able to talk to someone more experienced. He said that when I renewed someone pressed my payment button twice. As they cannot delete entries they got around it by "refunding" me as an internal way of correcting the error. The previous person had seen "refund" & assume that I had cancelled. I was assured I had actually been covered & my renewal would cover the vehicle I was driving & it was not vehicle specific cover. There seems to be a poor understanding about MVs in the front line people. A few weeks later my renewal came for the Wolf. This could not go on with the other MVs as I used it as everyday transport to work. I just checked that all the details were correct & that it was a full spec unmodified ex MOD Defender. I then met with the problem that it had been "modified". I was told that as it had been modified from standard by the Army, that modified vehicles were not covered. I explained it had been manufactured like that. She asked how did it differ, I mentioned that it had a fibre glass roof. Then fearing that made me a greater risk I added that roll bars were fitted. Ah so its been modified with roll bars for off roading. No! I explained. Ah but in the event of an accident that could cause more damage to the other car. I explained it was simply to prevent the driver being crushed if it rolled over. Therefore less injury claims would result. I was fuming & exasperated. So I went off & the keyboard started smouldering as this frustration was about to turn into a very nasty post on several forums. Half an hour later a conciliatory & pleasant man rung & wanted to sort the problem. He said as I had now retired, the high mileage & going to work was not an issue & it would be perfectly alright to incorporate it into the MV policies with the other vehicles. The renewal premium for the Wolf at an agreed value of £12k dropped from £280 to £180. He was very pleasant & constructive and rescued the situation as I was going to go elsewhere when they renewals for the other vehicles came up. It is a shame the front line staff don't have a better understanding of the business & should not bluff their way along eg the MOD modified it etc. So I will stick with them.

AA have always been there for me with small vehicle breakdowns. This was some years ago outside Oxford at 0700 on my way to Bletchley Park. The Rover had suffered a fractured diesel injector pipe. How about this for attention, within 10 minutes there were three vans!

But isn't that what Paul has got a FV610?

Thanks both. I hadn't thought of dry cleaners. My fear was that if I did it then I would end up with a shrunk, crumpled uniform with patches of different colours. I believe there are cold water dyes but nor sure how fast they are, I think hot water might destroy the forage cap. I have a wrong size & wrong sex tunic which only cost £5, I might try & see what shade I can get that to. Although it might be difficult judging the darkness as I progress as cloth that is wet looks darker anyway. I'll dry the dry cleaners. If there is head shaking & excessive expense then I'll experiment on the large ladies tunic & take it from there.

These are known installations for the vehicle types extracted from the EMERs showing the date of the earliest EMER. Wireless Stations in APC, Saracen (C13/B47 with harness type B) 1961 Station, Radio, in ACV Saracen Mk 2 (C13/C13HP/C42) 1967 Wireless Station in APC, Saracen, Mks 1 & 2 (C42/B47) 1958 Wireless Stations in ACV, Saracen (C11-R210/C42) 1958 Wireless Stations in ACV, Saracen (C11-R210/C42/C42 with harness type A) 1959 Wireless Stations in ACP, RA, Adjutant, Saracen, Mk 2 (C11-R210/C45 plus R209) 1958 Wireless Stations in ACP, RA, Saracen, Mk 2. (C45/B48 plus R209) 1958 Wireless Stations in ACP, RA, CPO, & ACPO, Saracen, Mk 2. (C45/C45 plus R209) 1958 Wireless Stations in ACP, RA, Saracen, Mk 2 (C45/B48) 1958 Wireless Stations in ACP, RA, GPO, Saracen, Mk 2. (C45/B48) 1958 Wireless Stations in ACP, RA, GPO, Saracen, Mk 2. (C45/B48 with harness type B) 1958 Wireless Stations in ACP, RA, Saracen, Mk 2. (C45/C45/B48/R209 + 2 x ALS21) 1962 Wireless Stations in ACP, RA, Saracen, Mk 2 (C11-R210/C45 plus R209) 1958

Before someone says yes please do, this is not dying but dyeing as in changing the colour of a uniform. A friend has a dark green uniform, but to depict an earlier period wants make it darker still. It needs to be so dark that it looks black, but close up in bright sunshine it can just be seen to be green. There probably aren't dyes around sufficiently dark, but the question is would a green dye add to the existing green & make it darker or would it just be swamped by the existing green & there be no colour change. I assume that no dye will saturate cloth 100%, so would dying with black achieve the result by allowing some residual green to be seen? The other dilemma is whether to do the tunic & trousers together that way would ensure equal levels of exposure to the dye. The problem is if something goes wrong then both tunic & trousers are spoilt. Doing one & if ok do the other would be safer, but could end up not quite matching? The dyeing process, does it reach a point where the cloth assumes a certain shade & that's it or does it just go on getting darker & darker the longer you leave it in. Can you really use a washing machine without it staining subsequent washes or should a large tub be used. But for consistency of colour I assume a washing machine is best. The other challenge is the darkening of a forage cap, How fast can you expect the dye to be? Not just in washing but wearing it in the rain, is it likely to run? Anyone any experience of doing this sort of thing?

The binoculars are Tabby Type 'E' which puts them from early 1943 onwards. If they are 'RG Binoculars Type 6' that is pre Dec 1942 it makes them extremely rare. The other unit I suspect is Tabby Type 'O' which is a personal monocular with lamp & batteries. I have never seen one before. Are there any more pics of it? Is that the MoS label still on it? The value of the Tabby stuff will depend if the image converter tubes CV144 are present & if they are intact. If the tubes are marked 'RG 4' that makes them preproduction & very rare.