robin craig

Have you ever tried low temperature (ie winter) windscreen washer fluid for cleaning the airbrush?

Over here the winter minus 40 spec type it has a lot of alcohol in it to stop it freezing, cleans real well.

R

Cosrec,

After reading your post three times I finally figured out what you are saying "MOT" testing your vehicles!

I 100% agree with you even though I am on a different continent.

We have in the collection two Bedford MJs and an M818 all of which are heavy enough to warrant a commercial vehicle yearly inspection which we do religiously, let alone the civvy rigs we drive.

There are others nearby who have similar sized vehicles and their trucks are not in a safe and fit state for the road. I have often been vocal and very public about this and have not made any friends by pointing this out.

In my humble view operating unsafe kit on the road is not on, period. I have seen 5 ton trucks registered as pick ups or cars. I have seen VIN plate swaps, I have seen an M37 with a slow moving vehicle sign as if it was farm equipment. I think I have nearly seen it all but i'm sure there are some yet to surface.

I and my co workers hold provincial drivers licences for tractor trailers (artics for you in the UK) and we do all the safety logs and the whole nine yards. We operate under drivers hours regs and are fully insured properly.

We spend a great deal of time and money being safe and street legal.

In the event of an unfortunate accident no matter how it was caused the collection owner will be in the clear as far as mechanical condition and operation and maintenance. Also, the owner is properly insured and no one will be left swinging in the wind when the insurance is declared null and void as will happen to others when the paperwork gets produced at the scene of an accident.

I have spent countless hours sorting out vehicle ownership paperwork screw ups and properly registering vehicles for what they are for ourselves and for many other collectors locally.

Register what you have properly and obey the law, for the sake of our loved ones who share the roads and for our hobby as a whole.

People, as COSREC says, do it right, for all of our sakes.

R

Interesting project there mate.

What was it used for when in service?

I really like the off main stream vehicles in service. Look forward to lots of pictures.

Have you traced it's history at all? I am presuming you know its registration?

R

I received the following info on another forum from a gent by the name of Chris Grove:-

"I was a safety officer at BATUS for the very first two battle groups. The M135s we were using then indeed had UK type number plates (hand sprayed if I remember rightly) and they were still in OD or whatever the Canadians were using at the time. We understood that they had come from the Canadian Armed Forces.

We happily drove right hand drive Landrovers around the local (and not so local) roads which caused children idly looking out of the back windows of cars to do a double take when they realised the steering wheel was on the wrong side, but later we were ticked off when it was explained that those vehicles were only supposed to be used on the ranges.

The other excitement occurred at the end of, I think, the second battle run, when virtually all of the armoured squadron managed to bog their Chieftains in a slough near the final objective. One of the only two British Centurion ARVs in the western hemisphere went to the rescue, and got bogged too. The one remaining ARV kept well back out of the mud and managed to rescue its mate, whereupon they eventually managed to drag the tanks out too."

So, it would seem that it took a few seasons before they got their paint job.

R

Howard,

When you consider the few number of people who carried cameras while in the army, as the cold war was on and it was frowned upon plus the fact space for kit was limited and getting a fragile camera destroyed it is not surprising that there are few pictures around, let alone finding some that have been transferred from real film to digital after nearly 40 years.

BATUS has always been a place of anomalies and the non regulation practices. Witness the CVRT Spartan at my work with add on roof armour and the VISMOD OPFOR vehicles.

This is the interest for me.

R

Howard,

Thanks for the input and memories.

Yes, for you at that time they were as you say "just a deuce and a half".

For others the use of non standard or unusual vehicles is interesting.

The other point is that they have not been mentioned and that bears noting and documenting, otherwise the history is lost.

Do you have any pictures of them by and chance?

Do you have any idea how they were given Brit registration numbers? Were they robbed from other trucks and it was a paperwork smokescreen?

Robin

And welcome back to the Tony and Robin chat thread!

Yes Tony, there would seem to be a lack of members from the early seventies who might have been at BATUS.

I am doing more looking and have actually found one of the trucks as of 2007. I'm attempting to get a hold of the owner and see if Santa can put a small deposit on it.

For me to have a Canadian made truck but in British markings with pukka provenance would be grand because it would be such a talking point. I like the exception to the rule.

Robin

Tony,

Although I live out here now, I do not claim to be any sort of expert on the M series trucks, likely because they really don't hold any interest for me, until now.

Basically the M 135 CDN as used at BATUS is a hard top cab with single wheels on the rear axles. Apparently the American versions were soft tops and had dual rear wheels on each axle. It is what the old sweats call a deuce and a half or in better terms a 2 1/2 ton capacity truck.

There was a 5 ton version that did have dual rear wheels on each axle in Canadian service but from what I gather unlike the M 135 CDN which were purpose made for Canada they were off the shelf purchases from US made stocks or manufacture.

The single rear wheels was apparently a Canadian thing based on the theory of rolling resistance off road. It was carried over into the replacement vehicle called the MLVW in Canadian service that is now also being withdrawn and cut up for scrap rather than being released as being far too dangerous for us civvies to own or operate.

The MLVW fleet was a licence build by Bombardier in Quebec based on a US design with minor tweaks for Canada. That build was a political decision to give industrial benefit to Canada and was funded with large gobs of cash to set up the MLVW production line and cost the tax payer for per unit produced than if they had been made in the US.

The M series truck nomenclature is further confused as the same M 135 was used over again in the MLVW fleet.

Don't ask me the pedigree of the 800 or 900 series numbered trucks, it confuses the heck out of me. There is some generational changes and re powers and up grades that have gone on. Basicaly it is an old design that has been flogged around for years with many super dooper improvements that have done nothing for sound insulation in the cab or creature comfort of the driver until some of the last versions.

We have an M818 at work as a tractor unit for a float trailer and it is a noisy pig that was once regarded as being a great vehicle and was flavour of the week until the said person making that comment had to drive across a large chunk of Canada for two solid days in a Bedford MJ and saw the difference of the ride.

There have been many vehicles produced over the years that appear to be identical in US and Canadian service but upon closer examination prove to have many modifictaions peculiar to Canadian usage. The suffix CDN to indicate Canadian version is how they are marked on data plates upon inspection.

The REO or whistler that is so much loved is a version of that in some form.

While I enjoy military vehicles, the M series will never hold a candle to my interest in the Bedford RL and MK and MJ and Leyland Daf and Daf and other British trucks hold for me.

This link to wikipedia gives you an insight into the multiple use of the same darn numbers. You will note that a 2 1/2 ton truck is listed as being an M35 and an M 135 with a different G number in brackets afterwards. Like a contract number thingy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._military_vehicles_by_model_number

There seems to be a better generational breakdown of the M35 and M 135 here

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M35_2%C2%BD_ton_cargo_truck

I am sure someone will be along soon to give you more proper info and pedigree and correct the inaccuracies I have spread.

It would seem by the posts so far that you and I are having a private conversation here Tony!

regards

Robin

Welcome George,

regards

Robin also from Ontario

Dear M109a3uk or Tony,

you are forgiven for that identification but actually they are the M135 Canadian, there is a difference, but congratulations for chiming in on the thread!

Robin

I was reading your tyre / wheel building on another forum and the tread lug by lug work. Very impressive and surely you must have the patience of a saint..

Tyres really do set a model off properly. I can understand why you are going to these efforts to get a master made and them cast.

Grand work.

R

Gobsmacked, really grand. :thumbsup:

R

Thanks Neil and Tim,

Yes they are keepers for sure, now I have them back!

Tim you are right on which survives, the model or the 1:1 scale version.

Strangely in later years I ventured into buying Land Rovers and purchased 3 of the last petrol vehicles coming from what was then BATUW, British Army Training Unit Wainright, also in Alberta.

One of those wrecks, which two were, lives on as a chassis under a civvy 88" locally.

R

While on a wild goose chase tonight I stumbled over documentary evidence of the use of Deuce and a half trucks as issued to the Canadian Forces by BATUS.

Here is the link, showing 22 FL 30 as a deuce. It is part way down the page. In another far flung corner of the web I also found a photo of another one bearing 22 FL 50.

http://fearnaught3.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=ra1&action=print&thread=739

Below it are some more pictures of them in use.

Can anyone comment on the registration number and or the trucks used.

Thanks

R

For me, this was the highlight last week.

As a scale modeller the detail I always wanted was good pictures of the real item showing obtuse and different paint schemes and markings to support a model of the same. At IPMS meets it was always interesting to see picture of the real vehicle displayed alongside the scale version.

This MAN wrecker shows just that. Some details I picked out were:-

- obviously the red patches on lockers and areas

- different coloured wheels obviously from another vehicle.

- the call sign done so poorly in vinyl stick on numbers and letters and peeling badly

- the paint pen "danger acid splash" on the battery boxes instead of any kind of formal stencil marking.

A real treat to see.

R

This absolutely mint Scimitar diesel showed up on its way west. It was so clean and fresh it was as if Chris McMillan had rebuilt it!

Sorry about the lighting but it was the best I could do.

Can anyone decipher the marking on the bin at the front?

I know from seeing other BATUS kit this will be the last time for a long while it will look this good.

R

This King trailer was headed east back to the UK.

Perched on top of a step frame trailer gave an interesting view of the underside and the articulation possible at a wheel station.

Would hate to have to check all the tyres on this as part of a first parade inspection.

