David Herbert

If three vehicles were built there will be photos and trial reports on them, probably at Bovington. These '50s projects were thoroughly recorded if you can just find where the records are. I suspect that the three vehicles in the hot weather trials were FV421s - there were a couple of photos of them in BlueBelle's thread (page 9 or 10) about Libia & Tripolitania in the Research section but I think she removed them when she got cross about people pinching her photos without asking. Certainly the FV421s were modified quite considerably as the various trials progressed, some finishing up with virtually an early FV432 power train, though with the B81 engine and Allison auto gearbox in line on the centre line of the vehicle instead of in the LH front corner. The more powerfull engine in turn required a different steering gearbox and stronger, rubber bushed track which were carried over into the prototype FV430s. David

Re reading this again, and not knowing the original text, it occured to me that the sliding doors could fit this description if they were fitted in either side of the roof of the vehicle, and the launcher swing out of the vehicle in an upwards rather than sideways direction, as with FV1620. If the loader/s stood between the engine enclosure and the launch rail , it is possible that someone thought that there was room to reload from there. Can I suggest though that there is a big difference between designing the best OW launch vehicle based on the FV420 series and doing historical research on the actual proposed design. If the FV426 never got beyond a brief specification of what was hoped for, trying to draw anything that is intended to have historical meaning is just speculation. That may well be quite fun but designing something that 'might' be what the FV426 would have looked like if it had ever been designed is about as usefull as designing what, say, a Tiger 4 might have looked like. I may be misunderstanding your original brief which I thought was researching the original 1950's project. If so I apologise - there is no reason why you shouldn't design anything you want. Have fun ! David

Regarding the sketch of the proposed FV426, remember the basic FV420 vehicle that this was to be built on. You can see in the attached photo that the result of the engine and main gearbox being mounted in the middle of the cargo area was that there was an enormous box stretching from the very back of the vehicle to just behind the 'cab'. There was then a short drive shaft to the steering gearbox mounted between the driver and co-driver. There was certainly not room to just move the power plant forward to give a flat load area as you have shown. At the time of this project it was regarded as necessary that combat vehicles of this size be fully amphibious, and this was attempted on other versions of the FV420 series. That would not have been possible without either the launchers being inside the vehicle sides as Clive describes, or a wading screen as used on the FV436 Green Archer radar vehicle. On the Green Archer the step from the top of the cab to the lower level had to be at about 45 degrees to allow the wading screen to be folded. As the Green Archer was mounted on a 430 series base the engine is in the front left corner of the vehicle with the gearbox mounted beside it on the centre line of the vehicle. There was then just room for a crew position between it and the back of the 'cab', rather like the FV434 armoured repair vehicle. As far as I know, no FV426 was actually built, but if I were researching this I would talk to Bovington Tank Museum. David

Ian, I can't see a video either, think it must have been scared away by the comments. (but I do agree with them). David

If you look closely the truck is actually painted with a two colour scheme, rendered in the photo as dark grey/earth and dark blue. I go for '3'. David

That really brings home the scale of our losses. The Germans must have been convinced that they had won the war ! David

You can use any gas combination that will get the parent metal properly red hot. I have used town gas/compressed air, oxy-acetylene and also a carbon arc accessory on a cheap air cooled arc welder with equal success. The key is the correct flux and the parent metal must be clean, free of rust/oxide and paint. David

Chris Wilkinson told me that if he ever had purchaced any Covenantor parts and particularly Meadows flat 12 parts, that he would scrap them as soon as he identified them. There was no market whatsoever for them, military or civilian, so there was no point keeping them. Presumably that would have been a common attitude among the dealers at the time. It might well be that some Meadows flat 12s survived longer than the Covenantors because the Covenantor power train was used in the British copy of the LVT4, known as the Neptune. These were not exactly successful but did stay in service long enough for the last remaining ones to be driven into breaches in the sea defences in the Fens in the 1950's floods, and deliberatly sunk as a barrier. As far as I know they are still there. There was a smaller version of the Meadows flat 12, of 165hp vs 280hp, used in the Tetrarch light tank. This engine was also intended to be used in the FV420 series carriers, which would have given a flat load floor like a Stalwart, but a policy decission was made to use the RR B80 resulting in a big bump in the middle of the load bay which was not exactly helpful and resulted in a complete re design into the FV430 series where the (B81) engine moved into the front LH corner of the hull.

