dgrev

Steve Given what you have told us about how surprised you have been at how quick the steel for that tank has rusted, I would be concerned about condensation induced internal rust. PQR-15 or equivalent should mean you never have any problems with rust contamination. The problem I had with my Kettenkrad is that with age and probably vibration, the rust turns into a powder finer than talcum, it then got straight through the fuel filter (like the thing did not exist) and clogged up the carby. Caused me quite a bit of grief. Which is why I used the Aussie equivalent of PQR-15. There is a process involved and you have to be careful not to get it on anything you don't want it on, including you as you will not be rid of it till your skin sheds at that location (I heeded the warnings and took due care). Regards Doug

Robert Thanks for correction. Are you aware of any health concerns with Araldite? Anything containing formaldehyde I would personally avoid. Regards Doug

Tony, You will be fine as long as you don't get the urge to drive it to Singapore! Regards Doug

Years ago (1980s) a fellow tradie warned me to be very careful of Araldite, avoid skin contact, but especially avoid breathing its vapour. I do not know where he got his information from, but he said that one of the components was very nasty. I do know that when the "5 minute" stuff came out, it had a very sharp odour compared to normal Araldite and made me think that it must be worse health wise. I haven't had the need to use either in a long time, so cannot comment about the properties of the current products. IIRC the legend goes that it was developed in order to solve the problem of the Mosquitos de-bonding in the tropics as your British timber glues were not able to handle high heat and humidity. Regards Doug

Rick Only those couple of wheel sets that I mentioned earlier in this thread. They are supposed to have gone to South Australia to a collector there. I have no idea who or where. Could be quite an exercise to get them to the UK even if they were located. Regards Doug

Thanks Gordon. It seems anything is possible now, problem being knowing that the gizmo exists to solve the problem! Regards Doug

Rick Can we have an update please? Has it moved out of the vineyard? What are your intentions for its future? Regards Doug

QL Driver I must be missing something, so please explain: how did you replicate the casting numbers so crisply? Regards Doug

Hello Neil. Your summation pretty much nails it. Either the new owner needs to engage in some PR and admit he got it wrong and will remedy it for next year or not...... Your comment about "take it or leave it" is 3rd or even 4th hand info, but if correct does not auger well for the future. It would be a shame to see it degenerate into just a re-enactor meet combined with a county fair. I really do get the impression that whilst it is still the biggest meet, this is due to a mixture of inertia, loyalty, tradition and nostalgia (I fall into that last category as a previous visitor). But nature abhors a vacuum and at some point one of the other shows may get the "we can out Beltring Beltring" desire and step up. Or maybe not, maybe there is not another Rex out there who wants to take on the hassle, of doing it from a "hobby" outlook that paid its own way: maybe we have seen it at its best. All businesses have their rise, apex and decline. Beltring appears now to be just another business, one with a captive clientelle - but for how long? Time will tell. Regards Doug

Indeed. The old business saw applies: for every complaint there are 10 customers who just walk away and don't come back.

Was there advanced warning saying "pay £10 for loos and bring your own (expletive deleted) loo" If a £10 loo fee is charged, then why would people be expected to then have to supply their own (expletive deleted) loo? It seems indicative from your postings that the loo company was hired, probably lowest bidder, without attention being paid to what was actually being supplied. Lowest price would appear to mean cheapest product version, a lesson that never ceases to be experienced anew in all facets of life. Either address this or ignore it, but to charge a fee and have the attitude indicated in the first line above is a major public relations failure. If it is a loss making business, they why? What is the difference between Rex and his reputed large free list and now?

I was paraphrasing, but you are correct.

If that scenario is correct, then the old saying "arrogance cometh before a fall" springs to mind.

Helicopters? That sounds like a nightmare version of the Beltring of old. I don't remember ever seeing/hearing a favourable comment about the infamous Beltring helicopter.... ;-) Thanks for the link. Regards Doug

Capel? Never heard of it, where/what/when please?

