Great War truck

Is it running? Will you be doing a full restoration or just preserving its originality?

Bought for £5,000 and now on the market for E9999. It is the one behind it which looks more interesting to me.

Why all the adapters?

That is a CJ2 isn't it?

I agree. It looks really super. Nice job Ian.

What is the turret on the M113. |didn't the Australians put old Saladin turrets on M113's?

More bad day in Boston photos. Makes you wonder how they managed to recover the vehicle from some of these positions:

Some photos of the carnage. All looks very sticky.

I believe it to be a very accurate copy of an original and that the cut head nails are correct.

I wonder if the strange position and lack of obvious cause of the accident indicated that the Autocar rolled sideways down the embankment. I pity the poor passengers in the back - well seriously killed.

Unfortunately, we had a bit of a mishap with the Water Pump on the Dennis, last month and the sad story of this was related on Page 180 of this thread dated the 12th April. The only thing that we could do following this was to have a new “Impeller” cast so that we could machine up a replacement for the lorry. With the Pattern still available from last time, it meant a quick visit to the Foundry. The two pictures show the new casting against the remains of the broken Impeller. A full description of the machining of the original Impeller that we made can be found on page 60 of this thread dated the 18th January 2010 and exactly the same sequence was followed again this time. It will now head for Leicester to have the keyway cut and then be fitted to the Lorry. We shall be mobile again very shortly!

Something intriguing in seeing vehicles that have been in an accident. Always a bit of an eye opener to see how vehicles look after they have been in a collision. I am sure that in some of these photos people lost their lives or were badly injured. The first two photos show an Autocar UF21 which was in a crash while taking people on an excursion. Ruined their day and that of their family. The caption says that several people were "severely killed". It doesn't get much worse than that.

I have been searching without any success today for a photo of one with this type of crane. It looked original to the truck. Has anybody come across such a photo? Thanks Tim

The crane body looks original. Is it?

I loved the SUCO. John and I were trying to think of reasons not to buy it. Nowhere to put. No way to get it home. No time to restore it. So we didn't get it. When I got home my wife said she liked it and we should have bought it. Oh well. Here are some more photos:

What an amazing find that photograph is. Fantastic. Didn't make the preview but I understand that someone has now written FWD in the dust on the front of it. I will go and take some photos of it today.

I couldn't get it out quick enough! Actually, this old chap did not offend me. I am always interested in other people take of the Jeep. I am sure that most Land Rover owners would agree with him. I have spoken to many WW2 veterans who said that the Jeep was wonderful. I am sure that as a young man when his dad bought a surplus one in the 1940's that it did not make a good family car hence his memory of it is a little jaded.

It was a lovely sunny day today so I took my youngest daughter for a drive in the Jeep with the windscreen down and no canopy (as it is supposed to be). After about 20 miles or so I stalled it on a hill when I was giving way to an oncoming car and I could not get it started again. While I was standing there this old chap appeared and said" "Ah a Willys Jeep, I have not seen one of these for a long time, where on earth did you find it". Now I like talking to complete strangers as you never know where it might lead - always hoping for "I have one of these in my shed, not touched it for 40" years or something like that. Anyway, what followed was a bit like this. "My Father bought one in 1948 and we used it as the family car for a few years. It was horrible. Always breaking down. Would not got over 59 miles an hour. All these levers and gauges, he never worked out what they were for. It was cold It was draughtly. He built a proper wooden body for it and it was rubbish. We all hated it". He then directed the following comments to my daughter. "Tell your dad he is a fool, a b****y fool, a complete idiot for buying this load of rubbish. If he wants a real American car he should buy a Firebird or a Corvette" and then walked off. It is nice to get a different perspective to the Jeep story. After he walked away and my friend John appeared to help bump start it if necessary it started just like that. Make note to self, time to buy new battery and tell daughter not to talk to strange men.

I think that you are over thinking this chaps. We have never been approached by anyone saying "That part is not original", or "That bit is a Dennis, Leyland, Ford, Willys, Hotchkiss etc". I would like to think that anyone who noticed the parts that had been made would realise that we had made them to return the truck back to its original condition. We are not trying to pretend that the truck is all original, but we are saying that we have done everything we can to make it look like it had done when it was used by the W^D. Look at it like this. If the original bracket was perfect and our replacement looked as poorly made as the actual original does then I am sure we would be having a different conversation or no conversation at all. Green? Brown? Service colour? All of those descriptions are fine by me.

I have picked up the rather tragic news that this Company has gone into administration. If you are not sure who this French Company is they produced some of the best military history books: eg, Liberty Roads, Spearheading D Day, British Tanks in Normandy, The British Soldier, The Americans in Brittany to name a few. They also produced the superb magazines Charge Utile, GBM and Miliatria. I would hope that a buyer can be found for the company otherwise it will be a real blow to the hobby.

A new Anchor Bracket was milled, drilled and filed in a bit of steel from the Scrap Box. A new Tie Rod must be made and the whole lot painted. An equivalent assembly for the Radiator end still has to be completed

This is just a small job that had to be done and is now completed and out of the way! With the completion of the Radiator getting ever closer, the Anchor Bracket assembly for it on the Scuttle will be required as soon as we mount the Radiator to steady the Radiator and hold it in the correct position. When we started work on the Scuttle, we found that the original Anchor Bracket and Jaw End for the Tie Rod from Scuttle to the Radiator were still on it, but after we took it off and cleaned it up, we found that the Bracket was broken – so a replacement had to be made. The Jaw End still had the remains of the original Tie Rod in it which protected the thread and after this was removed, we decided that it was in good enough condition to use again.

Putting the Gills on the Tubes – 125 Tubes with 150 Gills per tube! We got well into that and the whole assembly with Gills on the Tubes are now back in Leicester and will go back to the nearby supplying company to be soldered together. The Radiator castings still have to be cleaned up externally as they are still in the “as received” external state from the Foundry. Many marks to be taken out of them before the Radiator is painted – not a shiny radiator as with the Dennis but this one will be painted.

After checking the complete assembly, the final holes were drilled in the tops of the side castings.

We then moved on to drilling the holes in the tops of the side castings – again not an easy set-up in using the limitations of a small Home Workshop!