eddy8men

hi fella's thanks for all your advice but let's not fall out about what mark or designation it is because to be honest by the time i've finished restoring it nobody will know what it was eddy

i'll be going on sunday eddy

hi andy how about a fold down bed on one side and the sink/cooker on the other, for the bed you need ,a set of hinges a sheet of ply with a mattress/foam and some chain or rope to suspend it from the canopy frame. for the other internal fittings try to find an old caravan to rip out what you need. you can get a sink with a cooker and grill all in one for boats and caravans ebay is your best bet, i had one for my boat and it worked a treat dimensions are 900x450. just remember that because you're pushed for space everything will have to be easily stowed or be dual purpose. all the best eddy

thanks i hadn't noticed when i bought it that it had a torque tube and to be honest i was more interested in loading the engines and heading back to manchester from ramsgate which is where the truck is still waiting for me to collect it, when i get it back up north i'll start a resto thread on it but i might get it running and just sell it on, we'll see all the best eddy

hi alastair i've got a wot6 that i bought mainly for the engine to use in my carrier as you know, the engine and box are the same as the carrier but the rad is different and it doesn't have a torque tube, can i ask where you saw the other wot6 you mentioned as i could do with a look around one to see how to put mine back together. cheers eddy

hi fella's try looking under the rear floor plates for gulf war souvenir's (made by kalashnikov) :cool2: eddy

i've just read the following text from the churchill book which backs up what steve said about the frontal armour. it concerns the attack on steamroller farm by A sqn 51 RTR in tunisia so these would be the ealier mk's with 4" armour on the glacis. "the shot then ricocheted upwards and damaged the 6 pdr gun which had to be changed. the nose plate was slightly parted from the glacis plate by this shot". must have been a weakness from the start, although i would have thought the mk7 would have addressed this. the pic below shows a mk7 looking from the front, the nose plate is intact but the glacis has been blown in, it's probably not very fair to assume too much from the pic as the army were shooting at it for 60 years so it could have been the first round or the hundredth that did the damage eddy

hey fella's what's 15mm between friends, you're right i should have researched it as i was only going off memory of a hull i'd seen with penetration on the glacis, i remember thinking it wasn't the thickest i'd ever seen.sorry adrian guess i owe you a pint. eddy

hi fella's every weapon has pros and cons but i know if i had to face the germans in 44 i'd rather be behind a churchills armour than anything else.i know the sherman was a better overall tank but the armour is crap, probably no more than 35mm even on the front, the fact that they kept churning them out without any real armour improvement is not so much a mark against the tank but the people responsible for it's design. another interesting thing of note with regard to the churchill in the book i'm reading(the churchill by bryan perrett) is the fact that whilst crossing a bridge 4 churchills were knocked out by german a/t and mortars but only 1 crewman was wounded which is puzzling when you consider there was 5 men in each tank, maybe the gods were on their side that day. eddy

i saw it last year and thought it was great, the weather was on side and the view from the promenade with the flightline over the beach could not be better. http://www.visitblackpool.com/site/events/blackpool-s-annual-airshow-red-arrows-p543120 all the best eddy

thanks steve i knew you'd come up with the answer but it's still incredible to think that the british army didn't deploy all of them, (probably didn't have enough reme to keep em all rolling). i often think the churchill would have been a real war winner if they'd put the 17pdr in from the begining, i'm reading a book on churchill's in north africa and it describes a churchill being hit by 31 german a/p rounds both 50mm and 75mm and the hull wasn't penetrated, now that's impressive eddy ps. as for being a rupert it took me 14 years just to get to corporal

sorry adrian i couldn't resist it. steve i can't understand why more churchills didn't get to the front it's certainly not because they didn't enter til the end of the war, can you let us know what did they do with the rest of them i know a few went to russia but that still wouldn't explain it. i like to think that the churchill was so good when it actually went into service they realised they only needed 750 to conquer the germans and using more than that would have been unsporting all the best eddy