Due to living on the other side of the world, I have only made it to Beltring twice, 1999 and 2000. But reading the various threads about 2017, it would appear that the same problems remain or have returned, I really can't spot any new issues. The general theme seems to be that the show is a victim of its own success. The biggest shows draw the biggest crowds and creates the biggest problems. I do suspect that the "trying to appeal to all" approach is self defeating. I for one would not want to even contemplate herding cats let alone organising Beltring. Given that it is Camping/Jeeps through to Heavy Armour/Mil Re-enactors/Civvy Re-enactors/Stalls/Entertainment/General Public, the old saw "jack of all trades master of none" does spring to mind. What does puzzle me is that it would appear the new owner has not headed the toilet lessons from years past. However, given Ian's posts about the issue with making a profit (or not as the case may be), he may have decided to minimise toilet costs in favour of perhaps entertainment - if so, big mistake. A glance back over the years does not throw up too many "we were bored we want more entertainment" whinges. Both times I attended, the group I was with (MV owners/enthusiasts) mainly did not bother with the entertainment, we were too busy socialising and I must say, only too happy to sit down for a rest and some escape from the crowds after a hard day on the go. My impression is that if the toilet issue was sorted, attendees would entertain themselves. Given the choice, in all likely hood, most attendees would give up quite a few other benefits in order not to have a medieval level of sanitation. Just be thankful you don't get Aussie heat. Port-a-loos, no matter how well serviced, believe me, are no fun when you have air temperatures of 40 deg C (or higher). As to the general trend for everyone to pack up and head off on the Saturday, the same thing happens with our MV meet at Corowa. In Oz, our long distances mean that many attendees have hundreds if not thousands of kilometres of travel to get home. For most that means head off immediately after the swap meet (effectively grab an early lunch on the way out of town) and unless they live in Sydney or Melbourne look to arrive home Sunday arvo - then back to work Monday. The organisers of both events can fight early departure as much as they want, but the reality is that people have to work to support their hobby, get kids back to school etc. I will say, having been to the Oshkosh airshow in the USA many years ago, with attendees back then of X00,000, (now >500,000) temperatures in the 35 to 40 degree Celcius range, copious supplies of ice cold drinks and efficient entry control - I have no recollection of any toilet issues. So it can be done.

I used an Aussie competitor of PQR-15 on my Kettenkrad petrol tank. As you say, the cleaning process is intensive, but not difficult. The hardest part is coming up with suitable bungs for the openings. I am in Outback Oz and the issue I had was that the instructions assume a typical climate with typical humidity. This gives a working time of 15 to 20 minutes for the paint. As our humidity is so low, the paint stayed liquid for nearly an hour! The problem there is you need to keep tumbling the tank until the paint is thickening otherwise it will run to the lowest point. BUT, you need to empty it out before it goes so thick that it will no longer run. To the best of my knowledge, it is resistant to almost anything you are likely to expose it to in everyday life. Also, make sure you wear gloves and are careful with this stuff. If you get it anywhere you don't want it, you have a major problem. As far as skin, I am told it is a case of waiting till that layer of skin sheds. It sticks to everything. Regards Doug

True. But that still does not give him Carte Blanche to over stress. The components in the diesel variant would have been upgraded to absorb the spec torque delivered by that configuration plus a small fudge factor to allow, not spec plus say another 25% continuous. CVRT design is not that robust. Especially the epicyclic final drives!!! Quite a few times I have received phone calls from people who have killed their Ferret gearboxes by driving them as conventional manual gear changes. They then want me to supply them with another gearbox for them to kill - not going to happen. The consistent response I get is that they aren't interested in how the vehicle must be driven, but they want to drive it their way ie. drive it as a normal gearbox. If it was viable to drive it as a normal manual why would the military have gone to all the fuss of training on a pre-selector system? Until people get it through their heads that AFVs are a fine balance of trade offs that mean that the design is right on the limits: they just won't get it. Think of an AFV along the lines of a truck that is loaded to 150% of its designed weight then flogged hard. Which is why AFVs get rebuilt at around 10,000 km or miles, not 1,000,000 miles like your regular semi-trailer would if anyone bothered. CVRT was designed with that power output for a reason. If the designers thought they could get a free extra 25% power they would have done so.

