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paulbrook

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Everything posted by paulbrook

  1. Nice pictures! My Tp TTF was 65BN51....
  2. For the record I am a knocker fan too. My references to brakes refer to the potential for the things to be brakeless if they loose their air, not the performance. In terms of the latter I would relish the opportunity of approaching an Audi waiting at a road junction at terminal velocity (30 mph or so or a tad more if it were a bridging) then braking hard and making that squealing noise. Sadly I would not be able to see the drivers reaction as his rear view mirror filled with AEC-ness... One Tuesday morning, just before NAAFI break some of A tp were getting shuffled around. We parked the trucks in a sort of crescent facing the stores garages. Essentially a truck had stalled and, as was often the case (did I mention the dire battery set up? Oh how we would have liked to have fitted a pair of 6MTs) refused to self start. Things were a little fraught and time must have been of the essence and a second already-running tenny was waved out of the line, as it was not unusual for bump starts to be delivered by one truck shunting the other from behind. As the truck pulled out and swung towards the rear of the first Cpl Mick Wright was between the two. Although the buzzer (such as it was) in the running tenny had stopped buzzing it in fact had no air - or at least not enough, and Mick died that morning as a result. So you will excuse me if I get a little thoughtful once in a while........
  3. Hahahahahahaha! I like that - braking system not designed for modern traffic...... With all due respect to both Neil and the Mk 1 Militant other than the fact that it has wheels and an engine there is little about the knocker that suits modern traffic. Mind you I thought exactly the same back in the late 70s but somehow we managed, and that was on busy speed limitless roads in Germany! Driven sensibly the Mk1 Militant is safe enough, especially if you are not carrying 10 tons of benz or 80 fully bombed up rounds of 175mm HE (or - and would you believe it - lance missiles and their nuclear warheads - I still have nightmares about inhibited foaming nitric acid or whatever one of the propellants was called) So I say two fingers to the Audis in a hurry and the rest of the "modern" and impatient road users and let's hear more chuggachuggachugga on the road and the winding on of the handbrake at well earned stops. A well maintained knocker driven well is still a heck of a lot safer than even the most modern and safety feature ridden truck driven like a maniac with the driver on his mobile phone any day.
  4. Very cold very wet night on some endless FTX in the middle of NW Germany. It is deep in a wood and as usual the trucks had done the sort of hours of driving that would give an EU beaurocrat heart failure and a very very tired paket of knockers trundles up to the checkpoint of the entry to the Divisional Support Area (DSA) which would best be described as a very very large goose egg of varied real estate with all the commodities ground loaded ready for collection and distribution. The DSA by the way was so big that it would take about 3 hours to drive around - all off road and without lights. The last thing that was needed was a snarl up on the circuit then. Cue this convoy arriving... Now we were going through a bit of a password revolution and some bushy tailed Staff Officer in The Good Ideas Club had decided that the double daily changing letter system (eg challenge XRAY DELTA! Response JULIET SIERRA) was just too difficult for your average squaddie to remember, and had introduced a simple word-word system. It was after midnight and the password had just changed to "Reverse Combination". So first truck trundles up with the rest close behind. Up jumps the sentry who hisses "REVERSE!". Righty ho says first driver, crunching into reverse, and the rest they say is history. Being a knocker it killed the one behind with the dummy chassis into the radiator and the two of them then took out the one behind that etc etc etc. The joys...........
  5. Now there's a test that you don't want to get muddled up with!! Reminds me of the time honoured method of checking viscous fans on posh Mercs - they should chop a carrot but not a potato (don't ask.................)
  6. Slow, noisy, slightly fragile in some areas, no heater (icy active edge callouts called for a bluey gas burner to defrost the screens) and self-exploding batteries and as I say brakes that could (and did) kill they were a lot better at shifting stuff around than say 4 tonners or stalwarts but they were greatly outclassed by the Mk3s. I have a soft spot for them but if we were to stand a cats chance of doing what we were supposed to have done had 3 Shock Army decided to move westwards then sadly they were not up to it. Which of course is what DROPS was all about Anyway we must have been warry in 6 Sqn because we didn't sleep in the cabs. Must have been all the time we spent with the gooners.
  7. Sleep in the cab!! Wash your mouth out!! How can you defend your location from inside the cab??
  8. For some reason I have the number 420 cans to a load in my head. On the hard sides the tailgate had a fold-down step, so to load the cans you loaded the tailgate step and then jumped up and boosted them into the cargo area. A sort of pre-taillift tailift.. The tankies at the time still loved jerrycans, 20 per panzer then round again for the empties. Although hard work it was very quick and in later years we were hard pressed to match the rate with TTFs and MEFD kit. They might have a soft spot in many memories but the knockers did not suffer fools gladly - they were and are quite dangerous things, especially with the air-on brakes. If anyone wants to give one a decent and loving home though I could be persuaded. If its 08DM59 so much the better.
