trustmeimamechanic

For those of us with 15 year old cars the old joke about filling the fuel tank and doubling its value looks like becoming true soon :laugh: ,

£120 to fill the landcruiser up last saturday and that was at £1.35 liter .

Bet the price never drops again when the Libiya thing ends.

In fact why has the price gone up ? Didn't the Saudi's step up production to make up for the loss of Libiyan oil ?

I don't think I'm that old but I can remember when 50p got us a gallon of fuel and if several school mates clubbed together we could spend all weekend racing around the farm in our old ford anglia that we cut the roof off with an angle grinder.

So a ''battlefield tank'' that weighs all of four tons......:undecided:

Its all the cut backs.... battle fields are much smaller nowadays :laugh:

It must make you wish that you could shrink yourself to scale so you could fly it

Thats a work of art , will it ever be flown ?

I would love a MK 9 spit in that scale and detail ..... but well out of my price range I would think

Have you ever driven a TDI with an auto box ? they are painfuly slow and need loads of revs to get anywhere faster than a snail, also mpg will be little better than with a V8, unless for some reason you need an auto I would stick a manual box in it.

It made sense in my mind when I typed it :blush: ,

Translation is - the officers he had served with in that squadron were all now dead .... he was the only original still alive .

The zombie version would make a better story though .

" Nice for the "irk" who had to clean up the Elsan! "

Indeed .... probably better than cleaning up the remains of the tail gunner though :-(

some of the storys he told were more than a little hair raising ... the loss rate of the Lanc 2's was appalling ... he spoke of going to a squadron reunion during the war and not knowing anyone else there .... they were all dead .

"It was a wonderful aircraft to fly, it was never done but there are many accounts by test pilots etc, in which they say they just wished they had clearance to do a barrel roll because everyone thought it was possible."

Alex Henshaw barrel rolled lancs on more than one occasion , it was a kind of party piece of his to do so.... he stated that a pair of gloves left on top of the dash in the cockpit would gently rise to the top of the windscreen before just as gently landing back where they came from :-)

His other trick was to do a roll with an interested observer standing between and just behind both seats .... Alex says the mans feet would gentley leave the ground as the roll progresed and again touch the floor as he leveled out again.

Speaking to an ex Lanc pilot of some repute a few years ago he also claimed to have performed a kind of roll while taking violent evasive action from night fighters.... not to mention getting told off for bringing a bomb back to base ..... stuck in his wing where it had lodged after being dropped by one of the stream above .:wow:

He also flew Lanc 2's fitted with radial engines ... said they climbed as hard as they could all the way to the target and never achieved half the hight of the merlin engined Lancs.... a truly brave man who compleated 2 tours and a short tour as an instructor where he asked to be put back on op's because he felt safer with jerry shooting at him than he did with some of his pupils

Trying to make the storeage "airtight" would I think compound the problem , if you have an airflow around the vehicle it will at least get dried out again , think how on a cold frosty winter just a few days of wind realy dry the ground up ... you would need the worlds biggest dehumidifier to take all the damp out of the air in a reasonable size building .

Its condensation of the warm moist air on the cold steel of the vehicle so the only way to stop it would be to keep the vehicle and the air above the dew-point of the moisture .

Its strange stuff ....

I built a shed for my motor bike and spent hrs insulating it etc .... its snug and warm and a refuge from the mrs .... however my RD and the mountain bikes all at times get damp.

My Jeep lives in an old concrete garage with a road-plannings floor and a badly fitting door, and roof that leaked so its got a sheet of plastic over the top held down by some logs.... it never gets condensation :shocked:

Talking of cats......

Good work ;-) , glad it took you a few trips to find it... make me feel better about the hrs we spent looking .

Reading the last few posts makes me want to go back... i did a fair bit of diving last few times and it was some of the best viz i have ever dived in.

Up on the pan handle are some of the best desserted beaches you will ever find... we swam with turtles for hrs.

Must say the TRNC were pretty friendly but we were warned by locals to keep our two very pretty daughters away from the mainland Turk males

.... is the open air night club still going on the coast just up from Lapta ? it was over by two old Russian helicopters and looked straight out to sea ... we had some good nights there with some of the locals we made friends with ... it seemed to be very much a locals club...I think we were the only brits there.

