Pete Ashby

On 8/14/2020 at 12:00 PM, Jessie The Jeep said:

So many times at events I hear..."I'm waiting until I find the perfect Jeep for me", so another little piece of wisdom I share at events is this - There's no such thing as the perfect Jeep for you. You have to just buy a Jeep that fits your budget at the time and make it the perfect Jeep yourself.

Depending on your budget, it may be a runner that you tinker with, or it could be a wreck that you spend years sourcing parts for and rebuilding. Either way, you'll spend a good chunk of cash, but one way is expensive initially and gets you a vehicle you can drive, the other spreads the cost and is a long term project.

I think Steve has summed the whole expenditure versus value for money issue pretty succinctly.

Your purchase has to be driven by your budget, your ability, tooling /equipment and as steviem above has found out available  working space. 

Pete

On 8/12/2020 at 9:16 PM, Richard Farrant said:

Pete,

I can think of a better plan, give yourself a day off, get a comfortable chair in the shade with a pint of cider or beer and enjoy the day, there is always tomorrow, and you can plan that while resting in the shade 🍺

Sounds tempting but here's the rub Richard I'v'e been schooled in the Ward ethic of working,  so there are only two excuses for inactivity one is death and the other is....... ah yes I remember now that's death to.

11 minutes ago, Rootes75 said:

Very impressive again Pete.

I have tried doing work on the car but its simply sweltering.

Granted it was a bit warm for face mask, goggles, and welding gloves but I thought the better option than wandering around outside with a six foot metal pole with a strimmer blade on one end and a pint of petrol on my back at the other while the weather was doing a fair imitation of the opening scene from Mordor (Lord of the Rings for those that think I've lost it.....or perhaps it's heat stroke )

Well I don't know about the rest of you chaps but it's been some exciting but sweaty old weather out here in the West.  So having nearly melted cutting the grass around the yards I took some time out when the rain and thunder started and got down to some serious welding and grinding.

I'm pretty pleased with the result,  it still needs finishing off and there's a couple of small holes to weld up on the top right of the scuttle but over all not a bad result,  one I could not have achieved with out Richard Taylor's excellent pressings.

First photo with the vent lid in place

Second photo showing the vent lid seal channel, drain gutter and the repair patch to the scuttle.

Pete

Welcome to the forum look forward to following the restoration blog 

Pete

23 hours ago, chris golding said:

hi have jeep 57-yh-48. I to would like some details if possible, cheers, chris.

I'd suggest you go to the WW2 British Army Jeep Research Group on Face Book  most British operated  jeep owners are there and it's the place to go for a huge data base on post war YH numbers.   You may even be lucky and find a photo of your truck in the comprehensive photo files

Pete

That is really impressive Richard 

Pete

9 hours ago, LarryH57 said:

I complained to the Iwm that it was impossible to find a photo by the iwms own reference! So if for example I wanted a photo that I knew existed in say batch NA15901 to 15999, I could not search through 100 photos to find it. I got a rather laim response 

I suspect the problem is that instead of the IWM being a place for serious academic research staffed by people who have an understanding for the subject the whole enterprise has been turned into a money making  theme park with the major objective of getting foot fall through the door and royalties off the repetitively used media sign of the times I'm afrid everything has to be self supporting and show a profit even national history.

Pete

On 7/29/2020 at 8:57 PM, 67burwood said:

“ it’s alive “ ( again )

Also while it was idling it sounded like there was a pinking noise from the exhaust , does anyone have any ideas on this? 

Possibly an exhaust valve not seating properly or sticking in the guide,

One crude check is to use a strip of paper held at the tail pipe while on tick over, it should stream out evenly.   If it repeatedly sucks back to the pipe and then blows out again it can indicate an exhaust valve issue which could be seat, valve, guide or spring related or a combination of all those things, did I mention it was crude test ?

Pete

I was very fortunate some time ago to have the opportunity to purchase a set of blank pressings produced by Richard Taylor.

