RattlesnakeBob

Don't know if it's any help but.. ...there's a fella name of Adrian Moss from Stroud who builds awesome old British bikes into competition machines and he knows his onions especially with old BSAs...He was a great help to me when I was rebuilding my B44 Scrambler. He may be able to shed light on your idea of retro fitting a B40 clutch?? anyways.....worth a call maybe if only for some further advice??? http://www.rickman-motorcycles.com/about-rickman-motorcycles.php PS: As you can see.... he also owns the rights these days to the world famous 'Rickman Motorcycles'

Awesome !! what's the name of this old airfield ?.... I know a brewery is a great clubhouse but come on ..... What could be more appropriate for a MVT clubhouse than a disused ww2 airfield

Now that does sound like my kind of holiday :-D.........especially the last bit :cool2:

You'll need some crusty bread , a tub of nice smelly cheese and a bottle of wine to tempt them into surrendering :cool2:

On my way to Amazon as we speak Sir ! I have the absolute respect for the job done by those chaps .....also... My partners Grandad was a Medic/Stretcher Bearer through Northern Europe after D Day. I sadly never got to meet him but going on the few stories I've heard via her family , those men witnessed absolute horror on a scale we can't even begin to imagine and on more or less every day& night of their 'war' ...there was no 'glory' or 'flag waving' for what they did......just endless months of bitterly sad work.... Respect to them all . PS: oof! only 2 on Amazon at the moment . ..one at 90 quid and t'other at 120 quid!.best I put it on my Xmas wish list and see what I get !

Proper awesome find mate !!!!!!!! I love it when someone manages to turn something up that's been unloved and meadow bound and always find the story's of how vehicles and items are found absolutely fascinating . Can you tell us how you heard about her and tracked her down ??...........So if you would....I for one would love to hear of your detective work in finding and securing her !

What a fantastic trip , everything about it looks incredible , the vehicles , the uniforms, the route ,the history etc ... .....very emotional in parts I would imagine too........ Regarding the GIs bodies found in the woods after the war brings home the incredibly solemn job the Graves Registration fellas did too.......in many respects those boys were heroes too really and often very much overlooked.... ....It can't have been very enjoyable wandering the woods and fields for months after the war .......armed with roughly drawn maps of where chap's had been hastily buried then having the sad job of removing what you could find of them for formal burial......:-(... .In Europe it must have been bad enough... but I've just read 'War in the Wilderness' and the War Graves units are mentioned ....just how they set about wandering the endless trackless wastes of the thick Burmese jungle doing that job can only to be imagined ............but they did.. and thankfully managed to give many missing soldiers a decent burial............

right nice ol' bike that

Awesome thanks !! Whilst over there a few years ago in one of the museums I visited was a grand collection of photos taken from 1946 up through to the late 1950's of the beaches and surrounding villages / lanes etc..........I was very surprised to see just how much kit languished for many years.........it's no wonder some switched on folk over that way built up such impressive collections of vehicles and memorablia , I know if I'd have been around then as a teenager I'd have filled every shed my poor old Dad had..............

looks like some great engineering going on there though (on both!) whatever we may think of the end product

I got 9 :-|

Just remembered something ... many years ago , fitted to a Series One LandRover I saw a heavy duty 'combination' type lock fitted to the handbrake 'knob'..you had to wind in the correct combination to be able to push the knob in to get the handbrake off.. ....it was a properly built sort of thing and couldn't be badgered off as you had to set the proper combination to be able to take the end off it where a bolt was revealed that secured it to the handbrake lever...... Not a clue as to where the fella found it and have never seen one since..anyone else ever seen such a device?? It would certainly stop you rolling her / towing her away ?.............. I can understand it wouldn't stop you clambering underneath and fiddling about with the linkage.. ... but , still worth having I reckon???????

wow ! what a find !

I always do that with my old Landrovers now..... ....easy and cheap and effective.... a length of load chain .. a big padlock......wrap it through the spokes of the wheel and down under and back up from the pedals .. I've always worked on the idea that if someone wants your bike/truck whatever they will get it..... but........the idea is to make it as awkward and time consuming as absolutely possible to get it. .......then hopefully they will look at it and think " aw bugger.it's gonna take ages and be very noisy to cut that lot off " :-) I apply the same idea to all my bikes in their garage.mind you the downside is it takes me half an hour to undo every lock and chain and cable and disk lock etc just to get a bike out for a ride !