Notice the amount of rust on the ambulance in pic 3 ! think he did them a favour by totaling it.... looks like one good bump or pothole and the body was going to depart from the rest anyway .

The 1/24 Mosquito is a joy to behold.... now if only someone made a 1/24 mk 9 spit.

Most if not all modern motor cycles are 12v so don't asume that just because its off a bike it will be 6v .

The 80's mopeds were 6v so look at parts for Yamaha FS1E's or Suzuki AP50's on ebay.

"If he appears next year driving a truck, then no-one will be surprised "

Perhaps a pushbike would be safer

I use a fuel add (Castrol Valvemaster Plus) in the M55 truck & C.V.R.(T)s,but as a diesel engine has no valves it shouldn’t need it.

Thats a very strange diesel engine then ?.... I spent an hour adjusting the tappets on one friday :shocked:

Ah yes I think I can see one of them lying in the snow in the second picture.

I thought the duct tape would hold them on.... must have been the cold ....

The first posters clip contains one indisputable truth.... the RR Merlin and also probably the Griffion were the most important aircraft / boat / tank engines of WW2... the Merlin and the engines its design, all be it in modified form in boats and tanks brought about , did very much win the war . :-D

an ongoing argument..... however if we had the same number of just spits as the total number of spits and hurricanes then I'm pretty sure we would still have won the B o B and maybe a little sooner, the hurricane was / is no doubt a very fine gun platform and was easy to repair and is better on the ground due to its wide track.... that said the spit is faster both in the climb to altitude and in level flight (even Mks of the same age ), the hurricane was soon only sutiable for ground attack roles which it was very good at with a its six cannons ( 8 ? )and could never have fought an FW190 with more than the smallest chance of a kill , the hurricane airframe was at its peak of development in 1941 .... the spit was only just getting started.... at the end of its life the spit had over twice the HP that the Mk1 had and its all up weight was like a Mk1 taking off with a bus load of passengers sitting on the wings... not to mention sub-sonic in a dive :cool2:

I have never spoken to a hurricane pilot who then flew spits that would have swapped back... and don't forget the spit struck such fear into german pilots some would insist they were shot down by spits when none were in the area and a hurricane had been the victor...that fear factor contributed to more than a few victory's.

I may be proven wrong but I've been told chally 2 will never be released into private hands in this country .... talk of the panzers being laid up is rife but I reckon it will be just that ...laid up and put in store, with the regiments staying current on smaller armour .

Because those who do keep quiet are the ones fully aware that what they're doing is questionable, and are therefore the ones who will claim ignorance when 'pulled' when they know full well that they've been naughty boys.

 

What I don't understand is why you bring up your point. It would seem sensible that if you do want others to keep quiet about it, either P.M. people or keep schtum, rather than posting a reply that is for all intents and purposes as subtle as...

COOEEE WE'RE OVER HERE

I think Adrians point is that sometimes debate's are best not held on a public forum .... ie so as NOT to say Cooeee (wonderd how that was spelt ) not specificaly about this thread .

The law is without doubt black and white ..... the real world however has many shades of grey.... many new vehicles leaving the showroom today would, if the letter of the law was applied be illegal ....

Cold but fun ......

& ignorance is not a defense.. without threads like this members may unintentionally break the law as they didn't know any difference but would still get prosecuted..

My point was not aimed at the Mill vehicle user's.... more that the customs and others may not of even thought about dipping some old ex mill vehicles untill it was brought to their notice.......

just a point Gents.... not all who may read this are friendly towards Mil vehicles or their owners ..... a bit like posts slagging off the DVLA this may well have a detrimental affect on our hobby ... ignorance is sometimes bliss....

Yes a fine bit of flying...... as I understand it the pilots in the film were mostly vets from WW2 and had probably flown lower than that up canals in Holland with real bullets flying around.

At the time of the film there was little idea of preserving airframe life for the future so they would pull quite a few G's when filming.

I well remember seeing a Shackelton display shortly before they were retired .... the pilot evidently had little thought for airframe or engine life.... his low pass was a sight to behold... passing speed was not far short of the previous Hurricane and as he climbed away all four engines were black smoking like they were running on coal...... he also performed a wingover that would have done a fighter proud :cool2: