David Herbert

To reinforce what Dale and Andy have said: SAE30 in the engine, transfer box, automatic gearbox, steering gearbox, fan drive system and road wheel hubs. EP90 in the final drives.. ATF (eg any version of Dextron) in the fuel pump governor Hydraulic oil in the crane of a FV434 Note that the capacity shown in the manual includes the oil cooler heat exchanger and quite a lot of pipes. I doubt if Jon will need an oil cooler on his Pz2 as it is much lighter and he won't be invading Poland (I hope). David

Raymond, I expect that you know that Peter Gray died some time ago and that Pounds yard has virtually been completely cleared. The M10 that Mike Phelps restored was for sale by pounds for £1800 pounds when I first saw it there. When I inquired about buying it the price went up to £2500 which I thought was high but agreed to pay it. When I rang them to agree a date for collection it had risen to £4000 so I told them that I couldn't do business that way and gave up. I believe that Mike paid quite a lot more eventually. Values have gone up a bit since those days ! David

If you make a loop of rope diagonally across each part of the chassis, from one end of a cross member to the opposite end of the next cross member, poke a piece of wood through the middle of the loop and twist the rope by turning the wood, it is possible to exert a huge amount of force. I would expect that a triple loop of 12mm blue polypropylene rope would easily pull the chassis into line. You would probably have to pull two adjacent sections of the chassis in opposite directions at the same time or you will just parallelogram the whole thing but doing it this way is very controllable and is not trying to rip the joints apart but to pull them together so is much safer than a Portapak. David

The brake bands are operating in an oil filled gearbox so any asbestos dust is trapped in the oil and cannot be breathed in, even when you change the oil. I suppose if you burned the waste oil it would be possible for the asbestos to get into the atmosphere so best not to do that ! In the real world you are much more likely to squash yourself playing with 432s so I don't see anyone getting asbestosis from a 432. And I did have a good friend who died from it so I do take it seriously. David

Ahh, but what if it was blown up prior to 1 May, and so ceased to exist from the point of view of the army. Do the bits become bits of Elefant which they never were when they were part of a functioning vehicle ? I think that if rebuilt into a reconstructed vehicle, it would be correct to call it a Ferdinand or Elefant depending on the finished build standard. David

Many years ago a very well respected vehicle enthusiast managed to kill himself by taking a jeep wheel apart while it still had air in it. This is not just another health and safety pointless idea. David

The "A frame thingy" behind the take out engine on the right of the photo is actually part of the engine. It is the stays for the exhaust mufflers that sit in a frame bolted to the top of the diamond shaped engine mounting frame and held up at the back by those two stays. Later installations did away with the mufflers and just had plain pipes to the fishtails in the overhang of the upper hull. I note that the box for the new engine is marked as containing an engine with Scintilla mags rather than Bosch mags which didn't have a booster coil and so the engine wiring was slightly different, though easily changed to suit. David

The figures quoted above give a reasonable picture of general WW2 tank fuel consumptions but must be interpreted. Shermans, Grants and Valentines were built with both petrol and diesel engines. The diesel versions gave at least 50% better fuel consumption and were quicker. A tank has to work very much harder to move on soft or seriously broken ground or on gradients so its fuel consumption is very much higher in these conditions than on firm level ground. This will result in about four times the consumption that can be obtained on a road. Covenantor and Stuart will do rather better than the others because they are much lighter but all the others if they have petrol engines will average about 0.5 MPG in real life. Please remember that the official testing was not done in particularly scientific conditions and should be read with the statement of the conditions at the time of the test because that makes a big difference. David

Hi Louie, Crossley made many types of vehicle over many years. It would help if you could narrow the search down a bit by telling us what vehicle you have. Also it would help if you put your location in your personal details so that it is displayed under your user name so that people can see if you are local to them or not. This forum has people from all over the world which is a big place. In general people can't be bothered to search back through someones previous posts to see these details so adding them greatly increases the chance of people helping, which they will if they can but you need to make it easy for them if you can. David

Try www.sealsdirect.co.uk They offer a fair selection and have their catalogue on line. David

It was quite common for them to be changed to twin rear wheels in civilian life. David

John, I think that that is an excellent idea, it is certainly very hard to see that it could do any harm. The worst that could happen is that the oil oozes out and then you are no worse off than the standard arrangement. David

I was shown a photo once of a low garden 'fence' made from overlapping carrier sprockets, quite a number of them. It was allegedly well know to all the carrier owners in the area and as the guy was not interested in selling his fence, it got a bit shorter from time to time. I wonder what would be a fair swap for that carrier track ? David

Quite right ! Thanks Adrian David

This is an M4 75mm Sherman fitted from new with vertical volute spring suspension and built post August 1943. It is what is known as an "ultimate series" tank as it has the bigger front hatches that don't intrude into the less sloped glassis plate, the final version of the radial engine installation with the oil filler cap in the rear section of engine deck, no cutout in the lower edge of the upper rear armour. Inside the wiring, seats and most stowage are very different to earlier Shermans. The turret is the correct "high bustle" late 75mm one with the correct vision cupola but the gun mantlet and turret front are from a much earlier Sherman. The mantlet should be the full width of the turret front which should have extra slots in it for the mounting bolts of the M34A1 mount. It is possible that it was originally a 105mm howitzer tank as these had basically the same turret but with a different front, gun and mantlet but only by looking at the internal ammunition stowage would one know. David

It's an Austin K3 but I don't know what 'ZC' means but it might relate to the original rear body, of which there were many types. There were 17,097 built between 1939 and mid 1945. Early ones had 34x7 tyres (later called 7.00-20) with twin rears. Later trucks were on 10.50-16 singles all round. Engine was a 60 hp six cylinder. There are very few left and in the UK that would be regarded as a good cab, ours have rusted very badly. Good luck with it. David

I have one similar to the green one in the post above but of considerable age, painted red oxide and measuring 7 1/4" extreme length (which is rather shorter than the green one I think). It does not have the rubber nozzle. I have always assumed it was ex-mod as it came from a surplus dealer but there are no markings on it. It has a vent pipe that comes out of the base of the tube part and curves over the part that seals to the can. If the green one above had one it would be just visible at the very top of the photo. David PS, I have had mine for about 30 years and it was far from new when I got it.

Oh that is depressing 😫. At least you have a better crank. David

I think that all your points are good and that it is very acceptable to restore any vehicle to as close as possible to how it was at some point in its history. The problem comes when making it into something that it never was, or even more so if making it into something that it could never have been because a key 'improvement' (to use a silly example - air bag suspension) had not been developed then. To restore a Sherman to exactly how it came out of the factory is very difficult now, regardless of your budget, because some parts are simply not available and re-manufacturing them not really practical, so a degree of compromise is almost inevitable. Wherever you draw the line will draw criticism, mostly from people who don't restore things themselves. David

Odd chaps, women ! David

Yes, Centurion. And very heavy ! David

Could be caused by people putting EP90 oil in there. It eats bronze / brass even without a load. David

In the 20s and 30s the Germans were building steam locomotives with Whitworth threads but metric head sizes. David

And you have operated her for longer than the army did ! David

As it says on the parts list, this is a special thread, invented by Leyland for that particular application. I used to work for Fodens and they invented their own threads for that kind of thing if there was no standard one that seemed right. Don't mess the nut up ! David PS, It couldn't possibly be UNF as that wasn't standardised until the early 50s. Before that the USA used American Standard threads from which UNF and UNC were developed but not all sizes interchange (like 1" UNF is 12tpi vs. 1"AF which is 14tpi).