rbrtcrowther

Just for prosective my day to day Honda... Insurance £230 fuel just to get to work for the year £1500 ish Two tyres £110 Exhaust £94 Pads and disks £90 Winscreen not coverd....£140 Oil and filter £30 =£2194 this years motoring The tax is £180....whoopy do oh my god i could do with that saving:nut: I smoke...I'm not proud of the fact and keep trying to stop...I managed 4 months... The money i saved insured the Scammell and payed for fuel for me to play and get married in it. Oh and if the Scammell was not tax exempt i would still have bought it and struggled to restore it...

there is no reason why any vehicle should not be preserved......They don't explode or burst in to flames you just have to tax them...You can do this for about 80 odd quid for 6 months of the rally season. That's about the cost of two tanks of fuel or two tyres. I had a landy of 1974 vintage, It rotted badly so i sold it to a chap who restored it while i went and played with fast cars. My current landy is tax exempt. I bought it as a basket case without knowing it was tax exempt an rebuilt it on a new chassis. What i'm trying to say is if you gave my landy to a chavy 17 year old they would f*&k it in about 3 days. It needs driving steady you don't dump the clutch of fling it into turns and it need oils checking every 3 months. So does yours but there has to be a cut off date somwhere and you just missed it, what a bummer, and i would rub it in if i met you at a rally but hey ho thats life, A rolling date means there will be clapped out cars that need more maintainance on the road cos people want to avoid paying the road tax> They won't maintain them cos they don't know how they just want the car to avoid paying tax. It's a crap idea .

Not signed.... The 1973 cut off coinsides with the old number plates which is kind of nice. Most pre 73 vehicles need more care and maintainence so are owned by people who know what they are doing so for me the tax exemption is just a bonus. If it starts rolling people will start keeping all sorts of crap on the road just to save paying road tax. A nice modern eco car has very cheap or free tax anyway so just buy one of them when they are a few years old.

Hmmmm......Is it stuck from being left engaged for years or not being used for a long time?It might just be stiff and the master cylinder has managed to push the plunger in but the plunger is too stiff to release. can you get hold of it with a pair of mole grips and wiggle it out. Jack up one wheel so you can turn it to get "slack" in the diff or you will never pull the plunger out. Most likely it is stuck where it passes through the case. We never ran with any foot brakes or diff locks cos the sea water siezed them up so we just used the handbrake. The rear axle is dead easy to strip down. I have changed the rear wheel bearings and seals in about 2 hours. But i always cut the cab support leg and weld it back after rather than undo the bolts holding it to the trumpet. (stick a prop under corner of the tank to hold the cab up) Then use a trolly jack or engine hoist to support the trumpet (Trumpet = one side of the axle case) remove the ring of bolts and smack it with a sledge hammer and withdraw the trumpet from the tractor. The whole diff will come out of one side but i can't for the life of me remember which side it is so it's just a job of finding which trumpet to remove (have you got a parts manual?) What are the bellows like on the front axle? Is it the same as the 121? and 141? Have you got hydraulics on yours or a blanking plate? Never use EP oil in any axles cos it eats the phospher bronze brake discs..... The biggest problem we had was the PTO drive flange splines wearing out where it is splined into the engine. That shaft also drives a the hydraulic pump (and in some models another pump) that delivers oil to the top of the Drop Box and the associated shafts and bearings. If your hydraulics stop working remove the plate at the back of the drop box and check the shaft is turning. no oil to the drop box= disaster:embarrassed: the same oil also works is way to the gearbox to maintain that level although there is a pointless dipstick in the gearbox from the ford application. But then again the 171 might be compleatly different.......:nut:

i'm sure he will be able to help. He could talk the back legs off a donkey. Can't for the life of me remember his name though and i've been there often enough..must of spent £10,000+ of my old bosses cash on axle and gearbox parts. So happy never to have to work on one again:-D If anybody needs help or advice repairing a muir hill i know many short cuts and work arounds. The manual is a bit over complicated to be honest. I might have forgotten a lot but front axle was a speciality.....:coffee:

Too right, not enough beer in the White Lion or in Colwyn Bay i should think:) I gave you a blast on the horn when i passed though:cool2: Hope to be at the transport do this year as well.....

We have a huge "intelligent" charger at work and it won't charge a dead battery. i normally connect another battery in parralel with jump leads to give the flat one a kick up the arse and and let the charger know there is a load on it, then disconnect the good battery. However if the battery has been left flat for a few weeks it is more than likely knackerd. Does it look fat?

Well guess what i went and did last Saturday......

But you can't see the vehicle....You cant get close to it for a good look round, And you feel like your invading their camping space if you get too close....Very strange.....Public are paying to see your toys no to see how you camp...

So Crock....are you er...you know....er.....doing anything with them? I'm never going to off foad mine you see.....so err....if you keep falling over them.....

Anybody got a 1400 r 20 part worn bargrip? Just found a nice big split in the tread on one of mine:( Can you still get the road tread 1400 r 20's that they had on the front of the pioneer? If so how much? Might consider a pair of those one day....Crock....when you put bar grips on your front wheels Crock.....Crock?

my fourtrak engine runs better on Shell diesel, texaco and Esso not to bad but its crap and rattly on tesco fuel........stick a tank of veg oil in it and it goes like stink and is nice and quiet:cool2:

Diesel.....Lots and lots of diesel. He most probably has a button in the cab he can flick to turn on excess fuel to gain a tiny bit more power but also to put on a good show:-D

The absolute king of trucks and pretty unbreakable. have fun:cool2: Something went wrong...

excuse me but there seems to be a *hitpart box in that picture!! Whatever is in the box A) won't fit. B) Will leak. C)will only last a few months before failing at the most inconvenient moment. Or D) will try to kill you by breaking just at the wrong moment. Please post us some pictures when you do the job again in a few months......

I think somebody worked the winch rope length out at about 1/4 of a mile or something!

Yep he pulled it ok, just had to put a snatch block in to reduce the load on the winch rope. Yep scammell got out ok no worries.

Some pictures of Bills scammell at work....The ground was too soft for the Foden. So the scammell was called up. Apparently the plan was to reverse the Scammell till it got stuck then keep going till it buried itself and made itself fast. think the Bulldozer was used to help anchor the scammell too. Just as the digger was about to come out the operator stuck the boom in the ground to "help" and the winch cable broke. Got it out in the end though....http://hesletonrecovery.co.uk/LatestRecovery.aspx

There's a little sump thingy on the front of the gearbox higher up near the front mount i think ( Can't remember of hand, All my trouble was a t the other end!) Mine was full of gunge. It's got a little drain plug in it..

Bloomin heck you'll be on the road next week at this rate, Fair bloke.

We used to run a fleet of Muir Hill tractors and fordson majors in the sea launching power boats. To stop the nuts siezing up we put wet normal oil based paint on the wheel stud threads before fitting the wheel nuts. Then tighten the nuts up, The paint exposed to air drys up and seals the thread to stop the corrosion and the paint on the thread remains tacky. No more stuck nut ever again...And they never came loose:-D

Looks like you've got your work cut out for quite some time. Fingers crossed all the hydraulics work. I think the remotes are electric over air over hydraulic but i could be wrong. At least you can jump on the crane and test it with the manual leavers. I look forward to you updates which should come thick and fast the speed you work at...

That looks like John Carroll's Landy. Bless it..

Just have to see one being driven off road by someone who knows what their doing to realize just why they have such a following. Must of been the most capable off road recovery truck of it's time. There still isn't much to match one now. Only 13 tons in weight so quite light really and fitted with 450 foot of winch rope so easy to rig up big winch pulls without using extra extensions to the cable. Winch speed is a tad fast though. The jibs pretty useless though for suspend towing modern stuff unless you like pulling wheelies:cool2: Oh did i mention they look stunning:-D You've got to get one Andy...

Looks good, That's put a little extra weight in the back which should stop it bouncing around:)