The pressings have to be worked up from the blanks and then modified to fit the specific  area under repair. the first two photos are from Richard's post, I forgot to take photos as I worked up my pressings so I include them here to show the work required.

These are my pressings drain and drain channel at the bottom of the photo and the seal channel and the repair to the top of the scuttle at the top

Without these pressings making a good workable repair would be very hard indeed the seal panel and the drain channel have to be welded together to form one unit before welding into the scuttle.

Here it is tacked into position

Pete

After a couple of weeks in the molasses tub the vent parts were fished out washed off and given the standard treatment the lid will need a touch of spray filler to finish it off, the glove box hinge has also crept into the act in this photo

Meanwhile it was out with the slitting wheel take a deep breath and bash on.......... no turning back now

This photo shows all that remained of the seal trough and drain, ah well there we are then.

Pete

Effort over the last couple of weeks has focused on the scuttle vent, the vent lid and operating gear fortunately were in not too bad a condition the seal channel, the drain and surrounding area was just toast.

So first job was to remove the lid and operating gear 

View under the dash complete with original return spring which is nice

Lid and operating arm removed

Lid, operating lever and hinge bracket disassembled ready to go into the molasses bath for a couple of weeks

4

Pete

Very nice car Lenny it's good to see young guys getting involved welcome to HMVF

Pete

Looking up the census number on the door gives the following information:

Bedford QL 3 ton General Service (that's the rear body style so used for any form of goods haulage) this truck became the British Armies standard general service load carrier during WW2.

Census numbers for this this contract ( that's the batch of trucks delivered on a particular contract) L6124332 to 6128331   

Contract number for this particular batch of Bedford QL 3 ton GS trucks  is S7918

About the photo:

As Richard notes above the truck is a late war production 1944/45 but the photo will have been taken prior to 1949 as the numbering system changed at this time. 

The white bar above the unit identification located next to the radiator in the photo may indicate Corps troops so possibly Royal Army Service Corps or  Royal Army Ordnance Corps for example. 

Pete

3 hours ago, Richard Farrant said:

Hi Tom,

I have brush painted some driveline parts with Warpaint KG No.3 and it does have a sheen, which i expect when brushing, but I spray painted some large panels this week and it came out an excellent matt finish, and on the inside of a cable runway cover which has been untouched for 80 years was pristine sample of the colour, so I sprayed one end of it, after a day I checked it and you cannot determine the difference.

regards, Richard

I've been using Warpaint G3 15% for the past year on a couple of projects both spray and brush for closed areas and Iv'e found it very good to work with it thins well and holds the heavy pigments without splitting.

Pete

Excellent photo of the Churchill and your carrier looks fair decent as well Tom ,

  I agree the Churchill photo looks to be untouched but a word of warning is perhaps in order,  when using period color photos as tonal matches it's worth remembering that different manufactures of film used different emulsions and dyes in the film to replicate the colours.   It was also highly dependent on the skill of the printer before automated colour balanced printing machines came into being, I seem to remember war time Kodak film was very reactive in the red and blue spectrum for example.

Out of interest is that War Paints G3 you are using on the carrier?

Pete

An awful lot of band width has been burnt up on this subject on virtually every military vehicle forum on the web.  Everybody has a an opinion and a very few will claim to have definitive proof so that researching the subject can be like trying to knit fog.

My advice for what's it's worth is to start your research with these two publications:

British Army Colours & Disruptive Camouflage in the United Kingdom, France and NW Europe 1936-1945 by Mike Starmer  available from the author at mike starmer@hotmail.com

And:

Tilly colours by Mike Shackleton and Mike Starmer published by Trackpad publishing (no ISBN No)

In the muddy waters that accompany the discussion on shade,pattern and colour these two publications  may help to add a little clarity or at least a starting point.

Pete

PM sent 

Pete

On 7/6/2020 at 10:32 PM, Rootes75 said:

Thats a neat piece of metalwork, from experience getting the shape/contour of window or screen recesses is quite tricky. 