  9. I would go so far as to say that the vast majority were cargo variants - I know of only a handful of Mk1 wreckers. There were a few with 5th wheels, some tippers, some gun tractors and some tankers. I had both GS and bridging variants in my first troop, as well as two CL registered hard-sided trucks (you could only load them from the back and they were used to carry jerrycans by the hundred - what a joy they were to load and unload!) and a couple of 6x4 tankers.
  10. Technically it was 3 miles - 1 1/2 mile warm up. Nice buy though.
  11. If all is well in the engine department as you say then I would suspect the sender/gauge, at least as a starter for ten. If you don't have the wherewithal to pop in some substitutes it might be worth spending £6 on a non-contact digital thermometer as advertised on well know auction sites and take some readings around the thermostat housing top/radiator top both running and stood still. The other thing you can do with your point and shoot is to see if there are any really hot engine bits which might be sending the coolant temp skywards when the coolant flow stops.
  12. 100% agree - although it used to be called common sense. But that isn't what's being asked for here is it?
  13. All true But the responsibility for producing it sits in this case with the council - although they will of course need answers to the question "is there anything odd about your vehicle that we need to be aware of....?" That is quite different to asking owners to complete there own risk assessment, because that would mean owners imposing control measures on the organisers - patently bonkers ("The organisers are to provide adequate barriers, signage and in peak times 3 marshals wearing appropriately marked high visibility clothing to stop nasty children climbing onto my WW2 Paratrooper Bike") So responsibility for the dialogue, production and dissemination of the assessment sits fairly and squarely with the organisers. Thereafter it will be for owners to comply with any control measures/indemnities required. Just like every other special event held throughout the land.........
  14. I, and lots of others, have attended countless events over the last 40 years. As yet I have not been required to complete any sort of risk assessment. I have signed documentation undertaking to abide by the rules of the game and the direction of the organisers and I have had to produce documentation for insurance, boiler inspections and so on. If I were to be asked for a risk assessment I would be happy to stay away and take my exhibit elsewhere. At best this is someone on the council being idle, at worst it is a roundabout way of passing any event risk to individual owners. When was the last time anyone did a risk assessment to park their cars at Tesco? Just my opinion!!
  15. Indeed As it is the councils event it is for them to produce any risk assessment and inform participants of restrictions and control measures. There may be a valid "does your vehicle have any specific things we need to know about?" but that is a different question to the one you have been asked. I would be making a phone call along the lines of the above to someone with a brain on the event organising team.
  16. I have just tested some stuff called Uno SV from Crioch Industries. It is a viscous foaming degreaser and I was surprised that it was as good as it was. Being sticky it clings to vertical surfaces and underneath bits rather than dripping off and it does not dry out for ages and ages. It also seems to be very kind to paint etc. Well worth a try The contact is stuart@criochindustries.co.uk Oh and I have nowt to do with these chaps, just happy to use a product that seems to help.
  17. Have a word with Ollie at Broadsure Insurance - 01843594477.
  18. I have a similar conundrum myself. Even the examples on the DVSA website have the caveat that if you want to rely on the examples you should take legal advice! Sad to say that notwithstanding reams and reams of so called "advice" (opinion) from all sorts of quarters the only way to bottom this and all similar road haulage related regulations is to test it in court.... I am not sure I want to be that guinea pig and therefore the only way to play it is to play it safe in my humble opinion......
  19. Ooo just read that you googled already - try again with "classic vehicle motor trade insurance". Remember they may be military vehicles but they are also classic vehicles!!
  20. It is a bit of a mare.... A few years ago I got my renewal and was just about to send the money when I checked the small print - to discover that the exclusions now included classic vehicles.... I checked with my broker (Norton Insurance). Naaaaaaa they said - must be a mistake - but we'll check. They did. It wasn't. The insurance company had decided that it no longer wanted to be in the classic vehicle business but had still quoted with my title being Rustytrucks Vintage Vehicle Restoration Services. Anyway there are specialist brokers for classic vehicle restoration and a quick google will find them for you. Watch out for the exclusions though - standard ones include "American vehicles" for instance.
  21. If anyone does meet up with him could they ask him to get back to me re. Diamond T door hinges!!!!!!
  22. And if its a Diamond T make sure that it has decent door hinges................. Can't find any of those blighters for love or money
  23. Yep! The tanker was being towed on a straight bar a short distance after breaking down on the autobahn. Thinking it would just be a short distance the drivers didn't bother with any air lines. The slip road off the autobahn was a whole lot steeper than they expected, the front truck overbraked and the tanker flew straight past, snapping the towing eye off as it went. It careered off down the road picking up a passing merc as it went. Only the merc upholstery would tell the full story. No-one was hurt. Note the H&S conscious driver has put out a single dry powder extinguisher just in case.
  24. Nope. It had 14 tons of live ammo on board so it was shovel time. Seriously - it was dug out to a track then pulled out on a straight bar.
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