Terry Looking at the amount of smoke and colour coming out says to me that you are over fueling. More diesel than the air capacity of that engine. I suspect that you can wind it back some, get the same power and not be greeny public enemy No1! Keep in mind, that drivetrains are usually a balance between the ability of the various components to handle the torque and power. What concerns me is that by upping the engine, you will now over stress the centrifugal clutch, gearbox or final drives. There usually is not a lot of lee way in AFV designs. They all must obey the armour-firepower-performance triangle. On M113A1 etc Detroit Diesel 6v53 they run smokeless even when at full throttle unless the engine is knackered. Even then, with the heavier variants (eg M577 Command Post and FSV) the auto gearbox is the weak link in the powertrain as far as running on the limits of the power/torque load that it was designed to take. In so much as what started out as a 9 ton vehicle evolved to be around 13 ton before they upgraded everything with different power plant, auto box, drive shafts and final drives in the latter variants. With CVRT I would be particularly wary of the gearbox and final drives - given that they are epicyclic. My suggestion would be that on hard surfaces such as bitumen or concrete roads you don't give it full welly. Likewise leave some unused when doing neutral turns etc. Be gentle. Regards Doug

My Dad had a late 70s Jag which he bought 2nd hand in 1987. When he died it was suffering from coolant usage, not a lot, but it kept needing topping up. A subsequent owner contacted me and quizzed me about any problems we had had with it. He then offered to show me what was wrong (he was an incurable Jag addict). That was how I learnt about the idiocy of Jag not putting a rim on their liners and them having a propensity to drop liners. This one (No6) had dropped just to the point where without the head on you could clearly see the liner was down, but could not actually see into the water jacket. It also had some sort of crash switch that decided one day for no reason that it no longer wanted to play the "I should work because I have not been in a crash" game with the new owner and locked out the engine. Us Aussies tend to put a lot of emphasis on reliability due to our long distances and climate conditions where a breakdown can be a life threatening experience. Owning a car with random and unpredictable defects that can immobilise you is not a sensible decision. The liner drop tendencies and self crashing switch overruled my desire to ever own another Jag. Lovely car, lovely to drive, but stupid engineering hiding away in there. Surely there is another engine that will bolt up in a CVRT? Did Jag use the standarised bolt patterns for bell housing and gearbox or was it some bespoke pattern unique to them? Regards Doug

Phil You can always go around with a paint brush afterwards and touch up any visible bare metal. A bit of use and some dust and nobody will ever notice. Tank wheels are notorious for coming loose, no doubt due to side loads from turning at speed. Given that almost nobody seems to drive a CVRT sedately......... I don't know about CVRT but IIRC M113 wheel nuts are all nyloc to make extra sure they stay done up. So the last thing you want under your wheel nuts is something that can wiggle out and leave the wheels loose. Again I can't speak for CVRT, but do check the specification of the sprocket carrier to drive flange bolts. On M113 these are something special and a use once item. Doubtless there is a history there and a reason they did that. Regards Doug

I second Chris' comment. At the VW meet at Hessich (sp?) in Germany last week there was a VW Combie Ice Cream van that had been restored and the wheel fell off. The owner had painted the underside of the wheel bolts and the hole chamfer in the wheels where the bolts snug down. When the paint failed under dynamic load, the bolts came loose, the chamfer holes wallied out and the wheel went its own way. Embarrassing at best, dangerous at worst. Regards Doug