They are only mild steel, which is why they get so mangled. None of the dimensions are absolutely critical so if you can file reasonably accurately you should be able to make one in about 40mins. Try to get the lugs that engage the splines as even as possible so the load is evenly spread and use material that is slightly heavier rather than lighter than original which should make it tougher. Biggest challenge is marking out the shape of the splines, good luck and Happy New Year ! David

MW has a 15cwt load rating, later increased to 1 ton. OX has a 1 1/2 ton load rating. Slightly longer than a MW. OY has a 3 ton load rating. Much longer than a MW They have similar 'styling' and are based on the civilian truck range of the day but chassis and axles get heavier with the extra loads. The engines and gearboxes are identical as are many small parts. There was also a forward control 4x4 3 ton called a QL which again used the same engine / gearbox but not many other bits. All these two letter designations had an extra letter added to indicate the application. Eg: MWD was a GS truck, MWR was a radio truck. Chassis number is stamped on the side of the LH chassis rail above the cab step. Hope this helps, David

I agree, that is a WOT2 body, not Bedford. Very different details. David

The fuel tank brackets flush with the top of the chassis are another MW feature, OX and OY ones are lower by about 40mm. It seems that there has been about 7 inches chopped off the back of the chassis, and of course the towing clevis is not Bedford. No doubt related to its life as a breakdown vehicle. Still an interesting truck though. David

The red X model in the post above has different side plates to those in the photo that Ian_B put up of one of his two rads. That rad has two studs that hold the side plates on at each corner of the core. The red one has four at each top corner and I think three at each bottom corner (allowing for what I think is a broken flange on the NS side plate and no view of the OS one). I would also suggest the possibility that some vehicles would have had non Thornycroft radiators fitted that were 'pattern parts' made localy. It seems that the British army had workshops in France that were capable of manufacturing almost any spare parts that might be in short supply. This must have been an issue in Australia and NZ too. David

This is a bit of a long shot but although I don't think that water jet propulsion for shallow draught vessels had been developed then, could they be the actual water jet nozzles ? The large end could bolt onto the duct with the propeller in it and the water be accelerated by the reduction in cross section to come out of the square end through what could be steerable vanes. The mechanism for moving the vanes could be internal to keep the outside from catching debris, with the mechanism emerging through the round lump on the side of the big round end. Another application if the square end does contain some sort of vanes might be that these are part of a heating or ventilating system, with the vanes directing the air as it comes out. I am not very convinced by either suggestion but can't think of a better one ! Pity we can't pull out some of those new tyres, they are probably in very good condition having been kept in the dark all this time. The salt water will probably not have damaged them at all. They look like 10.50 x 16 to me which is an almost impossible size to find now. Oh well. David

I think that the safety aspect is possible to cover with the aid of common sense and good research. However changing large tires that don't want to come off the rim is unbelieveably hard work without specialist kit. They just suck the strength out of you. I suggest that you do the first one by hand and then take the rest to a commercial tire fitters while you recover. Have fun, David

Those body mount brackets look great. You should have had an extra box type one to keep on your desk to cheer yourself up with. David

