eddy8men

the no.41 i'm afraid, as for the no.29 i've never even seen one advertised or fitted to a gun, they must be like rocking horse sh1t to get hold of. rick

working on all those churchill's has made him turn to the lord for salvation :-D

nice find rob and it looks to be complete (to my non arty eyes) i have the direct fire sight, if you need it let me know and i'll bring it up sometime. rick

sorry to hear about your 2 mates dying in the cvrt. rick

i looked into the dorchester in ross's yard last year but it has apparently been bought and moved down south for restoration which is great news, however this is only what i have heard through someone else so i can't confirm it but i believe it to be true. rick

i reckon restoring a tank is a good way of honouring the men that fought in them and that once a tank has been restored it could well last for 100's of years. better to place a statue than leave a tank to rot but i'm a tank lover so you'll have to make your own mind up. rick

i have no doubt that most memorials will be restored eventually. as their value increases and their condition deteriorates it makes sense to get them under cover and replace them with something more suited to the riggors of the weather. you just have to be patient rick

welcome mate and don't forget to keep your eyes open for the valentine hull that's lurking somewhere on the island :cool2:

who cares about a bit of mud and rain, don't get me wrong i'd rather be wearing flip flops than wellies but sh1t happens and to be honest i'm quite looking forward to doing a few 360's in the mud :evil: rick

i'm going just to see the "world of tanks" girls slipping around in the mud with wet t shirts on :cool2: that alone has to be worth the drive down there ! rick

i reckon it's a fair price and i'm sure you could come up with a deal to include the engine. if i had £50k knocking about i'd consider it rick

well done :-D

difficult task you've got there alastair, if you can't get it to shift with a jack you could always slit it like the other one then weld the seem to close it again. not a great way i know but at least you'll get the bugger off the sodding shaft :mad: anyway keep plodding on with it you'll soon be at the putting things back on stage which is where the real rewards come, you'd be there already if you had no family, endless wealth and limitless time :-D all the best rick

i'm glad you finally got your churchill. i look forward to seeing the resto. i'd also like to say that there aren't many guys about who would take on the challenge of restoring a churchilll to running condition and then agree to hand it back to the tank museum. good on yer mate rick ps. stop keeping us in suspenders and post a few pics of the old girl

i heard that the irish army managed to shoe horn a meteor into a churchill, now that would have been a real speed machine possibly reaching speeds in excess of 18 mph :-D the truth is that we could have made churchills much faster but there was no need for an infantry tank to go charging across the battlefield. it just wasn't built for that purpose. nice clip though alastair thanks for posting it up. rick

good luck to you mate/sir

cheers john but is the guy mobile and what kind of price would he be looking for ie. does he have a day rate plus the gear or will he be looking to make enough to retire off the back of it. cheers rick

the churchill is finally now at my yard in manchester, (2 years after i bought it) so i can start to get to grips with the task in hand. the plan was to have it blasted before it left bob's yard in wigan but the weather was not on side so it'll have to wait which is a shame as it would have been nice to get the inside primed, if nothing else it would have helped my motivation :-D here's a few pics of it leaving bob's yard (thanks bob)

i was hoping to get my cromwell done for beltring but even if the hull is up and running by then there's still too much to do on the turret so it's not going to happen this year. the centaur hull is next years project :cool2: rick

shame it's been cut up, even if it was in a bad way it could still be restored or used for parts but once they get cut up they're gone for ever. i was talking to a fella the other day that was telling me about a churchill that had been removed from a range and scrapped only a couple of years ago. i would have given my right arm for it rick

top man

hi alastair the next step is to blast the inside and put a drop of primer on it before it moves from bob's yard in wigan to my yard in manchester on saturday, after that it's the long slog of getting the parts together but i look on the churchill as a long term/lifetime effort so i'm not going to put any pressure on myself to get it cracked off, however having said that i am prone to rushing into these things so we'll see. as for a good churchill book then you need to get "mr churchill's book" but it's expensive at £39 or so it's not cheap but it is worth it. the handle bar you can see is the steering tiller, which isn't unusual but if you look at the hull gunners side you can see a half tiller this is so the hull mg gunner can take control of the tank to enable him to move the gun onto the target, quite a good idea and unique to the churchill as far as i know. rick

clever dick funnily enough there are some markings on the hull side under the air intake but there's not much left, i might try a rubbing and see if that makes it clearer. here's a few more pics after we cleaned out the hull on monday

real bad luck with the weather guys, i can only imagine how much work went into this event, let's hope you can still laugh about it next year. all the best rick

great pics, thanks for putting them up. rick