eddy8men

bit of a bombshell moment, whilst looking on the afv register i noticed my churchill was on there twice (which is an easy mistake to make as in my pics it's upside down but in the other it's the right way up) and it's clearly a mk4 AVRE and looks to be in better shape than i thought. it would be nice if it turned out to be a D day avre but i won't be able to see what it's all about properly until i get it back to sunny manchester which will hopefully be this month. i'll get a link up to the photobucket site later. in the meantime here's a couple of pics of the commanders hatch and turret ring, if you look closely you'll see that the turret ring is made up of 13" sections of what i think is phosor bronze can anyone confirm if this is correct. eddy

very nice, good luck with the restoration. eddy

can anyone local to tamworth confirm this ? eddy

i've also got a commanders cupola and half a turret ring, i'll get some pics up on the forum this week as i'm not entirely sure the cupola is the right one for a mk4 but i'm sure steve will know one way or the other. restoration sickness is definately setting in as i'm sure i'll be sick of restoring by the time that churchill is done, probably just as well then that i've got my eye on another more complete one :-D eddy

no problem john, i want to encourage people to get into ww2 armour so your grandson is more than welcome and i'd appreciate a drive in the valentine as i'm looking at getting one myself, a nice man once told me where all the turrets were.:cool2: send me a list of carrier parts you're looking for and i'll see what i can do as i've got piles of carrier stuff. all the best eddy

got an original churchill gearbox sorted and will be picking it up in may, which will probably lead to an original engine going in aswell and so the build might turn into more of a restoration and less of a let's just get it moving exercise but the thought of all that work is not doing me any favours i can tell you that, (the things i do to keep you forum bunch happy) eddy

i bet you knew it wouldn't be long before i put my penneth worth's in, so here goes. the churchill is my personal favourite the more i look into it the more i like it, a very much underated tank that has been labelled as unreliable and out dated yet it still performed all the way through the war and even at the end still gave the crews a better chance of survivability than any other british tank. i was in touch with a chap recently that crewed a mk4 churchill through tunisia and never had a problem mechanically even after covering a 1000 miles (that's good going even by today's standards). i think the dieppe raid unfairly put the churchill in a bad light after the war, which is odd as the canadian crews swore by them and were totally sold on the tank. eddy

one of my favourites, an early churchill used by the canadians, after it broke down it was deemed too difficult to recover and so was used as a training aid for piat practice (judging by the holes). this churchill is on the south downs in sussex. you can read more about it's history here. http://www.findonvillage.com/0959_more_on_the_tank_on_our_downland.htm

if you're stripping something down lay out the parts on the bench in a line in the order they came off, then if you have a thick attack when reassembling you'll know how it all goes back together eddy

my mk1* carrier is yours if you need it. eddy

mechanically but to be fair i haven't spent much time trying to get them sorted, i'll wait til i get my workshop up and running then have a go at them. eddy

no rockets in me pockets, no shamooli's in me goolies :-D

i bought 4 of these geny's from withams thinking they were 240v, the rotten beggars had put the item number sticker over the data plate so you couldn't see the specs. caveat emptor eddy ps. non of mine work either

thanks for the post diver99, it was on armyjeeps not ebay that i saw these, sorry about that. by the way have you seen the prices of british armour they've got for sale £30k for a 432 and £60k for a spartan:wow: eddy

they're chieftains and 2 were for sale on us ebay about 2 or 3 months ago but i can't remember the asking price but i do remember them as being quite convincing reproductions. eddy

can't wait especially as stu has got a blank firing bren gun lined up for me to use in the carrier during the battles, it'll be just like the old days back in nam (wokingnam) eddy

i heard a similar tale about a churchill under a slag heap in sheffield but i don't hold out any hope of ever finding it, probably got more chance of finding a field full of ww2 jeeps than getting the churchill :cool2: eddy

nice, very nice i'd like an achilles one day :cool2: eddy

i'm lookling into a dump in norfolk where apparently jeeps and trucks were driven in and bulldozed over, the guy that told me was adamant it is there so i'm going to have a look with some detection equipment in the next week or so and i'll let you all know if anything comes of it. eddy

somebody else on the forum has mentioned warton as a dump site, i reckon all the old airfields have dumps, only the quality of material to be found in them differs from one to another. what makes the one i'm looking into interesting is the dump location was recognised when a local was watching archive news footage of the trench being filled with vehicles and then bulldozed over but that was in 1982 so his recollection is a little vague eddy

might go and check it out anyway mate.:-D

i drove to norfolk today, 430 miles round trip to investigate a trench containing ww2 vehicles that was buried by the yanks after the war but needless to say i didn't find anything but it's an ongoing project, you never know there might even be a crated spit in with all the rest of the stuff :-D eddy

i went to old plant heaven a few weeks back whilst picking up some bren gun carrier tracks and wheels at the airfield belonging to nelson green, must have been 500 old dozers and excavators truly an amazing place. eddy

i've always had a soft spot for the cletrac, a very practical and useful bit of kit. good luck with the restoration eddy

great pics, thanks for putting them up eddy