fv1609

I would love to have seen the answer :-D

Yes I was careful to use inverted commas, not sure which was the most silly suggestion of the two, well yes the chain.

Poor old Hornet at least it survived better than the one that JATE dropped as an experiment after the Hornets went out of service. Considered an unrecognisable pile of scrap but it can be identified only by certain characteristics of one of the doors! Anyway good to see the Scammell coming to the rescue, funnily enough this morning I was going through some old correspondence dated 1962 about using a Ferret ARV to come to the rescue of Hornets & wisely it was considered by the LAD EME not to be "robust enough". In 1962 only about half the Hornets had been built, but there was some correspondence from someone on behalf of CREME wanting to know if the engines were over-bored & was rather put out being told that this was not true & "the only difference was that there was a stronger timing chain". If you search the internet, books, EMERs it is always stated that engine was a B60 Mk 5A this not true if you look on the engine of a Hornet it is over-stamped 5F. Signifying that the mountings provided were for a 100A alternator not the original Generator No.1. I say Generator No.1 because the base vehicle was GS not FFW. The base vehicle was FV1601, Hornets were not modified Pigs. But of course the internet, books, articles etc say otherwise.

As I'm dyslexic I always do a preview then seeing it laid out slightly differently can spot oddities. Then sometimes I forget to press Submit then wonder where my post went!

I thought I should reply on headed note paper! I have joined that forum but not posted yet. The link you posted was along lines I have heard many times before. I can remember being told how there was disquiet after P Coy being required to wear, the generally most coveted, maroon beret. The view was that if a black beret was good enough for Monty, it was good enough for them to still wear! Yes the book. It was quiet a task to pull everything together, originally Col Mallam had contracted a professional military writer to collate everything & I was to meet with them to add some technical details. But the engagement of the professional writer never came to fruition & Col Mallam died, so Col Radford took up the challenge. In fact he visited me & scanned quite a few pictures for the book & I ended up writing the Hornet/Malkara chapter. But my bit was purely of the technical developments, mostly pre-dating Cyclops involvement & was an enhancement of articles I had done in Pegasus & Tank. Although I would have liked to have seen more Cyclops, there were 4.5 pages that included 8 photos but not a great amount I agree. An ambition is to write an article on the REME contribution to the Malkara project & submit it to the REME Journal (not The Craftsman) as I have a lot of archive material from Capt Peter Russell who was Cyclops EME. There are quite a few Cyclops men in the 2001 reunion photo at the back of the book, sadly many no longer with us. I am in that group photo which includes CGS in front of the Hornet. Most of us are pleased to get any praise about the turnout of a vehicle you have worked on but particularly from veterans but to get praise from CGS was very satisfying.

I used to see Trevor at reunions of Para Sqn RAC when I used to take along the Hornet I restored. But he would usually be with the 2 RTR caravan at W&P then W&PR. But he tells me the branch are selling the caravan because it was only a few of them that made the effort to set it all up. I last saw him with the caravan at the last Detling. I might explore their forum then as I know a few of the Cyclops people & their role in bringing Malkara into service has never been properly acknowledged. Trevor gave me quite a few of his documents & photos, including one him with Cyrus Vance who was Secretary of Defense at the time. Incidentally Trevor's Humber 1 Ton FV1622 Test Truck was owned by a good friend of mine who died a few years ago. It is now undergoing restoration, I was always hoping it would turn up at WPR & get a picture of Trevor with it again.

As an aside I was in touch with Trevor a few weeks ago. He has decided to sell his Rover 8 he restored in Cyclops markings, but I think the buyer is still in the Kent area. I've got quite a few of Trevor's pictures but they relate his role with Malkara as Missile Test Troop Sgt.

I'll try a dig out EMER WHEELED VEHICLES Q 025/18 Installation Instruction No.1 that covers the 3/4 Ton VPK. You will need to remind me to pack the books in the week before the show.

Unfortunately there are no instructions for fitting the kit to a virgin vehicle. It was an evolution of kits with the starting point of a vehicle already fitted with GRP VPK. Some of it was removed & the FV984568 kit fitted but this happened in a series of staged upgrades starting in 1980 to 1982. Somewhere I have the EMERs for fitting the original VPK. The best thing to do is to see what I have got & photo the bits you want. I will be at Overlord Show near Portsmouth & later Bovington Tankfest, which will be about as near as I get to you.

