David Herbert

I have a J60 distributor with the Lumenition conversion but no sign of a sticker - it must not have been very sticky ! In the photo in post 4 you can see that there is a fuse holder in the coil (facing the top of the photo). This is part of the circuit of the speed limiter that replaced the centrifugal one in the rotor arm of the points system. If the fuse holder is present you have the electronic ignition system. David

Neil, Check out this thread from the 432 forum: http://wwwfv432couk.freeforums.org/temp-gauges-t1623.html It relates to RR K60 engines but the senders are the same as B series which use the same dash as your Militant so electricly they should all work the same way. I think your problem is most likely in the wiring. David

Could it have been a future POW camp? Or as accomodation for allied invasion forces? Or even a dummy instalation to confuse the enemy? David

Just type "decode Land Rover VIN" into Google and there are several sites with explanations of what each letter and number reprisents. The VINs are in the same series as the civilian ones so it tells you quite a bit more than just year built. David

There is a reasion for that - it doesn't work very well ! Hence this thread David

I thought Eager Beavers had standard RL axles ? David

There is only the one hand throttle but it is not impossible that some piece of debris has got in the way of free movement of the linkage. There is also a linkage to the Allison gearbox which could have got interfered with. I expect that you know about checking the govenor oil level (through the little hatch to the left of the driver). This has no bearing on your present problem but is a critical item. David

The civilian ones had black chassis/axles etc when new. I would normally prefer that an ex military vehicle be restored to its original military colours and body style and any more modern 'improvements' be put back to original, but your truck is probably more interesting in its civilian guise and I think that gives you license to do more or less anything. I agree with you about having a light colour roof - maybe even white ? In hot weather the cabs do get a bit warm. Some nice period style signwriting would look good too. David

OK guys, you force me to actualy look in the manuals ! Fan noise: As I said before the main cause of this is backlash in the gear drive combined with an enormous fan that has a very large rotating mass and no provision to damp the surges in the drive as the free play is taken up. As such it is a pretty unsophisticated design (suprise) but seems to keep working anyway. It would certainly be possible to add shims to reduce the backlash in the bevel gears but I suspect that that was not the intention of the designers. There will also be backlash in the gear set before the bevel gears and I don't think it would be possible to do anything about that. If there were a coupling with a lot of rubber in it to cushion the drive it would make a huge difference but it is hard to see how to fit one. There is an overload clutch as part of the fan hub but that is not much help here, it just stops shaft breakage if the fan jams. Main Clutch: As you know this is built up onto the main gearbox and would normaly be removed with the main gearbox. It does not come off as a unit but in lots of bits. It seems that it was not designed to be other than fully engaged or disengaged. If you slip it, the plates get very warm very quickly and warp, making it impossible to disengage. This is really poor design by our standards but they have made a lot of them over many years. It is expected to transmit a great deal of torque and does so at a very basic level. You just need to revise your expectations ! I strongly suspect that the clutch that triggered this thread has one or more plates that have damaged themselves but you will only find out when you get it apart. It is possible that the release mechanism has a problem as it is very unlikely that it has ever been greased and something might have frozen or broken up. As I said before, Good luck ! David

Yes thanks, well done Trevor. David

I was sure that the guy that bought it said so in a post here but I have just gone right through this thread and couldn't find it. I am sure that the buying price was mentioned too (quite reasionable). Maybe he deleted it or it is somewhere else in HMVF. David

The noisy fan drive is virtually normal. If there is nothing actually failed it is caused by excess backlash in the gears. There is provision for setting this but no one ever seems to bother. I was seriously looking at getting a VT55 a couple of years ago and was warned that the clutches will not put up with more than the minimum period disengaged without the residual drag making the plates get hot and warp. That causes more heating and warping untill it is impossible to get it into gear. If yours has suddenly got much worse it is not impossible that a plate has split and the ends have overlapped, removing any clearance that was available. Good luck, David

I would have thought that the worst failure mode would be if a piece came loose and caught a ring when it was part way out. We are talking about quite small pieces I assume, but still big enough to break a ring or to cause trouble if it got wedged between two rings beside the piston. My feeling is that if the pits are smaller diameter than the width of a ring they will do no harm at all. If they are bigger than the width of a ring when measured along the bore, they will allow gas to blow past the ring, but still in quite a small way unless there are a great number at the same height up the bore. The other question is if there are enough of them close together that the remaining good bore is not enough to support the ring or will wear away so fast that the ring can drop into a hole, there would be a real likelyhood of breaking rings as they get caught on the edge of the hole. Of course this engine is never going to be expected to do many miles or run at many RPM, and a little extra oil or petrol consumption just doesn't matter, so I think that the safe option is to use it as it is as long as there are not enough pits together to catch a ring on. I have certainly seen modern engines that ran reasionably well with great gouges in the bore from broken rings or gudgeon pin circlips that had got loose. This will be nothing like as bad and I doubt will get much worse given the likely use that it will get. I have even seen an engine that was described as "running a bit rough" that turned out to have one piston totaly disapeared and the con rod smashed its way through the bore. The water in the oil was the trigger for investigations to start ! David

I think you might be on to something there Andy :tup:: David

Obviously lucky people just happen to work hard at it but that is a b****y good find Gearboxes !!! David

Don't be silly, that is Ivor''s American cousin David

Those are to be fitted to mine ploughs that are towed behind a FV432. An opperator in the back of the 432 slides mines down a shute and the mine layer drops them into the furrow and covers it over. For convenience they have landrover wheels but the cage wheels are fitted as well when in use. The mine ploughs have been apearing from time to time on Ebay & Milweb at quite reasionable prices but it is not something you can play with much. I have never seen them used on a landrover and I think it would be very limiting verging on dangerous to try it. David

The cast numbers that you find on the cylinder block etc are simply casting design numbers and foundry marks to give tracability in case of production problems. The data plate tells you that the engine is a Rolls Royce designed (but in this case made under license by Austin as were 15000, the vast majority, of Champ engines), 'B' series, 4 cylinder, 3.5" bore, Petrol burning, with manifolds/sump/electrics, etc to fit a Champ. The actual engine number is 50527 which I suspect means that this is the 527th Mk5 produced by Austin - can someone confirm this? I have no idea of the long number under the bonnet. You seem to have found a very nice original one. It looks quite sound. The first place they rust is the lower body sides, then the rest seems to just crumble away. I had one 42 years ago that looked worse than yours when I got it. I never could get the brakes to work very well, the master cylinder is particularly badly placed. It is critical that the hubs are kept filled with oil as the tracta joints dont work very well in a mix of water and dirt. Mine was a delight to drive, vastly better than a new landrover of that time, reasionably quick and always did 16 mpg with quite enthusiastic driving. Have fun. David

Remember that most of the people on this forum either own vehicles or have a hands on interest in them. You don't give a location but if you are in the UK there must be a Saladin in preservation within range of you. Anyone restoring a Saladin is going to be a friendly kind of guy (too much hard work for the grumpy ones) so why don't you ask if you can have a good look at a real one. Most owners are only too happy to talk to people with a genuine interest. I have a FV434 if you want to crawl over that... David

I think the steering arm IS the bump stop... On a more serious note, I am suprised that the drag link is not more horisontal, at least at some point in its action. Was this a typical Dennis thing or just this particular chassis design ? I would like to add my voice to those saying what a super job this is. David

Hi Neil, Padlocks: It is relatively easy to buy them all to the same key - makes life much easier. Either buy a propper pack or do what I did and go through about 30 individual ones in a tolerent hardware shop and pick out all the ones with the key that has the same number - you can see it through the packaging. Non starting generator: I have quite a few things with small petrol engines, both 2 & 4 stroke, mostly made in China and brought at insanely low prices. It seems almost routine that the original spark plugs die quite quickly, sometimes in a couple of hours of use. I go to B&Q and buy their standard lawnmower/strimmer one (probably also made in China) and they last forever! I have a small line-up of new looking but non functional original plugs that I have yet to think of a use for. How is the leg ? David

I think mine took about 10 days. David

What a great set of photos. I must admit that having been very kindly given a ride on both your Autocars it is hard to see how you could go fast enough to get severely killed in/on one. However the one in your first two photos describes itself as an 'Express' one ! I suspect that it ran away on the hill and ran up the right bank, tipping it on it's side and decanting the passengers onto the road. Someone has stood up the stools that were presumably being carried for a picnic. Does anyone know what the truck is in photo7 ? It is very heavily built, full forward control with the engine well back and quite a long shaft from the front of the engine to the front of the chassis for the fan drive and starting handle. David

I see that the drawing above shows a left hand drive truck (with the winch drive and forward pull run of the rope on the right). The Keely one is right hand drive (now). The photo of the earth borer shows American style clamp on wheels, not the ten stud bolt on wheels of the Keely one. I wonder where the conversion hubs to fit bolt on wheels came from. They would have been expensive as new parts given the small benifit from using UK wheels. David

Good point Degsy, that would explain the hubs for bolt on wheels though I assume that the present wheels themselves are non original. I tend to think that although this truck seems to have been built with a winch (british type guide pulleys & rollers at the back) there seems no provision for guiding the winch rope round the winch drive chains when you run the rope up the left side of the chassis to pull from the front. I have no idea how the winch was originally driven but I suspect not as it is now (or was it a different winch?). Does anyone have a photo of a standard chassis/cab that shows the winch drive? David