Musket Good points. I will challenge you on the "no WW1 plane will get a flying certificate" as last I heard, the Shuttleworth Trust in England had predominantly genuine WW1 planes with some reproductions/replicas. How much of the genuine examples structure is actually WW1 manufacture is debateable. I have read recently where Tiger Moths are becoming a real concern due to an until now not appreciated cumulative stress failure mode of the wing timbers. There have been several if not more crashes where the wings simply broke up in mid-air. The until now criteria for assessing airworthiness of timber was predominantly age and visible deterioration based. They appear to be thinking that this is not reliable criteria and that g force etc loading also significantly affects the timber. The problem being there is no satisfactory way of determining this. I suspect it will have to end up being hours of use condemnation such as applies to lots of helicopter components. Or maybe even just X years since it was a tree. So, unless they are de-certified and put in a museum, any flying Tiger Moths will end up having new wings. > Nothing wrong with a copy, or a replica, but each will have to be taken on raw merit. > Always a tricky one. Now we really are getting into the murky area. Earlier in this thread, mention was made that ultimately it is the owner and the buyer who will quantify and qualify just how good a replica or reproduction is and its value. From other sources (such as the Kradrider email list) it is evident there is a huge problem with rebirthed post war vehicles being on sold as WW2. It would appear that certain German vehicles have as high a probability of being fake as 98%. The owners are blissfully unaware until such time as they need spares, order and pay for them and then find they don't fit when they try and install those parts. There then ensues an argument, usually with a German supplier, about the supplier ripping them off. As we all know, most Germans are very "korrekt" but they still have an uphill task to convince someone that their vehicle, despite the Waffenamt stamps and paperwork is really not German or WW2. French M201 jeeps rebirthed as WW 2 jeeps and sold for double their actual value is another favourite of those with no scruples. Then we come to Hetzers. To my knowledge, those that are mobile and appear at shows are actually all Swiss G13s that have been to varying extents altered to look like WW2 Hetzers. Someone with enough money to buy one of these also probably has done their homework and is aware of this fact. I suspect that "any Hetzer is better than no Hetzer" attitude applies. Were full disclosure not made however at time of sale, especially in the USA, it would be a lawyer fest. Personally I would do without the stress of trying to drive an armoured tracked vehicle around with nothing better than 2 letterbox flaps for a field of vision regardless of whether it is of German or Swiss origin. Lastly, OT-810s vis-mod'ed to impersonate SdKfz 251 semi-tracks. Those wishing to sell their franken OT-810s seem to advertise with very varying attachment to the truth. In the main, the ads always seem to start with "SdKfz 251"..... Regards Doug

> a pink P40 :-D , that's awesome. <https://www.google.com.au/search?q=pink+p-40&rlz=1C1GGGE___AU532AU540&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwi-77rm3OvUAhWBwpQKHUPTD4IQsAQIJQ&biw=1680&bih=871> Hopefully the above link works, if it doesn't, type into a search engine of your choice "pink p-40". > In case you haven't seen it, here's the AAAM tiger made from static movie Thanks. > at the same time, none of them offered to pitch in for the $200K it costs to buy a set of repro Tiger 1 tracks o Years ago I was involved in an attempt to get around 10 Aussie LP2 Carrier (Bren Gun Carrier) owners to band together and get some sets of track reproduced. The whole idea was to get sufficient people and thus sufficient quantity that tooling cost and thus final cost would be affordable. It went well until it was time to pony up their deposits. Didn't happen. I learnt a salutary lesson from that. Thus I was quite surprised (pleasantly) to find out that a group in the US (I think) banded together (pun intended) and got a production run of Weasel track (the US light weight WW2 vehicle, not the latter German light AFV) done. > At any rate, looks like we're bound to have at least 2 more made with original parts, the one in Poland and another from > Herr Hoebig, that would bring the number of original vehicles up to 9 I didn't know about him, just had a read. Helps he once owned the legendary Trun scrapyard! Good on him. What has amazed me in the last few years is the dedication applied to bringing back from jigsaw puzzles to fully restored vehicles what was essentially scrap metal. Jacques Littlefield's Panther being a good example. What has also puzzled me is that there are rarer vehicles out there, but because they are not German WW2, those restorations don't happen. Case in point being a pre-WW2 Vickers Medium that was scrapped as being unrestorable, yet was mostly there. In this hobby, beauty is most definitely in the eye of the beholder. It will be very interesting to see what happens with the latest Dorking Covenanter. No easy restoration there. But with a survivor count roughly that of Tiger Is, I really hope it ends up restored and running and hopefully seen at Beltring one day. Regards Doug

If anyone knows David Fletcher's email address now that he is no longer the liberian at Bovvy, ask him. Regards Doug