Adrian Barrell

Ahh, but the Mars Bar has shrunk! When I was a lad, it was four feet long and could feed a family for a week......:-D

My Sherman cost $46,467 which was £11,617 approx. In todays money, that is about £420,000 using the GDP deflator. :shocked:

I was assuming we were talking about a Humber Pig and so also assumed (dangerous!) that the exemption being claimed was the 'goods vehicle, pre 1960, used unladen'. Most of the exemptions on the back don't cover a Pig, is this the category people have in mind? I define a goods vehicle as a vehicle designed or adapted for the carriage of goods, actually that is how the ministry define it but that will do! If the Pig has seats in, surely it's not a goods vehicle...? If no seats, it's a van, which is a goods vehicle. Problem solved?

But you have to sign saying you are claiming one of the following, it then gives a short list. If you had to stand up and say why it is exempt, what do you say?

But what exemption are you claiming?

To be exempt, it has to be a goods vehicle. Armoured van!

Point 3 is not quite right. The 'pre-1960, used unladen' exemption is only for goods vehicles over 3500 kg unladen. If it's a breakdown, it's not a goods vehicle.

I think all of this illustrates how easy it is to get the wrong impression over a forum.

Reading through the posts again, it seems to me that Blackpowder44 took offence at any contrary view to his. It is obvious from his first post that he was talking about a vehicle transporter with an MV on being considered an MPV due to it's load. This is simply not so but he wouldn't accept that and I feel his responses were bordering on abusive.

I reckon you've cracked it...:-D

But probably not. I don't believe for one minute the authorities would wear that one. They would surely argue it was an HGV with some display boards stuck on it. Incidentally, you can run a Diamond T with Rogers trailer with no test, free tax and on a cat. B licence provided it is unladen. You can put a Sherman on it with no test, free tax but you need a LGV licence and you are supposed to run under STGO. But that is another discussion/argument!

Fantastic picture! The 9 is the bridge classification indicating the vehicles gross weight. It looks like a Command vehicle, I have seen a picture of a similar hard top in a wartime picture so I wonder if it was an official design or a unit mod? Keep them coming!

According to Simon Dunstan, AEC only built a mobile test bed hull with no turret to prove the mechanical design. They had a hand in the suspension design though that was in essence a modified Horstmann system. Horstmann was with Vickers Armstrong. All the prototypes were built by the ROFs.

A lot of the vehicles running under the plating and testing exemption could not be put on a rolling road, I'm thinking 6x6 trucks with no centre diff. front brakes would be ok but not the rear. The other problem could be knowing the weight codes for the brake test computer as I understand it. Tapley meter?

Crusader did 27 mph at 1500 rpm, it's Liberty engine being governed to 1650 giving a top speed of just under 30 mph. Just by changing the engine to a Meteor gives a top speed of 46mph so to achieve 50, the Meteor must have been running at 2700+. No problem I would imagine especially as this was a specially built engine using Merlin internals. Of course Crusader only weighed 18 tons, Comet being nearly twice the weight.

I don't doubt the origin of the stories, just the facts. The chap who told me on several occasions, quoted me a higher speed everytime and that was only over five years of telling me.... The fact is the Meteor was not built to anything like the quality of the Merlin, in fact the first engines were built from reject Merlin parts and they just will not run at those speeds. If an entire unit had modified their governers to run that fast, the failure rate would have been so high, heads would have rolled. I'm not saying it didn't happen, I wasn't there! I am just scepticle of the speeds quoted. As an example of an old soldiers memory, I know a chap who was in Shermans throughout MW Europe whose memory is fantastic, he has written some notes on his service that make great reading but he keeps complaining my Shermans gun is mounted on it's side.... He will not have it any other way! He insisits they had a vertical sliding breech and no amount of photographic proof will convince him otherwise.

I'm sure they thought the multibank was a marvel of modern engineering and were very envious!:-D I understand Ford (GB) redrew the Merlin for their style of production but otherwise built it as designed. Packard in the US did much the same though they still used British threads IIRC.

With the greatest respect to your father, I have often been told of the governer being disabled and getting 55 mph out of Cromwell but the facts don't add up. The governer in a Meteor is a sprung plunger in the magneto rotors and short of modifying a rotor and swapping it over, there is no way to ''tie up a governer''. Crews would not have been fiddling with mags so unless there was some sort of 'official' understanding in the unit to modify the tanks, it seems unlikely. For a Comet to do 55 mph, the engine would have to run at 4400 rpm, Meteor will throw it's rods long before then and I doubt the tracks would take it either. Nice picture but they are all Comets.

It's OK Alastair, we seem to agree on most things, sometimes it's fun putting forward a different view! :-D 77mm used 17 pr projectiles married to the old 3" 20 cwt AA gun case so performance was less than the 17 pr in AP but HE was no worse as 17 pr used a reduced charge for that. The 17 pr/ 77mm HE round was reportedly not as good as the 75mm, it was certainly not as accurate but I don't know what the charge weights were for each and whether it was accuracy or explosive power that was being commented on. ISTR the 17pr shell used a thicker wall to allow for the greater power and so had a smaller charge. Perhaps later 77mm HE used a dedicated projectile giving a better perfomance but as it was more or less the same calibre as the 75mm, it's hard to see how it could be much better without an improvement in explosive filling. Early 17 pr APDS was, I understand, fairly innacurate somewhat negating it's range advantage.

Mostly true and all addressed by Centurion which entered service soon after. Given that Cromwells battle debut was June 44, Comets early 45 and Centurion trials in May 45, that's a lot of improvement in a short space of time. I wouldn't say it was inferior to a lot of German tanks as only Panther and Tigers 1 and 2 were on a par or 'better'. Mind you, those tanks were between 2 and 3 years old by wars end....

Hmm, Churchill could go places you wouldn't get a Comet and Cromwell was as good off road as Comet. Anything was faster than Churchill..... Worse HE than any of those and as 70% of tank ammo usage was HE it's not a small consideration. Bigger and heavier tank. Comet was essentially a heavy Cromwell and so was closer related than Centurion. Despite what I've written, I actually like Comet! I've had quite a bit to do with various examples over the years. My point are just to show you cannot compare different vehicles too closely as most types come out better than others in one respect or another. Mike, yes that's a Comet. It probably got fed up of going so slowly.......

Ok..... it's the easiest of all the ones I've done!

That's the easiest licence to get legitimately!

Amazing how many pre-production Sumbs there are that were made in 1959. Production starting in 1964...:-D

Jack, please feel free to put it where you wish. If it's going to be a permanent fixture it could do with a bit of additional detail.