I had to fabricate a complete rear screen recess on one of our lorries, it took a lot of patience and in the end a few attempts!

Thank's yes it was certainly 'tricky'

I used several other descriptors for it while doing the the job, if it had just been in the horizontal and vertical plane it would have been fairly straightforward however as the upward curve begins so the whole molding  starts to lean back into the scuttle something like 15 to 20 degrees from the vertical following the pressing for the door post.   The difficult bit was trying to form a series of bends and depressions two of which form 90' bends into three orientations while not introducing distortion,  needless to say the first attempt ended in the scrap pile  

Pete

A bit of an update regarding work on the scuttle in the last set of photos I posted I'd started to repair the RH side screen recess after a couple of false starts it's now complete.  originally the whole panel was stamped out in one hit probably hot and by a break press. As I don't have such luxuries I ended up making the repair patch out of 4 separate pieces welded together and then ground to shape.

It looks a fairly simple repair however the indented pressing has to curve upwards and also lay back following the contour of the scuttle to get an idea how it all worked I made a pattern out of some very thin steel cut out of a biscuit tin it was thin enough,  0.8mm to let me to shape it easily but stiff enough the hold the form once made

So this is how it looked when I started this section

That's what is going on here 

Here is the first section in place, welds ground down and awaiting the addition of the curved section, the trial pattern is on the scuttle

The finished 18 gauge section welded in and ground back, some lead work will finish this off after blast cleaning

Next job is to tackle the the vent and drain............ some serious tea drinking needed here I think

Pete

16 hours ago, B series said:

 

In light of your comments, how about it is a regular CMP with  GS body, with No 13 cab, that has been fitted with a windscreen frame assy  from a Gun Portee vehicle.  I guess it might depend on how similar the No 13 and No 43 cabs are in the windscreen / cab mounting area.

B Series.

I fairly certain it's a 43 pattern cab because these were a modified front end construction  being wider to take four men in the cab. A number of these trucks were taken out of service and refitted with GS bodies after the concept of transported A/T guns was went out of fashion in favor of the 17pdr trailed gun, the Bofors mounted variants continued in service however.

Pete

13 hours ago, LarryH57 said:

Its a depressing thought that we don't own our MVs so much as keep them for the next generation!

I take the opposite view I don't think of it as depressing,  I consider it as a part of my rational for spending so much time and money doing what I do.  Without wishing to get too heavy about it all for me my vehicles have never been just diversions or trophies to show off, to me they represent a three dimensional tangible piece of world  history that had a profound effect on people who lived through the period and shaped the world that exists today. 

I do agree with you that we are merely custodians of our vehicles not least because no one person can own history, I also believe with the custodianship  comes a certain responsibility particularly as the generation who's history the vehicles represent have now all but passed, it's are turn now.

Will there be people to continue after us ? a few perhaps,  but here I agree with you in that what I find depressing is how the quickly the world forgets the hard and painful lessons learnt  in the head long rush to a bright new future.

 A much wiser man than me once said 'when humanity forgets it's history it is doomed to repeat the same mistakes'.

Pete

Excellent photos and very interesting introduction,

my Father's CO in the REME was Maj Hugh Macniven an ex Anglo American Oil company  Mechanical engineer he took command of the mobile Field Workshop in North Africa and commanded the unit in Sicily and  Italy leaving in the Autumn of 1944  when he was posted back to the oil fields in Iraq. 

Pete

I think the truck going into the water trough is a No 43 cab Chevrolet or Ford Gun Portee for the 6lb A/T gun the screen could be folded flat to enable the gun to go into action forward.  Having said all that the rear body doesn't look right it shouls be a 7H1 body which was basically a flat platform with tubular hood frame and I can see a tail gate and full sides, perhaps re bodied  as GS at some point by local workshops??

Pete

Additional:  The 43 cab was also used for Bofors gun mounts only on Fords I think designated as F60B's.

Congratulations on a wonderful restoration 

Pete