ArtistsRifles

Brake light switch arrived and went to fit it - which is where I found the union was not bolted to the securing bracket but floating loose. As a result a rigid brake line split due to the flexing that resulted. Took a day to get both front lines off in 40 deg C temps - not fun at all!! New lines now made and need to be refitted and the brakes re-bled. Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

New brake light switch also ordered - aBay.de of course :-) Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

Numbers arrived and fitted so now technically legal to drive on the road :-) Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

New light fitted and tested (don't 22v bulbs get bright on 24v! :-) ) and 24v bulbs on order. Paperwork submitted to DVLA for the change to Historix tax. Just leaves the punctured spare to fix and all is ready to when DVLA return the V5. Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

No worries Stu :-) Could have got you to W&P but then the OT looks to heading out to a new home at Burnham on Crouch. Not sure now how much longer I can keep the old bus..... Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

Would say share with the OT again mate but its not going back to Yeldham ever again. Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

My pack arrived yesterday. Kind of worrying as I have been allocated TAV1 for the OT - usually it's allocated one up in the twenties..... Got 25 and 26 for the Landie and UAZ.

Number plates on order now - got them from Jepsons as they did a deal for the two UAZ plates and the Sankey one. Just need to sort out the brake light switch and all is go. Right now the brake lights are staying on - the switch is an in-line one and I am told the classic Mini type is a direct replacement although I am waiting for verification of this before spending the ££'s

Throttle linkage now adjusted correctly so it works as intended by foot and by hand. Still need to sort out the reason why it won't run on the hybrid cap though. The O/S front indicator was a nightmare!! I reckon I must be a contender for the record length of time to change an indicator bulb - 2 complete days. First the glass lens refused to unscrew so extreme measures had to be used to get it out - kettle of boiling water over the fitting then wrappping in a tea-towel and use of a strap wrench. Having got the lens out the bulb then refused to budge. A liberal dosing and soaking in WD40 had no real effect so I spent a looong while working on the bulb trying to free it. At last I thought it was free only to find the glass bulb had separated from the base - so more time was then spent trying to free the metal base from the socket, Having done this then the socket needed extensive cleaning to loose the corrosion inside. Finally though the new bulb was in and working. This are the remains of the old lens and bulb - and the first replacement bulb: This leaves the number plate light - I had a look and found the connector for the positive lead had broken up leaving the lead floating about free. Luckily for me I never ran it on side lights as a known issue when this happens is the loom and the rather expensive 6-way lighting switch burning out!! New light was ordered from eBay and came today so I will look into fitting that tomorrow.

Got through the MoT OK - only to have the front sidelights, O/S front indicator and the number plate light pack up on me. The sidelights were an easy fix - the connector had parted company - must have been caught when the air-filter canister was put back in. That was the simple part ended. Took the number plate light apart and found the terminals had broken apart- the live lead was floating about loose inside. Luckily I didn't run on lights as it might have made a mess of the loom. So - a new light assembly is now on order. Then I tried to get the lens off the indicator to test/change the bulb - only to find the lens will not unscrew. Luckily there is a spare in the garage as this one is now badly mangled but still has not unscrewed. I've left it soaking in 3 in 1 oil overnight in the hope this will free it off.

Cheers :-) The only clean looking parts are the sump, oil filter canister, oil filler pip, head and rocker cover. The engine block itself is covered in grease and sh*t! :red: Got hold of a set of new conventional plugs today so - hoping like hell - I swapped the screened cap over and laid the plugs on the cylinder hear bolts. Spinning over showed no sign of a spark on any of them though. So I think I need to strip that old cap down and have a look at the HT leads - the king lead in particular. Maybe I will replace them all, and the plug caps too. Right now I need to get the old bus taxed - and she is now qualifying for historic (i.e. Free) status so I need to send the V5 off to Swansea. Got all the paperwork ready but the MOT expired last month. This needs to be sorted before I send the paperwork off so tomorrow morning a quick call to the local MoT station is in order. I will ask them if they can check the timing and fuel/air ratio without having to use a plug lead. If they can all well and good and i will get on with the converted cap at my leisure. If they can;t then I really need to got this sorted before going on any long runs - I don't want to go through this again.

Finally!! The UAZ is now street legal in terms of tax ans documentation/insurance. It's taken over a fortnight to get the on-line insurance database to accept the details - Footman James have spoken to them no less than three times! But at last today iot is showing up as insured on-line. So I went to do the road tax wondering how the new system will handle MOT exempt vehicles and found to my surprise and pleasure DVLA have already taxed it till 30thMay 2016. So - once the little niggles (i.e, number plates, brake lights) are sorted I can start cruising around town.. :yay::yay:

Ah - yes makes sense. Last year mine arrived 27th May and I remember at booking in a couple had misplaced theirs Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

Anyone had the booking in packs yet?? Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

Almost there now :cool2: Finally I have the new registration mark from DVLA - contacted the insurers who changed the policy without any issues. But - true to form - the www.askmid.com database still has not been updated!! :-( I spoke to the insurers again today and for the third time they have sent the notification through. It's almost impossible to get the UAZ taxed without the database as its all on-line now. If it's not done by Wednesday the insurers have said to ring them back and they will start lighting fires under the Askmid data entry people. On more practical things - the starter decided to go "lazy" such that I could spin the engine faster on the starting handle than the starter motor could manage. Got hold of a known good second hand one - to get the old one out and the new one in the distributor clamp had to be loosened and the fuel pump removed! Not the greatest design in the world!! It now starts again although the motor is still slow so - when the bloody rain stops again I will have the earthing strap off and clean it and the contact point up to see if that helps. New fuel senders arrived and have been fitted. Unfortunately the wife threw the old ones away as I left them indoors which is a bit of a buggery as the new ones seem to have "issues". If I hook up the multimeter I get a resistance value at one extreme - low tank - of 9.3 ohms and at the other extreme - full tank - of 94.9 ohms. However on the continuity setting I get a tone from the 9.4 ohm position up to 46.8 Ohms - just over the half tank mark. Which explains why on the drivers side tank which is about 1/4 full the gauge reads but on the passenger side which is about 3/4 full the gauge is apparently open circuit. See video clip: I have 12 v at each of the sender leads and if I swap the senders over the gauge reads the same. I have contacted the suppliers to see if they can shed any light. At the moment the gauges will only read when the fuel level drops down to about 1/2 tank so the vehicle is useable. Had to replace a front seat as when I removed the drivers side the base frame was broken and thus unsafe. Both seats had to come out to gain full access to the senders. When I did get the UAZ to restart after fitting the starter and a correct fine fuel filter i then found the brake lights were on all the time! So I have a nasty feeling that the brake light switch took damage when the starter came out as it dropped. Apart from this the side indicator repeaters still need to be sorted out and there are some odd jobs that need to be done but which are awaiting parts from Poland. Oh - and the local immigrant gang emptied brake fluid into the rear load bed - neighbours saw them gathered around the back of the vehicle a couple of weeks ago and when I looked there is just a mess where the paint used to be. So my already minimal tolerance for this multi-culturalism business has reduced even further.

