ackack

Yes they were both from Rush Green. We're abit off thread now with this perhaps I should start a new one... Anyway thats a very good picture, are there any more, I was trying to read the census number on the rear of the chassis cross-member, it looks like X47682**, can anyone read it? I have numbers for both of mine and one post-war number.

Most people don't realise that Isabelle carries a 1944 Lister JP3 3-cylinder diesel 230V 15kVA generator in the back, and there is only just enough room for it to fit! It gives 2 tons of ballast for a more comfortable ride. It will be used used to power my next project which is under way a 1943 No3 Mk2 AA radar system I have included some attachments showing how it should look and the state of it now. I bought 2 hoping to make a good one from the 2. They are 95% complete and have all the electronics inside. It might be at Kemble in 2010/2011!!!

You should NEVER shot blast springs, it tends to stress relieve them and they will stop being springy. New castings are often shot blast to stress relieve them. Just grease them, you won't get any friction with new grease and it will prevent them wearing and they will work fine, never had any problems.

The MapleLeafUp link doesn't seem to be working at the moment. Meanwhile I have attached some of my Navy pictures which you will see look too light to be a dark blue but too dark to be a medium grey! I am sure they are wartime pictures due to the white mudguards for blackout and the Allied Stars on the roofs in the 3rd picture.

Also very few of the surplus vehicles available were actually sold off to the public in this country. We have all read long catalogue lists of auction disposals and seen photos of vehicle dumps with nice rows of trucks, but in reality most were junk and had a very limited civvy life. You paid your money and took a chance, with little spares available the best bet was to buy 2. It wasn't until the late fifties when decent more modern vehicles were sold off to the public. There were strong fears that the motor industry which had been quickly strengthened over the war years would be in ruin if everything was given away. Even engineering would suffer. Order books would still have to be kept fairly full for the economy to survive, after all we had to export in order to pay back billions of dollars loaned. Post war it was getting very fashionable and affordable for the ordinary man to own a car. Tons of material was sold/given to parts of Europe which had suffered many years of German occupation and to many other countries such as Africa and the poorer areas of the Commonwealth. Many foreign armed forces were now equiped with our surplus which was usually better than previously owned. Vast amounts were left in Europe because it just wasn't worth the cost of ferrying it back home especially to the USA and Canada. Tons of extremely useful material was buried or dumped at sea. There was so much ammunition stored that it could never be used up in peace time, it was really an embarrasment, which usually resulted in it being quietly buried or dumped in out of the way places such as tunnels, old mines. ( I believe there are tunnels in the Forest of Dean full of war surplus gear.)Scrap metal was in excess and not worth much money. Aluminium due to aircraft being scrapped by the hundreds found its way into car production, notably the Land Rover. Timber was extremely scarse and house building was slow, considering the thousands of homes requiring repair. The Army was very keen to start afresh with new designs of vehicles after learning much experience. Technological advances over 5/6 years would normally have taken nearer 20. Many servicable vehicles were kept on in the forces for another 10 years (on average and then possible rebuilt or refurbished for another long spell) but it wasn't long before a whole new range was available, the older equipment was then relagated to use by TA and training purposes. A fear of the USSR and another possible war meant an ever increasing struggle to keep up, production continued. There were indeed thousands of vehicles that never actually made it into the war, notably the 4 Centurion prototypes that arrived in Germany in May 1945. Production was running at full tilt at the beginning of 1945, at a rate faster than we could ship it. Contracts were suddely halted though as soon as we realised that victory was in sight, we had in actual fact over produced as we had the facilities to do do so by then, this proved to be an expensive error. Anti-aircraft equipment production was rapidly slowing up shortly after D-Day due to allied air superiority although the war was to continue in the far east. Maximum effort was being made to produce we couldn't risk being beaten back again. Had the war been won at Dunkirk for instance then it would be most unlikely that anyone would own a WW2 vehicle now, its only because so many were actually built that the few ( in relation) that survive do.

There were over a million allied vehicles stockpiled in Europe at the end of the war. Actual production wasn't a great deal more than this so the sums don't seem to add up. We did leave behind 75,000 vehicles and guns at Dunkirk with only about 5000 remaining in the UK!

I tried to buy some camouflage trousers at a show once, I couldn't see any. :-D

Yes, January should be fine. It was actually pouring down and the wind was howling when I wrote the last posting! As you know Worcestershire and Gloucestershire were probably the worst hit areas with the floods in July.

Sunny and dry Worcestershire !!!

I have the sight assembly on mine, you are quite welcome to have a look. It would be fairly easy to manufacture most of it if you have access to a machine shop. I have never seen any photos of quad Polstens in service, I have been searching for years.

Someone had a clear out auction, that was the agreed price. It shouldn't be that expensive being expendible. Do a search on the web. In the cabinet I use G12 grade chilled iron grit which lasts for ever. That is expensive. Six sand bag sized sacks was about £75 about 10 years ago. And it weighed the back of the car down!

I use a cabinet (with arm holes) for small items up to a small wheel rim (jeep sized) fed from a small Perkins powered Hydrovane road compressor and for larger items we have a 30' lorry back with a roller shutter rear door (bought for next to nothing). It has a clear perspex roof which provides plenty of light during sunlight. I wear a full face mask with an air supply, don't forget a breathing mask. Dust extraction is with a large snail fan/motor, this pulls in the sides of the body when the door is shut fully! No extraction and you won't see a thing after a few seconds. Air supply is from a Ford diesel 6-cylinder engine driving a Hydrovane compressor all housed in a large soundproof cabinet. Fuel consumption is quite good, about a couple of gallons for about half a days work. We use black grit which gets smaller each time it is used, but the finer grit gives a better finish anyway. Think we paid £100 for a ton. Grit is tipped into a large hopper after sieving and fed through a hose which will throw you backwards when you first turn on the air tap! Only problem is light items will be blown about all over the place unless you hold them down. I can shotblast a 25' lorry chassis is about an hour and do it to my own standard, most professional blasters seem to miss bits. I can do anything I want when I need it and prime it straight afterwards. The total cost of this set up was less than I paid to have all the bits on my Chevvy done proffesionaly which was about £500 a few years ago. If you plan on doing a few restorations this is the most economic way to go, and you could earn some of it back by doing some blasting for your mates!

The 4 CX22s at Biggar were offered for sale a while ago and were very reasonably priced at £4000 for the lot initially. I tried to raise the cash unsuccesfully. It would have cost this ammount to get them back home again. There were a few time wasters and no other buyers and they had to be moved off site so they were scrapped in the end. Shame but no one else was interested! One of the vehicles was 100% complete with the canvas rolled up in the back!

This is what you need for splitting rims... I did eleven 14.00-20 rims in one day with this!

Some more stuff on the Lynx; http://www.canadianregister.co.uk/lynx.html

This little gem was "Best in Show"...

For those who haven't been to MVT Kemble here are some pics of some of the rarer vehicles... The Dakota was with the Spitfire & Hurricane which landed and took off from the airfield. Amazing!

You could try this page about the Otter; http://www.canadianregister.co.uk/otter.html

I have just found this website which covers in detail everything involved in MOT testing a vehicle. It is an MOT testers manual. http://www.motuk.co.uk/manual/contents.htm

It looks nowhere big enough to be a 155mm. To me it looks like an American M1 90mm anti-aircraft gun or variation of the M1

You used to be able to get a duplicate certificate for £25 as long as you knew the certificate number. I know because I lost for a while the certificates for my quad Polsten, which would have been expensive! The best thing would be to telephone Birmingham Proof House.

There are a few Polstens on the Canadian Register, the ones that came over from Portugal many years ago seem to have disappeared! I have manuals.

Yes the MVT! The webmaster is a really helpful bloke, my site has a link there and I link back!

Make a start right away on the register. Set up a simple website and you will start to get registrations fairly quickly. See if you can get linked from other sites such as MVT etc. I started up a site a couple of years ago and now have over 200 vehicles on the register.

Where Eagles Dare ?