Friday 02/06: right so the first coat of green is on looking more than respectable to go to a show, so we thought we'd take it for its first run since owning it before its first show last weekend, so we swing onto the road and start chugging and crunching along as we get used to the Crash box :oops: , not knowing what to expect as neither I or Paul have driven a vehicle bigger than a transit, so speed, noise, handling, brakes etc all we dont know what they should perform like.
Speedo, fuel guage dont seem to respond :? we'll keep going as it a quite road etc, then we come a fairly steep hill (for a WW2 lorry) gets halfway a feels like its going to cut out but keeps going :oops: , so we feel pretty chuffed that we’ve covered a massive 3 miles so we pull up to check it all over looks to discover that the passengers front and drivers rear brake drums are rather hot. So we try to do a proper brake test only to discover because we stopped the brakes have locked on, time to call for backup and 15 mins later we have 2 jerry cans of water, by this time its 9:15pm and the light is fading, brakes surficantly warm we start to head for home, as we get within 100yards of the drive it starts running on 4 cylinders and hesitating but we make it. By 11:30pm the offending brakes are being inspected discovered we’d touched 40Mph, and we call it a day.
Saturday: It’s a 5:30am start, by 8:30 the brake cylinders are working and the system has been beld and the engines back to running 6 cylinders, time for another run this time we take it further to ensure all if any faults show up, and they do at the petrol station the tyres should be 85 (rear) and 70 (front) they were between 5 and 30, this being a well known petrol supplier they cant afford to let people have air without benifitting and not only that it took 20 min to inflate 2 tyres for the cost of a fish and chips :evil: , so we call it off as we have a que of lorrys and cars behind us. So off we chug only to find that in 2 Mls since the station the brakes don’t exist much, so we gingerly head for home and make it (again). All wheels and drums off and a full overhaul and a day later its ready again.
Tuesday 06/06: 3rd time lucky, we took the same route as the 2nd run and this time we had a chase car to carry extra tools and find out how accurate the now working speedo was, and it worked every thing worked, I was following in the chase car and we touched 55 on the straights easily with travel still on the gas pedal. We stopped to check the brakes and they worked well and were’nt even lukewarm, we carried on until we got to a WW2 RAF base 2Mls from home to have a final check, take some pics and have a look at the memorial, then had the K4 drive past just to see if their was any excessive noise from the drivetrain etc and I was supprise just how quite it was.
There's still a 2nd coat of green, micky mouse camo pattern and the markings to be applied but they should be done by Duxford