Update time!! The engine is now back together but not without fun and games. First off getting the pistons out left some noticeable wear ridges in the tops of the bores. The only solution I could find was to get a Dremel type tool out and polish them back so they blended in before running the bore hone over them again. If I hadn't the odds were the top piston ring would have broken sooner or later - knowing my luck - sooner. Putting the new pistons in went well till i torqued #3 down - at which point the engine locked solid. I had to undo number three, remove it completely and refit it. After this they went in OK and the engine could be rotated on the hand crank. The head went on OK - I got a new torque wrench calibrated in lb/ft, torqued the bolts down in 3 stages, rechecked the final setting twice on the new wrench then dug out an old bending scale one and checked them again using that. The tappets were then set by the book and again checked 3 times. Then I started to reassemble the thermostat housing - and one of the three bolts promptly snapped off in the head!! This gave a few more days delay whist a set of bolts, taps and ezyouts were delivered. Fortunately the broken section of bolt came out OK with an ezyout so the 3 threads were cleaned with a plug tap and this time the stat housing assembly went on OK. Whilst waiting for these bits to arrive I cleaned off the sump and gave that a couple of coats of duck egg blue paint and, when dry, refitted that together with the oil filter and the oil cooler fitting. Whilst underneath I also took the time to give the axles a coat of black hammerite, the rear diff a coat of white hammerite white paint and applied the oil stencils, Still got to do the front axle stencils. Once the head and housing were on OK together with the rocker cover I refitted the manifolds and, again, a nightmare of a job getting the two bolts in on the underside that have the spreader plates on them. Finally got it done though. I then fitted a new Zenith to replace the Weber. Still need to get a bolt to clap the choke cable into place. I did note that the fuel inlet pipe was a smaller dia. than the Weber so I tightened up the jubilees clip as much as poss. Didn't work as the first time I spun the engine on the starter the fountain of fuel was quite impressive!! So new flexi-fuel line had to be sourced too... i also thought I would fit the heater fan I;d had for a while so took the heater matrix off and flushed it out then went to fit the fan - and that's when I found out the one I have is a LHD version and won't fit!!! So now I need to sell a brand new LHD 24v heater fan and try to find a good condition RHD drive unit. I thought maybe I could fit the fan motor and resistor to the old fan assembly as that was knackered - but when I dug it out not only was the case badly mullahed but that one was LHD too :-( So I had to refit the heater matrix for the time being. I also need to get the trunion that goes on the heater tap at the front of the engine - I fitted a replacement control cable to the slider and need the trunnion to fit it to the tap. When I fitted the hoses back on I found the new one that joins the rigid feed pipe for the heater matrix to the heater tap had gone walk-about. Could not find it anywhere. Luckily I had not thrown the old ones away and it was still in useable condition so I refitted that - thus far it is water tight. Eventually everything was back together as it could be so I checked and adjusted the static ignition timing then refitted the plug and screened leads and spun it over. Eventually we had life again!!! Next job is to try and fudge up a 24v screened cap with unscreened leads and caps so that ordinary plugs can be fitted to let things like a strobe light and colourtune can be used to set the timing and fuel/air mixture accurately and that will be the engine finished. I can then get the MOT done and then send off the V5 to claim Historic Vehicle status, I can then look at shifting the shunt back back into the rear tub where it belongs and finding some way of fitting the Military plates and the bridging plate.

So - as the topic heading asks - who will be going to W&P this year??? I sent off the booking form last November and this might well be my last year there with the OT as a lack of work means there is no money after this year to pay the transport bills. Hopefully the Landrover and the UAZ will be there both this year and henceforth though.

Little Maud went though a spell of doing the reverse to this - the belts were over tightening every time the engine was run. It stopped as suddenly as it started and I don't think we ever worked out why it was happening.

What I found interesting - and unusual - is that the hull is a common design, akin to the FV6xx series of vehicles - across the range but of the family of 4 vehicles, 3 are tracked and one is wheeled ala the current BTR's.

I don't Paul - that is the responsibility of the driver. Usually they use cross-chains fore and aft onto the OT's towing eyes. Seen them use ratchet straps over the tracks on the centre line a couple times too. But usually it is just cross-chained. Never seen it move yet. :-) Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

Every time my OT travels it hangs over the side of the trailer. Usually the road wheels are "just" on the edge of the trailer. Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

Bill Ruxton has a nice one for sale @ £3000 with a REME machine shop body right now. He says its a '59 one - cab is in a LOT better condition and it runs sweet - and stops. :-) I wouldn't mind it - just short the £3,000 Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

On the sub-topic of rolling over - a lorry is not like a car or a Landrover in that there is all too often little or no warning the unit is going to go. And when it does go there is absolutely nothing you can do stop it. RL's and Knockers were stable load platforms but I've been in an RL that rolled and seen a Knocker go over. Both were loaded with palletised shipments and were loaded and lashed by the book. The RL was being driven by an older, experienced NCO so no excessive speed etc. yet on a bend on a back road in Germany it rolled. One moment all was normal the next the horizon was describing a slow arc. Luckily neither of us were hurt bar cuts and bruises. Accident investigators could only assume the slight negative camber on the road was the cause. Neither of us had felt any abnormal bumps and the driver said he felt nothing through the wheel etc. till gravity made its presence felt. Road was blocked for hours whilst the army cleared the load and then the truck. Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

Perhaps not quite as bad as the T62with its (in)famous autoloader :-) Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

Took one look at the door and thought "NO".... Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk