utt61

8 hours ago, Edd said:

Here is the link to the leaflet, relevant bit at the bottom of page 2.  Note there are age restrictions, for a Scammell Explorer which is over 7500kg it is 21.

inf52-large-vehicles-you-can-drive-using-your-car-or-lorry-licence.pdf (publishing.service.gov.uk)

 

That is an interesting read, thanks for posting the link!

I am intrigued by the bullet point that says you can drive "any engineering equipment (vehicles designed or built for the purpose of engineering work), except mobile cranes". I own a 1961 Iron Fairy 6 which is clearly a crane but due to the nature of its design is legally "Engineering Plant" according to the Special Types regulations, and not a "Mobile Crane". I wonder id that means that it can or cannot be driven on a car licence!

Not a problem for me, I have a pre-97 C + CE licence, but it would be intersting to know if someone who only has a B licence can drive it.

21 hours ago, Niels v said:

And it still survives in its civilian look

I wondered if it had survived, glad to hear that it has. Where is it now, a museum or private collection? Can it be viewed?

17 hours ago, XS650 said:

...

I believe around 700 Pioneers were left in France .

...

I'm not sure if this figures is just for the R100 or is all models, and I don't know how many other types of Pioneer were left at Dunkirk, but if it is just the R100 that is 700 from a total production of 980. Adds a sense of scale to the disaster.

If you type "lockwire pliers" into Google you will find many, many sources (including Amazon, Machine Mart, etc).

Edit, oops, just noticed you want genuine WD pliers, which I am sure makes the search more difficult. Sorry, I should have read your post more carefully.

On 5/24/2021 at 7:45 AM, Morris C8 said:

...  I have added some colour to the photos from my collection. ...

 

 

 

I do like the way that you have "colourised" the images, it is very effective and to my eye adds a whole extra dimension.

I've no idea how you do it, but it is great, thank you!

Remember also that it is the maximum permitted weight of the "trailer" that matters, and that the brakes must operate on all wheels and exceed the minimum efficiency required (rules out vehicles with brake servos). It is exceptionally difficult to A-frame any vehicle and conform with the regs, most people agree it can't be done.

In the recovery scenario, the vehicle must have been roadworthy before the breakdown and you are only allowed to recover it to the nearest 'place of safety' from where it must be removed by a conventional and legal method.

Does anyone know of a UK source for a replacement damper for a Bradley MH35 coupling, the type used on Sankey trailers (the damper is possibly the same for the Penman, but the Penman coupling doesn't have the manual reverse lockout)? The damper appears to be a STABILUS 637041.

Googling only reveals one source, in Belgium, at a price of well over 300 Euros, and not in stock anyway. One could buy a complete Sankey trailer for that price!

I find it hard to believe that there is nowhere in the UK with these available, and it seems a shame to scrap a whole coupling simply due to a failed damper.

I have contacted Bradley, who sadly remain more useless than a very useless thing and simply deny ever making these coupling, despite me supplying photos of the coupling, makers plate, part number and NSN. Seldom have I encountered such uselessness!

Martin Harper was a well-known manufacturer of PTOs to fit a wide range of gearboxes, and, as an example, the hydraulic pump in my Iron Fairy 6 crane is driven by means of a Martin Harper PTO fitted to the BMC gearbox of the crane.

The initials DBS on any kind of gearbox I associate with David Brown 7 Sons, well known makers of such things and still in existence today (now David Brown Santasalo).

I am no expert on dating the parts you have but my instinct says that they are probably post-war.

If you are 66 then you will. From 45 to 60 the medical is required every five years, from 65 it is required annually. 

If the battery has gone flat and has been like that for months, then it is highly likely that it won't hold a charge very well once you charge it up again, Lead-acid batteries do not like being left flat for a long time. You could try giving it a conditioning charge from good "smart" charger such as a CTEK, doing this will often help a damaged battery recover some of its lost capacity and make it usable again. Unfortunately the only way to find out how well your battery still works is to try it, and you do run the risk of it letting you down while you do this.

Towards the beginning of lockdown I made a significant investment in CTEK chargers, and the batteries from all of my vehicles have either been continuously connected to a smart charger or have been boost charged regularly. Hopefully this has maintained the serviceability of the batteries, the signs are good so far. I suspect that this has been a good year for the vehicle battery supplier business. In fact, one of the several pieces of advice I gave my staff a year ago when I sent them home was to remember to at the very least start and run their car regularly whilst locked down to preserve the battery.

I would add auto "steering" fog lights to the list of hates, utterly pointless, solving a problem which doesn't exist.

I don't disagree with any of the foregoing, however a good quality LED bulb designed to have appropriate characteristics to replace an H4 bulb, correctly adjusted, and producing a beam pattern which passes the MoT test requirements for headlight adjustment, will not in general dazzle anyone if used properly. Since the introduction of Type Approval it has been illegal to use a light source other than the one the light unit was designed for and type approved with, so technically the only thing that has changed is that now it is an MoT testable item and cause for a failure,  but I am sure that the objection is the technicality that the light is no longer compliant, not that there is necessarily a problem with its performance. 

I do actually think that all car headlights now are unnecessarily bright and only encourage today's "disconnected" drivers to drive excessively fast nearly all the time. I really don't like driving cars at night any more due to the incessant barrage of excessively bright oncoming lights (not so bad in a large vehicle though). Those of us who can remember driving in the 60s and 70s when headlights were useless and your eyes would adjust to the dark will know what I mean.

I find this both incomprehensible and depressing. For the last few years I have run a Landrover with good quality LED bulbs in the headlights, and it has passed the MOT beam test without any issues, ergo there cannot be a beam problem. They undoubtedly illuminate the road ahead far better than the original H4 bulbs, they use less power hence are "greener", and I really don't understand what is the argument against them.

If you do a Google image search (for "Bishops Cleeve" war memorial including the quotes for best results) there are several old images which make it very clear that the King's Head was indeed to the right of the photographer out of shot, and the cottages in right centre stood on the site of the shops in the photo immediately above.

The other thing that is immediately apparent is that Bishop's Cleeve hasn't improved with the passage of time, and the picturesque charm of the old photos has been entirely eliminated in the name of progress.

Worth noting that the"blue" filter is the appropriate colour to produce a signal green light from a paraffin/lamp oil flame.

Personally I have never seen any BR artefact with the broad arrow/crow's foot mark. There were several operation military railways in 1955, of course, and paraffin lamps were in use well into the 1960s. My suspicion is that it is more likely to be of military origin (it is not a style that I associate with BR either, I don't recall standard BR lamps having the "crinkly" top, they are usually domed)

The ubiquitous Bardic came on the scene in 1962, but I seem to recall that it took a while for the paraffin shunting lamp to be phased out (and paraffin loco headlamps lasted until the end of steam, sidelamps until the end of loose-coupled freight trains, and tail lamps even longer).

Out of interest I have just checked my settings, and I too don't have the option to change the display name.

"Intent" is notoriously difficult to prove, and I suspect that the success or otherwise of legislation related to Q14 would be wholly dependent upon the burden of proof needed to establish the intent. Prima facie, the clear answer to Q14 should be "it should be considered a very serious offence" since the fact that there is intent indicates beyond doubt that potentially serious criminal activity may result. The question is not asking anything about the situation where the intent is not proven, so merely having possession without clear intent is outside the scope of Q14.

That being said, regrettably I have little confidence in those who formulate our legislation nowadays, and there have been far too many unintended consequences recently. I think it is quite possible that an honest answer to Q14 would be subject to misrepresentation.

2 hours ago, Dorset HQ said:

Thank you☺the log book clearly says Historical vehicle so I guess I'll have to let the solicitors fight it out?

"Historic Vehicle" is a taxation class, not a vehicle type. 

It wouldn't be a commercial vehicle per se, only if you were using it for commerce. It would probably be considered to be a Private Heavy Goods Vehicle in the eyes of the law..

The outcome and the legal situation would depend entirely on the wording of whatever agreement he is trying to enforce, I would think.

I have found a similar thing, if I search for keywords that I know exist, the search returns zero results. If is do a Google search of the site (i.e., enter "site:hmvf.co.uk <keyword>" in the google search box) for the same keyword, it will be found.

I suspect that there is a malfunction with the search facility.

For example, typing the word "Singapore" into the search box returns no results.

Typing "site:hmvf.co.uk Singapore" into google produces pages of results.

I wonder how long it will be before all the ground source heat pumps become a problem, since if the heat is taken out of the ground, the ground must get cooler.

Ultimately until there is an acceptance that the population has become unsustainably large for the planet and moderation becomes the order of the day, I can't see any real improvement happening. I am relieved that I will (probably) be just a forgotten memory by the time it comes to a head.

Almost impossible to answer since it depends on how you're using the tool, but generally I expect a morning's work from a 5Ah battery on the 1/2 drive.

I have recently generally moved from using air impact wrenches to Milwaukee M18 cordless wrenches, which are excellent. I have a range from 3/8" SqDr up to 1" SqDr, and I haven't yet found anything that an air tool or corded electric will do that these won't. I have a 3/8" Milwaukee right angle impact wrench, and it is a genuine impact wrench not a nut runner, but the 3/8" tools are relatively low torque and their suitability will rather depend on the size of your project.

For most vehicle work up to Landrover sort of size, I find the 1/2" drive most useful, it gets used a lot! Larger than this, 3/4" is most useful with 1" in extreme cases. The 1" tool, even though battery powered, is capable of inflicting great damage on things including the user, and actually outperforms my Master 35 petrol impact wrench in terms of breakout torque. An awesome tool.

Before long you are likely to be unable to link from anywhere to a site that doesn't support SSL, and probably won't be able to access a non-SSL site from any mainstream browser. It is actually a very sensible move towards better security, and whilst I fully understand a reluctance to get all technical it is probably just postponing the inevitable.