sharky

Evening all some progress this week . First of all i have been busy with the engine(number 2 the C4) had each cylinder off and de-coked them and a thorough clean of everything did the last one today so monday i shall be setting valve clearences replacing HT terminals, timing magnetos & refurbing clutch and then by wed hopefully we shall have a test run fingers crossed . Also today manned the loader to help Nitro refit the ammo lockers . been really good to get those lockers back in as they start to make the interior look like a tank again not just an expensive skip:cool2: cheers for looking sharky

Good news this week nitro has been a busy beaver and been hard at work fabricating all the missing hull fixtures and fittings range poles and gun cleaning rod holder was shot to pieces so a new one was made track adjusting spanner retainer and chain fastener cranking handle mounts repaired the swivel lock on the towing pintle but the best news of all is she is now back on her tracks .Nitro and captain chaos got busy whilst i was up to my elbows in piles of engine bits.They took the nearly new set of steel chevron off our high speed tractor and made up the short fall with a length of good track we bought in .(dont worry we have a good set coming to refit on the high speed tractor ) nitro over seeing the the job;) 2 and half weeks till our deadline is up some busy days ahead . Enough for now, next post more imfo on the engine progress . cheers for looking

definately more work than ours but nothing is impossible . good luck

some more updates engine this time . whilst one of our engines was away being looked at we decided to have a inspection of our R975 C1 that is destined for the sexton eventually, to see if it was viable to drop in our sherman to get us running for cosby.....as you'll see this wont be happening . After initial visual inspection , setting the timing and having a general fettle we got it running but it was blowing oil out of the crankcase breather and exhaust joints on cylinder 7 & 8 . So we stuck a camera down the bores to checked for heavy scoring seemed ok , then did a compression test which gave us an average of 90 psi across 8 cylinders but number 7 cylinder was reading 235 psi !! nothing left but to remove cylinder and find out what was going on with the rings etc .if you have worked on one of these radial you'll appreciate what a swine it is to just remove a cylinder .but however after a morning of knuckle and hand bashing all was revealed . cowling off then we get to the piston :cry: sadly all the pistons appear to be in this state, suspect either crankshaft counter weight siezed and has shaved bottom and scraper ring off each piston or a badly fitted retaining circlip has come adrift and broke skirt of one piston then continued to eat its way round crankcase and pistons . I know more when i strip rest of engine , this engine wont be in for cosby show. there is light on the horizon tho, our C4 engine is back in our hands now so hopefully fingers, legs and arms crossed it will be ready to go. positive mental waves baby.......... cheers Iain

Cheers prob be the guys with big bags under our eyes slighly less hair and hopefully drinking a well deserved beer .i do add hopefully as time is tight and we got 2 engines in bits both with problems hopefully one at least will be sorted in time . Also not to mention the rest of the work we got left to do hoorah we love a challenge.

Its orchid white must admit it does look very creamy in the pictures but its only slightly off white .this is what the team at wheatcrofts recomended

Evening all ,we have not made as much progress as we would of liked due to weather related breakdowns on the fv432's, especially with cosby show coming up where we are hoping to give her an outing , but heres a pictorial update . engine bay painted (still masked up for more paint) ready for engine to go in when it returns. next nitro had a bit of a clean upm of the gun fire control mechanism main gun firing solanoid In the mean time the boss presented us with this beauty he acquired . i had a go at the gun timer relay finally its nice to have piles of repaired and painted parts to refit rather than either rusty scrap or oil encrusted broken parts waiting for us to fix . thats you lot for tonight hopefully there should be some real progress pictures in the next week or 3 keep your fingers crossed and wish us luck cheers for looking and as normal questions and comments welcome. Iain

is it def engine oil then . hmm rear output seal on engine then possibly if you send andym a private message on here he will point you in the direction of the correct manual that covers that end of the engine. i have them on pdf file but i'm still wading thru them so might be quicker with andy either way its a pack out job, enerything is with fv432's iain

Is it clean oil? if so it is rear seal on gearbox, so its pack out, gearbox off and then a strip and renew seal quite a big job .you will eventually kill the gearbox if you continue to run it .sorry for the bad news iain

nice work indeed

it was a private sale in this country via milweb

Hi Tony , yeah pretty much cosmetic some rot low down on cab in the usual places such as battery box, rear corner behind seats on cab side curves, bit on the body so far aint had a major go over her yet tho appears to run drive and brake ok so just a good service.Also remove french add ons such as horrible rear lights etc. i'm in love with her love big old trucks . Iain

just thought i'd share our new arrival at work with everyone ex french diamond T i'll post more imfo as i find it and pictures of any progress as and when we clear some work and get on to her thanks for looking Iain

Hi Alex thanks for the encouragment, as for the cylinders these were green top coat with a red spot then under that coat there was a red coat then primer so anyones quess. personally i like the look in red

Cheers for that tim .you'll see from the transmission in pics that it has had a fresh coat of paint inside so its socks or slippers from now on hmm steel toe capped mocasuns where the address for dragons den ...

yes they do also i have cabelled them to the original pull handles took a bit of head scratching and a few choice words but got there in the end

last few for now. forgot these in earlier posts many thanks for looking. still need a few parts to complete i'll bump the post again

transmission going back together whilst nitro does his best fred dibnah impression then finally on friday we got the hull and transmission paired back up again

here we go again more photos any question do ask next we tackled engine compartment fire extinguishers, oil pipes etc

nitro got busy with the welder and gas torch and fabricated these up meanwhile i tackled the fire fighting system i had to fab up a new fire extinguisher horn as we we're one short the eagle eyed may notice the modern fire extinguishers hidden in the locker we thought this might be a wise precauction what with the price of these here sherman things

After a brief sojourn on a T-34 and a massive amount of fv432 breakdowns 14 torsion bar i think last count me and nitro have finally got back on to the sherman well where to start. first of the self cleaning oil filter needed a bit of help

first of all Hi and welcome to the forum . i visited the museum 2 months ago absolutely brilliant and best of all its free admission keep up the good work. Iain.(sharky)

p.m Andy for the links Robin . i have downloaded them this morning absolutely brilliant they cover nearly everything you can think of Iain

Hi Andy , nice one i was gonna email you and see how you had got on with this . just shows persitance pays off . ring now to start the downloading many thanks Iain

morning, Jim clark or Adrian scott may be the chaps to ask ours has no evidence of a lining but our roof has had the machine gun ring removed and a plate put over the hole when it was in in its post military life . welcome to the forum by the way prob best do an intro tho Iain