John F

Yep, and the "windscreen" appears to be propped up on bricks.

My group has one of these medical marquees that we're thinking of selling, it's wartime dated (1944?) and is in fairly good condition for its age apart from a couple of (internal) patches that would benefit from replacement as they're not in the correct colour (lighter-coloured modern fabric). Is there any interest? Here's a picture of it from 2018, before covid ruined everything. It's being used for a wedding next weekend, I'll post current pictures of the marquee after this event.

From Wikipedia: "Royal Ordnance designed variants with 105 mm Royal Ordnance L7 gun as an upgrade package for owners of the Type 59. The upgrades incorporated 105 mm L7A3 gun with thermal sleeve and ammunition stowage of 34 rounds, British smoke grenade dischargers on both sides of the turret, Graviner fire-suppression system, Vickers Instruments L50 gunner's sight with laser-rangefinder, Avimo driver's sight night-vision device, Marconi's Centaur weapon system with digital FCS, Mantis commander's sight and solid-state drives. Another upgrade package also installed ROMOR-A reactive armour on the side hulls and ROMOR-B passive appliqué armour on the front hull and turret, along with the aforementioned upgrades. The Type 59 tanks used in the project were acquired from Pakistan, and the upgraded tanks were exhibited in British Army Equipment Exhibition 1984.[27][28] No Type 59s served with British forces."

Displacement of the master cylinder pushrod is worth investigation , as you said. Especially since you said that all four brakes freed off when you cracked a bleed nipple.

That makes more sense. And yep, the slave cylinder is likely to be the culprit :-)

Welcome aboard. It's certainly not the first time & won't be the last time that a Landy drops fluids, hehe. 1992 on an M plate is unusual though, what's the story there - have they based the reg. no. on date of release?

From what I've seen up to now in this thread, Jon, I suspect it'd be well within your capabilities to cast your own track links. But naturally the decision rests with you.

£30,000, ouch! Are you now planning to cast your own track links, Jon?

See also "Mr Jolly Lives Next Door" by the Comic Strip (Rik Mayall, Adrian Edmondson et al) from back in the 80s... lol

I'm re-reading "Zwischen Metz und Moskau" by Karl Knoblauch. It chronicles the author's experiences as an infantryman in Alsace during the Battle of France, then his subsequent transfer to the Luftwaffe where he retrained as a navigator and flew as part of a Ju 88 crew undertaking long-range reconnaissance and ground attack on the Eastern Front.

That's great news Eddy, thanks for the update.

I've just seen this on a Russian free ads site... 1942 Il-2 Sturmovik for approx. £40,000. No idea of its condition, but it looks fairly complete. And it seems very cheap for a warbird. https://www.avito.ru/pushkino/gruzoviki_i_spetstehnika/samolet_il_2_2216517492

Hope Jon's OK, he's not been online for a while now.

I'm certainly no expert, but if you do decide to remove the grease I imagine if you go for a long-ish drive to get the tracks warm you should be able to jet-wash the vast majority of it off easily enough.

Unlikely... according to gov.uk: All helmets worn on UK roads must meet one of the following: British Standard BS 6658:1985 and carry the BSI Kitemark UNECE Regulation 22.05 a European Economic Area member standard offering at least the same safety and protection as BS 6658:1985, and carry a mark equivalent to the BSI Kitemark

IIRC you only need a "commander" (with a full H licence) if you're a learner.

You can make a Freedom of Information request to the RAF to get information about your Mini, see https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/select_authority There's an example FOI response for someone enquiring about a Land Rover here: https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/merlin_report_for_land_rover_con

Yep, at one point in my life I had Polish post-WW2 "emigré" neighbours, it was informative chatting with them.

I'd be interested in hearing more about Poland in WW2. Back in the 1990s I provided the wedding Lightweight Land Rover (her idea) to the grand-daughter of a chap that won the Virtuti Militari Silver Cross, Cross of Valour and British Military Cross at Cassino. I met him at the wedding, he was full of life.

Well, I suppose it means that Panther might be visible to more people now, rather than sitting in a cellar. I hope it stays in Europe.

I'm no expert on tanks, but I've read quite a few first-hand accounts from German tank crews, so here's my 2p worth... German tank crews (don't know about Soviet ones) were expected to perform basic repairs & maintenance to their own vehicles, and were trained to perform these tasks with the vehicle's on-board tool kit, so I can't think of a plausible scenario where a lone, untrained civilian might come across an abandoned tank that was so lightly damaged that it could theoretically be repaired with hand tools. Also, tanks are heavy duty pieces of kit so the replacement of even a broken track link would be probably far beyond the capabilities of one person on their own. Also, both sides had a vested interest in recovering as many disabled tanks as they could for repair so it's unlikely they'd be fully "abandoned" in the first place. Anything that couldn't be recovered for one reason or another tended to be demolished to deny its use to the enemy.

I know the feeling. I'm part way through at least 4 vehicle projects, it's not always easy to stay motivated!

Come on Jon, we're all waiting on tenterhooks... what are you going to do with the tracks?

Oof. Love the attention to detail, as always Jon. I look forward to seeing this beast in the flesh, could it possibly be at next year's Yorkshire Wartime Experience?

Well, certainly from my perspective us youngsters know our place...