Great War truck

Here is a photo of a Peerless tanker delivering fuel to the US army. If you look closely you can see it has Standard Oil on the side of the tank. When the old boys Father purchased his Peerless tanker it came from Standard Oil! Could it be the same radiator? Probably not but it must have come from the same fleet.

You may remember about 20 years ago while in California we were introduced to an old boy who used to drive a Peerless fuel tanker as an eleven year old while his dad took a nap. I understand that he could not reach the pedals but would wake his dad up when necessary. The fuel business was purchased and as part of the deal the Peerless was broken up and scrapped apart from the chassis which was used to level ground when it was towed behind a tractor and the radiator which was kept as a souvenir. In LA we met with the eleven year old (now in his 90's) who still had the radiator which he sold to us. it is in super condition and wont need much attention before fitting. Peerless rad 2.bmp

Quite a successful result. We will use that as a pattern to make one for the second Peerless.

Dad is still experimenting with the molasses. He had a go at the Peerless plate from the scuttle.

OK. It cant be the Kitchener then. I cant check as my PC has stopped playing videos. Most frustrating.

I think that it is a post war Kitchener survivor painted up to look military.

That's great Marcel. Thanks for that. Great to her it running. It sounds like ours but a bit of a different tone. Probably rattles a great deal with all that armour plate. The vehicle has been kept in pristine condition since it was acquired; the major hurdle in its restoration involved replacing portions of the carburetor last summer. The restoration team's first challenge was to track down a service manual. "I had no documentation, mechanical documentation, on this," said Michael Miller, the War Museum technologist who led the restoration team. "A museum, a private auto museum in the States, their curator generously sent me a photostat of a beautiful 1916 manual." Well they should have googled Autocar, found this forum and we could have helped them out. We wrote to them a while back asking what the chassis number is (it is on the rear cross member) so we could see if our Autocar was from the same batch as theirs. But they couldn't find it. Since then we have dated ours to 1918 so ours is almost certainly one of the WD water tankers. Would have been nice to get a photo of both of them together, but it would be a bit of a logistics exercise:

Yes, a truly superb job. Well done both of you.

Thanks. I will ask some Austin owners. Cheers

I have had this for a while but have no idea what it is off. It has a tag on it which says LV7/AN BF.1119 Anybody have any thoughts please? Thanks Tim

A sandblasting does make it look good very quickly. A big step forwards.

After cleaning with cellulose thinners and applying a first coat of Bonda Primer to prevent rusting again.

After the success of placing the newly acquired rusty Head Lamp Brackets in Molasses to clean the rust off them, we dug the Side Lamp Brackets out from their long term storage – they were heavily rusted, too - to give them the same treatment. The second picture shows them as acquired with the remains of the original lamps still attached and the Coach Bolts that were used to fix them to the scuttle, before treatment. The first picture shows them after being taken out of the Molasses after 10 days – still wet and covered in the solution before that was cleaned off with cold water. The third picture shows them after an initial quick wire brushing.

It will also arrive at the sale with a dating certificate from the Military Vehicle Trust What is that then?

I think they are Wolseleys.

The advert says: It’s ready to go and most importantly; there is on file a letter to the DVLA from the Military Vehicle Trust confirming the opinion that this Jeep has a World War II pedigree. If the MVT issue letters like that to the DVLA do they come back to the vehicle owner? I struggle to believe that this Jeep would have been verified as wartime.

An excellent question. I have raised it with them.

It was up for sale at Beaulieu last month for £16,000.

Probably my favourite photo of all was this one taken by John Styles .

The full story has been published in this Months CMV so I thought I might add some otherwise unpublished photos. These ones were everybody getting ready for the trip.