adrians right about the ranges, i made it my personal mission to save some of these range wrecks and i was as annoyed as anyone else that the army was using them as targets even though they are historically interesting (well the churchills are, don't know about the shermans though:D) but if they weren't used as targets the only place you'd get to see them is in a museum as every other tank would have been scrapped with the exception of those few that could be converted to mostly agricultural uses such as the valentines and stuarts in oz.i know it sounds funny but we should be thankfull they had a use over here at least that way the average man has at least a chance of owning one . my churchill came from the anti tank ranges at catterick garrison and there's still plenty more out there that are restoreable i know of 5 wrecks that fit the bill so as you can see it was for the best in the long run. eddy

nice one alastair it would be great if you could get hold of a nearly complete loyd that would help you no end with the resto. good luck eddy

great thread i've been eyeing the vehicles on www.allegro.pl for some time, is that where you found the link to moto. there are bargains to be had for sure but at the expense of a load of hassle but that's normally the way it is. anyway good on you ! it took a bit of belief in yourself to take on a trip like that i'm glad it worked out ok. all the best eddy

hi alastair good to see the restoration has started in earnest, what was the condition of the linkages and other components you took off were they shot or did you get lucky, i don't know about you but i've a feeling on my carrier it's gonna be the little fiddly things that take most time but it'll be worth it in the end. all the best eddy

here's a thought, the stolly went in the water, it swam around for a bit and then it came out again intact. what loads or other forces were involved i'll never know but you don't have to do everything by the book all the time espacially if you've never read the book and not everyone is a recovery expert but at the end of the day they got the job done and that's all that counts and by the way i'm not an armchair general i spent 14 years in the reme doing this kind of thing and it was often more dodgy and we were the professionals. i suppose it comes down to the individuals personality, some take risks and some don't eddy

could it be "pinking" if it only occurs under load maybe the dissy needs adjusting/retarding but i can't think of any fault other than a loose dizzy securing bolt that would have made it advance too much but it's just a thought, why not retard the dissy timing and see if it makes a difference but don't leave it like that as it'll cause the engine to overheat. it's been 20 years since i dicked about with ferret's so don't put too much store in what i say but it's probably worth a go. all the best eddy

no worries tim, keep looking for more you never know what might turn up, like steve said the rest of it could there, which would be nice, restored carrier = £25k :cool2: all the best eddy

hi fella's i went with my dad and had a great time, this is only the second show i've been to and i have to say i thought it was brilliant, there was so much to see we didn't even get to the america's field after 2 days of tabbing round, so next year we'll stay longer and take the carrier as well and maybe stay for a week. i must admit i was surprised at the freedom afforded spectators as we could mill around with the vehicles and exhibitors which was a refreshing change in these days of the nanny state where people are not often allowed to use there own judgement and take responsibility for their own actions, it gave me a sense of free spirit not often found these days. i even managed to cadge a drive of carrierbarry's universal (happy days):-D all the best eddy

hi orison welcome to the forum, i know a fella locally with a hippo if you would like me to ask him if he has any tyres going spare just let me know. all the best eddy

i like this forum it's been a great help to me and i'd also just like to say that i'm honoured to be in the prescence of so many perfect people who obey every law and never make a mistake what i'm trying to say is we all take chances and make mistakes but that doesn't justify jumping down someone's throat so quickly, i'm damn sure you wouldn't do it so forcibly if they were standing toe to toe with you. yeah i agree it looked pretty crazy but it's up to them what they do with their kit and it made for a great video and it took balls to take their pride and joy into the unknown with so many people looking on and i say fair play to them and i bet they learned a little bit too, i guess we'll have to wait til next year to see. have a nice day eddy

hi tim it's definately carrier track, you just need to find the other 335 links and you'll have a full set all the best eddy

hi alastair great to see the carriers are in your hands now, i expect yesterday was a good day for you, lots of day dreaming about the finished article no doubt. keep the pics coming eddy

i hadn't thought of the spares availability like that adrian. i'll tell you what else you didn't have as well, the biggest tool of all (not me). the internet and thru it this forum without these things i wouldn't have been able to convert so much of my money so quickly into 40 odd tons of historic rust eddy