Stone

Drive it to your local weighbridge and see! (obviously, 7.5t - unladen weight = load capacity) They all vary depending on how many extra bits are bolted on; ours weighs a shade over 5t unladen. That's without side panels but including the Ptarmigan cable reels etc bolted under the bed - think it's 5060kg. VOSA supposedly require 2t of carrying capacity to remain on any 7.5t downplated vehicle - personally I wouldn't be happy carrying more than that on ANYTHING downplated as the penalties for transgression are severe! Stone

Thinking outside the box, would a company like this lot be able to attach new pads? They do say they do custom fittings... Obviously for the time being the only answer is to fit NOS track but collectively we'll run out one day! Stone

Linky for the hard of thinking Doesn't look all that bad, though you might worry if the disk 'breaks', err, did! Stone

Engine speed will affect voltage but also alter the frequency so I assume you'd want to be leaving that alone. If your genny tester is measuring peak voltage it would be RMS voltage * sqrt(2); 220Vrms (Euro standard) would measure as 311V so not too far out...or your meter could be out of calibration Did you measure with the load applied? The voltage isn't that well regulated (they were designed to run with a fixed, near-constant load always applied) so if practical you should be measuring while your 1kW grinder is running - that'll give you much more of an accurate idea. I'm very glad they work! Stone

Thanks Clive, that's just what i was after MAPPS was 'Mobile Access to Ptarmigan Packet Switch' as in a data terminal to hook into a Ptarmigan network. I heard there are a couple of Pinz vehicles hanging around waiting for someone to think what to do with them so I might get lucky (they'd be just the ticket for something at work) Cheers Stone

Maybe the long gearstick is to accomodate the highest seat position (head out of hatch)? It looks very uncomfortable though! I bet you could register one, not necessarily lying about the width but just blinding them with science a bit maybe? Don't ask Neil for help If you filled in *all* the fields on the form and took it to a local office in person you might have more chance. An MT-LB is only 6cm wider than a 432 and there are tons of those on the roads. Fold the wing mirrors in Stone

If you speak Russian there's a great video on Youtube, nice knife-edge! Something went wrong... I can't grab more than the odd word here and there, but 4 pedals? And what's going on with that crazy gear shift? :confused: Stone

Thanks for that, also you've just reminded me about the other matter, I've sent you an email Stone

Nobody? :??? I'm hoping it's a Pinz 718T, in which case would anyone have any pics of different shelters, or of the base vehicle without one? Stone

No, you're right, it's an MTLB with an upgraded turret, I just meant to copy the flamboyant paint scheme Out of interest are you buying MTLB, MTLBu (extra road wheel, uglier) or MTLBv (wide snow tracks)? I think they're beautiful little things but have nowhere to put one! Would love to see one greenlaning... Stone

I think you should do this! No need for the flashing beacon any more :cool2: Stone

No, it's a Pinzgauer 718 (:cool2:), but I was trying to work out what the last letter of the Pinz designation would be - the website the pic is from just says 'Pinzgauer with box body of Royal Signals'. Is the box Ptarmigan? The whole system was shut down in July so I wanted to find out if these vehicles were going to be backloaded or just have the boxes discarded and replaced with FALCON or whatever. I know someone at 22 Sigs I can ask, but I still want to know what the truck is called! (There's a Pinz version called DS for 'dismountable shelter' - if it's one of those I'd be happy) Stone

Morning all, Could someone look up 91KL44 for me, please? I'd like to find out how its designation is described - possibly a Ptarmigan vehicle? Thanks Stone

You can get thermal lightsticks as well - used for marking helicopter landing sites, among other things. The Americans were using infrared lasers for aiming heavy weaponry for a while (assume they still do) - can be seen through passive night vision devices but not by the naked eye. Stone

You don't happen to own a Deep Bronze Green Land Rover 90 with an infrared searchlight on top, do you? If you do I'm moving into your road soon Stone

Um, yes, that's what they look like before the Army get hold of them! :rofl: Nothing a bit of TLC can't sort...I may know someone with some top covers as that seems to be the only missing bit. Will enquire Stone

Does it not ground through the chassis? Just remembered our Bedford manual mentioned the refueller variant had insulated earth returns, does this maybe hark back to the Stolly's UBRE days? Stone

Any idea how the gauges work internally? If they're of the type with a small bimetallic strip that is heated by battery current to move the needle, an internal short could cause this. In fact reading this it suggests that 0V going into the gauge would normally make it read full, so somewhere along the system something's probably shorted to the chassis. I assume it's not separately wired earth return...and that replacing the gauge and sender aren't an option. If you had spares you could 'just' swap them over to see if it's the wiring at fault. The sender might be stuck, but I guess not since you disconnected them at the tank end, so the fault is probably hidden deep in the middle somewhere :shake: I'd probably progress by taking the gauge out of the instrument cluster and applying a varying voltage to it at limited current to see if I could get it to move in a reasonable way. If it works it's the wiring, and I'd probably run a new one rather than try and troubleshoot the old one! Good, God knows they deserve one... Stone

I bet you'd remember after the first replacement engine

Give it a tap with a spanner (or cup hands around the filler neck and stick your eye to it while rocking the vehicle like one of the contractors we got to drive our Bedford - this was after he tasted our coolant to check antifreeze concentration :shake:) Glad to hear it's all sorted, it's been a long slog! Stone

I guess most of the armour is down low since that's where the biggest threat is. Not that it would probably do much good with the size of IEDs these days. Did you see the pictures on the news yesterday in which 6 Italians (and sadly 10 Afghan civilians) lost their lives? They were in Iveco LMVs: The force of the blast (suicide car bomber drove into their convoy) blew one vehicle on its side and demolished the other - there was a shot of what looked like the engine in the middle of the road. I've had the chance to have a poke at the British version (the Panther) and they are rock solid vehicles - inches of armour all over the place - but there's no way anything can stand up to that size of direct attack and remain useful levels of mobility. Most of the Afghani IEDs are made of surplus Russian 155mm arty shells - looking at the wiki page for the USA equivalent it tells you how much TNT is in each shell. The Casspir is designed to protect against 14kg of TNT hitting a wheel - the sum (14kg / (0.158 * 43.2kg)) = 2.05 means you only need two of these shells next to each other to potentially defeat one! The Taliban aren't stupid, they know this. They have plenty of shells, all they have to do is tie more of them together until they get the result they want As for the original question, you could try here. I hope you've got your chequebook out! Stone

The crankshaft sits on a liquid bearing of oil, which drains back into the sump(?) when the engine's stopped. Until the crank is sat in the right place resting on its layer of oil, it will severely mangle the engine if run...so you have to run the electric oil pump long enough to float the crank before you can start it. Otherwise you'll be buying a new engine before too long! Do I win a prize? Stone

Hi all, How do you guys go about finding places that stock NOS or reproduction parts? Do you just go by word of mouth and private sales? How about finding people to do the bigger jobs or things you can't do with the facilities / skills you have to hand? Our problem is that as our Bedford is company-owned, we are very limited as to what we can do on it ourselves - for anything more serious than pumping up the tyres we can't guarantee the safety of any work we've done without exposing the company to the risk we've messed it up ;-) Ideally we'd find someone who could do odd maintenance and servicing nearby, but who to choose? Would they be able to get parts etc? We have a front hub seal that's weeping oil onto the tyre: minor job for you lot but we can't do it :-( Any ideas gratefully welcomed! Stone

Both provisionally spoken for now. Thanks

Does that help? Stone