I may be able to help you Paul. There are getting on for 200 types of individual components in the kit, most are identified with a FV number. If you can read the FV number I can tell you where they should go or if you have picture of an unknown item I may be able to identify it. Shame I didn't know about your project earlier, as 6 months ago I used to live in Wiltshire.

Perhaps they should put some ointment on it.

Thank you it took a long time, in fact decades, to string together enough references to put together some coherent story of the various interests at work. I'm grateful to have a platform on here to share the info with other enthusiasts, it is a shame that it was not considered suitable as it stood for my club magazine to publish it. Striving for "professionalism" in magazines is all very well, but it saddens me at club level there seems to be no place for first hand research if there is too much text & not enough colour photos. :-(

Sean yes Sky Blue. I ran into this problem when I was writing the last charging article, I had some nice pictures but they turned out too green. With digital I could instantly compare the pics with what I saw before me, so I had to tweak the colour correction to tone the greenish out to get what I could see.

Sean part of the problem may be the camera's light source consider these two pictures. Generator No.10 top view without flash, lower view the same generator with flash.

It looks like Sky Blue to me Sean. Now you are going to hate me for this. :-D It is dated 1980 so looking in the 1980 edition of Catalogue of Ordnance Stores & Ammunition Section H1(a) Paints dopes & varnishes. Eau de Nil is not listed as a heat resisting paint. Looking in 1978 EMER WORKSHOPS N 111 Chapter 2 Long term preservation of gasoline engines. Painting. "... then apply one coat of finishing paint H1/8010-99-943-4730". Looking in the COSA it identifies the NSN as "Heat resisting Sky Blue BSC 101 5 litre can".

Here is my Jolley set up at the end of this: http://www.hmvf.co.uk/pdf/IGNITIONMATTERS.pdf

If it has been half installed, just make sure that the ballast resistors have not been shorted out. The way to test this is to disconnect the CB lead from the coil to the module. Put a voltmeter between the coil SW terminal & earth. With the ignition on it should read 24v then connect the coil CB connection to earth then the reading should drop to 12v. May be higher than this but by design it reduces as the ballast resistors heat up.

James he's just shorted out the proper ballast resistors & fed it to his new ballast resistor & matching coil. I assume it is a new coil, not just because of the fuss about a special ballast resistor, but the coil looks shiny & unpainted. If it was mine I would reinstate the proper ballast resistors & fit the original coil or a normal 12v non-ballasted non-sports negative earth coil. The new coil I assume is a quest to get ever more HT but as I said before that increases the chance of electrical breakdown in 50-year old equipment that was not designed to operate at a higher voltage. I know there is advice to increase the plug gap but if you have RSN13P you cannot adjust the gap. I did for a while run with RSN12Y & opened the gaps but I found had starting issues when hot & returned to normal each time I fitted plugs adjusted as ooriginally intended.

James I have fitted two Jolley B60 kits. All I wanted was the module although he seems keen to sell you a special coil. I assume that is one with a lower resistance now that the module can switch a higher current current & give more HT output. I assume this is a 12v coil so the ballast resistor should have the same resistance to ensure the coil is supplied with 12v. I don't see that always striving for a higher voltage is the ultimate goal, because it can encourage leakage through components made 50 years ago such as the rotor arm & HT cable although cable can be modernised. I just wanted an HT system to run much as nature intended but with a reliable replacement for the contact breakers, so run with the original coil. I think any standard 12v negative coil will do, easier if you try to get one with screw terminals.

James is it still the original coil? I know that some people have been tempted to change the coil as well & he would supply his own ballast resistor. But if you have an original coil, the ballast resistors are each 7.6 ohms, but wired in parallel give 3.8 ohms. The are made of Nichrome/Nickel wire so that once hot the resistance will increase.

ZA - Wireless

Richard there used two MWs (one early & one late) where I used to go for my MOTs, one survived as it served as a breakdown truck & then was restored. So got to look at them a bit, the other interest is that the RF RUC had nearly 50 of them.

Richard if those trucks are MWs, I don't think they should have a hatch in the canvas?

Mike I found this chap Terry was good. Honest & turned up etc as planned. He is used to moving MVs but he might be a bit big for what you want. Not sure if you are in his coverage, but might tie in with return trip for something else. He brought my two MVs from Wiltshire to S.Wales in June. http://thmhaulage.co.uk/

Defence Clothing and Textiles Agency at Bicester