I don't know what the snout at the rear in the centre is for, perhaps for pushing on?

R

A few more

R

These two models need a lot of explanation.

They were made for the then owner of both of the vehicles, a fellow member of Ottawa Valley Land Rovers, Bob Wood.

Bob was a real character. He was one of the core members of OVLR. Bear in mind that in North America, one dark day in 1974 (I believe) the company closed its doors and quit this side of the pond. It left owners high and dry without support.

Bob, being resourceful and keen to keep his transportation in the Land Rover brand, embarked on a scheme with other local owners in the late 1980s. They had heard of BATUS and the scrap vehicles that were CAST and sold off.

In an ambitious plan he and a few others traveled across the country and loaded a large number of vehicles in various forms of disrepair and brought them back east. Most of the vehicles were used as donors for their chassis as the local civvy vehicles had by that time come to the point of needing a transplant from being driven on winter salt covered roads.

There was also a need for body panels and spares. Importing from the UK was expensive for sea freight and the scrap vehicles of BATUS were sold as scrap at very cheap prices.

Myself, I landed in the Ottawa area in the late 1980s and getting involved with OVLR Bob asked me to make a model of two of the vehicles he had brought back and was in the process of resurrecting and putting back on the road using spares from his piles of vehicles.

So, to be clear, these models bear the registrations of the actual vehicles in his driveway. The paint colours are 100% faithful to parts from them both that he loaned me while making them. You will note that the ambulance is quite a different colour than the GS. Anyone who remembers one of Simon Dunstan's books will recall a shot of a similar vehicle in similar colours.

The colours at BATUS have changed over the years and markings have evolved over that time as well.

The way the wheels were painted reflect what was in the driveway. I question it but he showed me the wheels and they were done that way.

Anyhow, some of you sharper detail orientated types will notice some errors, which I freely admit. The main one is which way round the brake and turn lights and side lights are.

Bob wanted the old Italeri kit to better replicate his soft top and so after some discussion I used fine tissue soaked in water and glue to roughen up the surface a bit. It is out of scale but you get the idea.

Bob wanted the Tamiya ambulance kit left straight out of the box. I did take liberties with headlights which he was happy with. This is my favourite model.

Sadly at the moment I don't have a good camera and have tried taking these pictures under different light but coupled with my poor cell phone quality this is the best I can do at the moment.

I was making models quite a lot in those days but when my personal life unravelled and things got packed none of my completed models have survived the 13 years in storage and moving 5 times.

Two years ago Bob died. It was sad but considering his life style was inevitable. I had know Bob as a friend for a good number of years and he had been a good mate.

Sadly in his declining years the ambulance and the GS both went different ways and are no longer whole in their original form, so this is all that remains.

His executor and fellow OVLR member Bruce Ricker was charged with clearing Bob's estate up and asked me if I would like them back. So last year they came home after over 20 years.

So, here you have them, warts and all, "here is what I have made".

Enjoy.

R

I could not get close to these so I'm lost as to their identity

As I have said before some of the vehicles from BATUS moves by road both coming from and going to BATUS.

This fall there has been quite a selection.

From the outset, my apologies for lack of light and lack of quality, the time of day that I pass by is not of my choosing and the camera is my phone and work wont buy me a better one!

The first vehicle is a Warrior. Exactly what variant i'm not sure.

R

Jim,

welcome aboard the friendly forum.

I know of and have contact details of another Abbot owner on the west coast, I think he is up Washington State way. If you contact me by email (not PM) I will pass along his info to you. Always useful to chat with another owner.

We have no Abbots so cant help you with any info.

Do you have the smoke grenade launchers? I have one spare in my hands. I have some other bits like spar control box etc I might let go.

Regards

Robin

Union Jack Collection

Ontario

Canada

Dear All,

I came across this cover. I don't recognise it as a CVRT deck louvre cover and was thinking from its rectangular shape that it is a Stormer or Shielder radiator louvre cover.

Sorry I didn't take a picture of the whole thing laid out. From memory it had a strap with buckle on the short ends in the centre and a drawstring through the whole perimeter.

The manufacture date was also a clue as to which generation of vehicle it belongs to.

Any thoughts oh wise owls?

R

I found this on ebay.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/190746617147?ssPageName=STRK:MEWAX:IT&_trksid=p3984.m1438.l2649

Can anyone comment? Is it a genuine issue item?

Thanks

R

Tony,

It is without a doubt a very handsome model and without a doubt a labour of love and a testament to your skills. There are pictures around of the 1:1 scale vehicle and it is extraordinarily faithful.

The ladder on the back must have been a pain.

Any chance you took some pictures while you were building it that you care to share?

The cable reels look interesting, how were they done?

I know this is not a model making forum but I am sure others would be interested to see how you achieved the end result.

R