Hey Adrian.... the one with '51' painted on the turret and USKUB on the hull ?....is that an Easy 8 ? M4E8??

Yeah those incredible photos have appeared a few times on here before ...they are amazing aren't they?.....hard to imagine a huge field filled with thousands of scrap Jeeps but I guess it was commonplace at that time :-| anyone of them in those photos... in that sort of condition .....would fetch a minimum of £3500 to £4000 over here now..in fact .......in all honesty probably more.... simply because if they were actually in that same condition... folk would pay a hefty premium for them being 'absolutely original and untouched since the war'...

I'd best adjust my previous post to "totally in awe and absolutely insanely and completely jealous" of what can be found in Australia .... ...consider yourself very lucky for any number of reasons to live where you do I reckon mate... just about anything of what you listed would be hunted down like golden hens teeth over here in the UK and would have a whole tribe of fellas lining up to buy with cash aplenty to buy with as well...:embarrassed: I think the 'golden days' of finding ex military stuff in the UK probably peaked around the late 1970s/early 1980s with the real 'finds' being grabbed 10 years or so earlier.. .....Those days are long gone over here though and if you find something good hidden away ( and to be fair ...dedicated folk still do find some gems now and then) then you can usually bet a couple of dozen other very interested fellas will know about it already and also will have started the bidding way above what could be considered 'sensible'.. ...but then again.. .I say that because I'm not in the league of having thousands of pounds to spare...... if I did?.. ..well I guess I'd quite probably sing a different song :cool2:

Cheers ! I know which one it is I want then :-D

Jeez calm down there mate , sit on the porch with a cold one fer a minute... ...I never suggested you were an idiot... I was simply saying (ok.. albeit with tongue in cheek and a small dab of sarcasm) that if you didn't know what was strange about a M38 being advertised as 'built in 1942' then you could well get ripped off by someone selling you something it wasn't.........but never mind. PS 1: You're right ....the Austin Champ was gawd awful compared to the Jeep...and when compared to just about anything else too.(IMHO) PS 2: Your Jeeps look fine to me.and yes ....we're envious of how many there appear to be still lying around Australia waiting to found..

the picture of the 'sandbagged' Sherman is great ..seen various measures taken before to beef up the armour but that one takes the prize I reckon PS: The Sherman at Utah Beach Museum (which I think is the same as one of those pictures outside the Saumur museum??) .what model Sherman is that ? Horizontal springs , big long gun , 'rounded' armour , wider tracks????????

mmmh........ok.......:-)... ..if you follow the link to the 'Car and Classic advert' you will find someone trying to sell an M38 as 'built in 1942'.. .and...it has to be said.....if you don't see anything strange about that ..... I strongly suggest you don't go off to buy yourself a 'wartime Jeep' on your own mate ..who knows what you'll come home with...........

.....an M38 built in 1942 hey ????????? ah well !!!! it's obviously the only M38 ever made in 1942!...built before the factory even thought of building them ! ! there you go see ! ! ! :cool2: .......................... that's why it's so expensive!!!!!

you can bet though as soon as someone says "no way will you find one for that money!" ....a week or so later one'll pop up on eBay or Milweb or maybe even just down the road from you ..so don't give up There does seem to have been a lot appearing over the last 12 months or so on ebay and a few other markets...but as someone said above.....most of them for anything around or under that kinda money will need working on in one way or another.....but ...you never know ! in fact.if Ebay is to be believed ...there's a corker of a M38 just gone for £5100.....

According to a few different websites the CJ3A was built between 1949 and 1952 :-) here's a good one ..http://www.film.queensu.ca/cj3b/Timeline.html ......follow a few links off there cos there are some really good Jeep based websites out there with stacks of obscure info that's all useful if only for impressing folk with little factual detail

Many thanks for the info everyone ... ..Strange isn't it?......all these years after WW2 and we're still bolting extra stuff on the outside of a tank to 'beef up' the armour ...those old Shermans from back in WW2 with extra track links and railway sleepers and sandbags etc lashed to their hulls wouldn't look so out of place today in Afghanistan would they?? .....:-)....... ...and ...eeerrrr :-\........I have to wonder....how much has been spent on research since then :cool2:.??