I think that the circular feature on the trolley in the image above is actually the turntable that allows the front axle to turn on a vertical axis for steering but not to move in any other direction. It would have been of very simple construction with sliding contact (no rollers or actual bearings) and lubricated by grease occasionally. The apparent different diameters of the front / back wheels is possibly due to the smaller one having gone flat and the bigger one not. My lawn mower tyres are noticably bigger when properly pumped up. I have an ex-MOD trolley with a flat wood top. It is slightly smaller than this one but otherwise very similar construction. Any workshop or warehouse facility would have used these trolleys as fork lift trucks were not universal in those days. Also there is a structure across the top of the image to the right of centre which may well be a torsion bar suspension axle assy from a Brockhouse trailer. These commonly had a refueling tanker body used by the RAF but there were also other bodies on the same chassis. It is possible that the other pneumatic tyred wheels and the section of chassis could be from the same trailer. This research that you are doing is great - the more images that you can share the better ! David

One of the problems with a thread like this one is that people who are unhappy have much more motivation to complain than those that are happy have to compliment. I think that the automatic preview of a thread when you hover the curser over it is a big improvement over the previous version. Also it is a huge improvement that after posting and the screen returning to the thread (with your new contribution showing as the most recent) if you press the back button you go back a level to the list of threads, not to the page where you were writing your post as used to happen - much easier. I think that the biggest thing that I miss is the location of people showing on their posts. As we are a very international forum it is usefull to know that they are on the other side of the world or if English is probably not their first language before commenting on what they have just written. Once again I thank those that keep this forum going for the considerable number of manhours that they put in normaly, quite apart from the vast amount of extra work that the recent change has caused. David

An old trick which I have used very successfully is to remove the spark plug and thread a foot or so of soft rope through the hole. Then turn the engine gently so that the piston pushes the rope against the valve and stops it dropping. When you have done, turn the engine the other way and pull the rope out. This works brilliantly on lesser engines but would get a bit tedious on a Meteor ! Obviously it doesn't work on the exhaust valves of early landrovers or B series engines or any side valve engines. I have also used it to lock the crank on lawnmower and chainsaw engines when undoing the flywheel nut but you need to use enough rope that it goes solid at roughly mid stroke to get the best leverage. David

I think they are 2 axle tractor units with semi trailers. As I see it, some are not quite in line with their trailers. I also don't see them being as big as DTs or Macks. If you were to prove that they were Bedford OXCs I could believe it but I think they are a little larger than that. David

Looks to me that the camo pattern has been mostly sprayed. Not impossible for WW1 but very unlikely I would have thought. Potentially a very nice truck though, will be interesting to see who wants it at that price. David

There is no reason that the casting cannot be cast with its flat back face down. That way the core cannot float away. Alternatively the core could have been made an inch longer at each end so that it is fully retained in the mould. Looking again at the photos of the original castings I am wondering if they all originally had the box shape, but that the two without the 'box' had either been deliberately or accidently modified, maybe by over tightening the through bolt ? David

You deserve it Oh Great One !

It is only when reading this thread that one realises how many individual decissions must have been made in setting up the new HMVF. It seems that everything is customisable and always defaults to the wrong settings ! Well done for battling through ! I do find that there is now much less on a screen at one time. It is not so much that the font size is bigger but that there are much bigger gaps between lines and, well, just about everything. I am using Firefox on a PC and it is a little like browsing on a mobile phone. Others will probably prefer it but I prefer a lot more to be visble at once without scrolling. No, I have not accidentaly changed the screen magnification - all other sites are normal. I am glad the ranks are back - I was just beginning to get somewhere ! David

I found google translate worked well on the site itself. The site is really a forum with individual links to where the actual manuals can be downloaded. There are other similar sites with the same links on them but this one seems to be relatively easy to use and has a huge list of scanned manuals, including quite modern British and American ones! Obviously you need to watch out for unwanted browsers and other crap but just study every new page before clicking 'next'. You will need software to open RAR and Dejavu (probably not spelt like that!) files. These are much better equivilents of PDF and ZIP and work very well producing much smaller file sizes and so faster downloads. This software is easily available as free downloads but again watch for 'extras'. The only problem that I encountered was that a few of the manuals were rather poor scans with sections missing but as they are free one can't moan really. A great resource if you are semi computer literate like me. David