Great War truck

With the painting of the seat at last finished Tony painted on the black circle in anticipation of the signwriters visit. Using our pattern fern as a template: He produced a circle, masked it and painted the inside: he then fixed the reflectors: And then back on the mudguards again:

Yes, i found that really quite disconcerting.

Apparently May 21st will be judgement day and the world is ending on October 11th after five Months of earthquakes, war, pestilence and fire (oh, and some death too). Those who profess to know about these things certainly give the impression that it is going to be a pretty nasty time. Still, on the plus side, that will give us enough time to do the London to Brighton.

What a daft women. Mind you i succesfully stabbed myself with a collander yesterday so i am as daft as she is. I am also curious as to what the green stuff was.

That was an interesting idea, but no. A Dennis Eagle rubbish lorry took Honey on her last journey. A further development today. Honey's sister Violet died today. If this sort of thing carrys on at this rate i will have to get a special recycling box from the Council for dead pets.

Tony has been making up some U Bolts from some old steel bar we had laying around: These are to secure the body to the chassis and we need 4. After cutting to length he cut a thread in each end. These will need to be bent into shape. He has also made a pair of brackets copied from photos which were to hold the seat together. We shouldnt actually need them (as the seat should be strong enough), but to be correct as per the original we should have them: The painting of the seat continues on and on and on: Only a few more coats of paint needed. As he had some spare time and some bluetack Tony tried out the NZ marking: We will be getting the sign writer in soon.

Steve has been making some more bits for the body. He has fabricated and dressed the tailboard catch plates and also the backing plates for the inside which have loops for the tailboard support chain. He has also made up the seatbox corner brackets which support the cab hood bows. These were quite tricky as they have three right-angles in them. He decided to do them by making two bends and welding the third joint after trimming to size. Making a nice crisp bend in 1/4" plate can be quite hard. However, he had previously made a mini press-brake for bending bits of brass in his hydraulic press. These plates were a bit heavy for it but they went ok when hot and he is very pleased with the results. The next items will be the tailboard catches themselves.

I am very sad to report that Honey the hamster has died. We are not sure of the actual time of death but put it between Sunday 27th Feb and Monday 7th of March. After much discussion we have put the funeral in the hands of West Oxfordshire County Council and she will travel to her final resting place (Dean Pitt recycling centre) courtesy of Dennis. My daughter took the news surprisingly well and said afterwards “Oh, the way you turned the TV off first, I thought one of the Grandparents had died”. She went on to say later “I am a little sad, but some chocolate cake would make me feel better”. Honey is survived by her twin sister Violet (for now).

Fantastic story. I recognised the guys DI as the 395th Inf btn. I have the book "Butlers battlin Blue Bas -chaps" about them. I have not read it for years, but will put it in my read pile. Tim

Bloomin eck, thats pretty horrific. I do ask myself the question why? It seems pretty pointless setting light to a car and then pushing it in to a lake. Interesting to see how close to the houses they are. To think one of my neigbours complained when i parked my Jeep outside her house. I wonder how she would react if i torched six cars outside her back door.

More progress. Tony has been painting the seat box, the metal strips for the body, working on the mudguard and lamp brackets. All tedious jobs, but it has to be done. I feel another trip to devon coming on. Now in undercoat:

What type is it?

Thst is something which i have worried about as well. Hopefully by the time they rot away the things will be jammed on with rust. Fingers crossed. Today, Tony and Steve had a go at tidying up the edge of the shims: They also managed to get the wheels back on so things are looking quite promising.

One of our main concerns has been that the tyres are not a very good fit on the rear wheels. To the extent that in some places you can push a metal ruler well in between the wheel and the tyre. This creates the possibility of the tyres falling off when on the road. They would fall inwards and get stuck on the axle as opposed to rolling off down the road, but this is still something that we would like to avoid. It seems that when the wheels were made they got the diameter a little too small. This was not an uncommon problem so the standard practice was to press them on over a sheet of canvas as per some of the previous responses. We had actually done this before, but the gap was still too much. Today we made a return trip to Barry’s place to use his hydraulic tyre press. This is a fabulous piece of equipment although it involves a great deal of manual pumping. We pumped off the tyres quite easily. Steve had prepared some 1mm steel shims to go on the wheel under the tyres. We rolled the shims to get a curve on them and hammered over the top of them to stop them sliding down as the tyre went on and then used a ratchet strap to hold the shims in place. The tyres on the first wheel went on quite easily. Too easily in fact as the tyre came off when we tried to pick up the wheel. We cut some more canvas (from one of Barry’s prized tarpaulins) and pressed the tyres on over two layers of that on top of the shim. This worked really well and after six hours we had both rear wheels with firmly fixed tyres back on the trailer ready to go. A good days work but really wonderful to have such helpful friends ready to give up their time to help us out.

Friday was the last full working day of the week on the lorry before we disperse again! Tim continued with painting before his departure for home in Oxford in the late afternoon and Steve continued with his black-smithing, making up wing brackets. No drawings to go by here and very much looking at photographs and bending hot metal until it fits and looks right! Some last minute concern that the wings might foul the Head Lamp brackets but it is all OK although we should have liked greater clearance.

Hi Tom It was the January 2011 issue. Six pages in all with about 25 photos. Tim

Hi Tom Yes it is a part of a cracking image of an RFC Crossley that i found in Canada. It featured in my article on RFC Crossleys in a recent Military Machines International. The same article will be appearing in the Crossley Register quite soon as well (with my rather daft mistake). Alan, did you put Crossley on to the article as they contacted me a couple of weeks ago? Tom were you interested in the Crossley or the lamp? All the best Tim

A day of doing bits and pieces. It took much longer than we anticipated to get the rear wheels off the Dennis and loaded onto the Trailer - ready for the journey with them to Bedfordshire on Saturday so that the tyres could be taken off and re-fitted with shims to hold them tighter to the wheels. They are very heavy to move around and again because of the limited space, we had to move so many other things to get them out. All time consuming. Some time ago, we started to make the brackets for the headlamps - see page 94 of this blog - but they were put on "hold" when so many other more important things came along with more urgent time constraints. It has now been an opportunity to pick them up again and they are now finished - apart from final painting. Our minds have now moved on to fitting the wings and initial work on making the brackets to hold them has commenced. We have held them up where we think that they should go and have been comparing that with old photos. Preparatory work has also commenced on painting the seat with screw holes "stopped" and the first coat of aluminium primer placed on parts.

Following our up-date on Steering Wheel progress, yesterday, Barry very kindly suggested that the rim could be Powder-coated which, if thickly applied would look indistinguishable from the real thing and that with a bit of luck, there might be a Powder-coating company near us who would do it! And with the help of the Internet, a company was quickly located in nearby Cullompton - about 40 minutes away. After speaking to them on the telephone this morning when they confirmed that they could do it, Tony took the wheel to them and its return, duly completed was promised by next Friday! Meanwhile, the painting continues today. The body has now had various coats of wood primer and undercoat, followed by two top coats. Tony is not satisfied with the depth of the finish and will give the sides a third coat of top coat later this week. We have also obtained the rope cleats for the body - they have been screwed to bits of off-cut, just for painting and will be screwed to the body when they are finished.

Interesting stuff. You hear about this sort of thing occasionally. http://forum.keypublishing.co.uk/archive/index.php?t-23954.html Strangely enough, when i was in Illinois some years ago i met a chap with two Spitfires that he had recovered from India. One was retored and flying the other a kit of parts (albeit a very complete kit) which was for sale. He found these in a ditch, not a crate. But maybe the crate had been pushed into the ditch first. Oh hang on. here is a picture of it: http://www.warbirdinformationexchange.org/phpBB3/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=30840&start=0

There is a Ford day at the motor heritage museum at Gaydon. They would be very interested in having any Ford MV's along. If anybody wants more info please PM me. Thanks Tim

Thanks. Thats a cracking photo. I will ask someone who knows about this sort of thing. Anyway, it has been a busy weekend for Steve and Tony but no great material chunks of completed work to show for it! Apart from delivering the Hood Bows to the Canvas men, yesterday, Steve has spent his weekend polishing the steering wheel. It was our intention to send the wheel away to specialists so that a black plastic coat of some kind could be placed on the rim - but with time now running so short, we are afraid to part with it at this stage in case it is not completed in time and does not come back before the "Brighton" as we shall be really stuck without it. So as an alternative, we shall just put a coat of black paint on the rim for now and rectify that at a later date. The masking tape shows the extent of the rim painting - the spokes will be left bright. In polishing the spokes, Steve has found that there are countless pin hole size gas holes in the casting which cannot be polished out and presumably are throughout the depth of the casting. This is of no great worry as far as the strength is concerned but it does not look quite as nice as we had anticipated. Tony is still painting, and the body of the lorry is starting to look quite smart! From next weekend, the full team will be in Devon for several days and it is our plan to build the Seat Box during that period - amongst other things. We are getting there!

Fantastic stuff. What happened to Tim's other 109 Centurions? On the subject of Centurions i have had an E-mail from an Israeili engineering company trying to purchase Centurion parts. Is it a scam? Has anybody else had one of these? Tim

What amazing photos. \Thanks.

Good point. Would you like to post it here? Steady progress continues although we still have not heard if we have been accepted for the "Brighton" Tony and Steve delivered the three completed Cab Roof Bows to Martin Hammond and Jim Clark at Allied Forces today so that the canvas could be fitted. We were familiar with Martin's work as he made the canvas for our FWD some 7 or 8 years ago and he made a superb job of it. Apart from making the Cab Roof, Martin will also cut out and sew the big canvas rectangle to cover the main body, the side cab canvas "door" on the passengers' side and also the seats. The seats are simple rectangular foam filled cushions with a similar separate "back". Steve has now finally fitted the steering wheel to the column by filing and scraping the last few "thous" out of the centre so that it is a good snug fit on the square. It still has to be final-polished.