RattlesnakeBob

not a clue as to what it really truly is apart from a very loose description of a VW buggy....... but back in the 80s/90s there were lots of things just like that racing about in the Safari class's of the AWDC :-)

Cracking photos..... ........of the Imber wrecks....the 11th one down...... ..given that they (I presume?) are never left on the range with any fuel or explosives in them .......what would /could/possibly have hit that one to blow it apart so comprehensively? also.......... ....what sort of shell has hit the old Comet to 'pepper pot' it like that???? cheers! also....... I think its somewhere in this thread...a while back I posted a few picture of a Chieftain on the edge of the FIBUA village up at the Epynt Range/Sennybridge for those interested in Chietain wrecks.............pretty wrecked mind you.....:-D

welcome ! when I got my old Landrover back on the road I'd forgotten how noisy it was...so suggested to my missus that I could carpet her out and put some soundproofing on the bulkhead etc..she was horrified....." I like it sounding like a tractor" she said

A policeman has to go and tell a woman her husband has been killed in a car accident.... he knocks on the door: "Widow Harris?" he enquires "No ! I'm not a widow!" she replies.... "Wanna bet?" says the policeman. A policeman knocks on the door of a house to tell a husband his wife has been killed in a car accident.....pointing to a photograph of the woman on the mantelpiece the copper asks.. "Is this your wife Sir?".. The chap replies "Yeah thats her" the copper says "...I'm afraid it looks like she's been in a terrible accident Sir" "Yeah I know " says the bloke ......."but she's got a lovely personality"

The Sgt in a barracks has to tell one of the lads his Mother has passed away so he lines all the lads up and shouts "step forward all those with a mother.............not so fast Jenkins..." (shamelessly stolen from Spike Milligan ) another classic of Spikes....... whilst on sentry duty alone in a pillbox surrounded by a minefield on the south coast in the opening months of the war there comes a knock on the door ... ..a little old lady is there enquiring had Gunner Milligan perhaps seen her little dog that had gone missing?... .Spike replies "No I haven't and you shouldn't be here my dear ...this is a restricted military area and there's a minefiield all the way around this pillbox.....now follow the path back to the road and I'll ask the lads to keep their eyes open for your missing doggy"........ Later in the long dark lonely night there is the sound of an explosion from the minefield....... Spike concludes the story thus........... ..it could have been done a little more tactfully.........in the morning our Sgt knocked on the old ladys cottage door with a tail , a leg and a bit of a collar wrapped in newspaper and asked... ....."is this your dog madam?"

Young married lad says to his Dad "Dad I can't abide my mother in law I simpley hate her guts" His Dad replies "Now come on son...you gotta have a better go at it than that....why don't you buy her a present?...that way she'lll start to think a bit more of you and who knows....you could end up really good friends" So the lad goes off to try his Dads advice and a week or so later his Dad rings him up and asks "How did you get on with my idea son?" The lad is absolutely over the moon and sounds 50 times happier ........ "It worked a treat Dad !...honest !....I should have done it months ago" His dad replies "Yeah !!!?? oh thats fantastic news son...what did you buy her?" The Lad says "I bought her a Jaguar" Dad exclaims... "Christamighty son! I didn't mean you to spend that kind of money on her!" The lad goes on........ "No Dad it was worth every penny..she opened the cage to give it a stroke and it ripped her throat out"

seriously wish I'd had a bit of foresight many years ago..... ...round these here parts loads of lads had old motorbikes for tearing around the woods on in the early /mid 70s.........ex post office BSAs Bantams were very favourite along with C15s , Triumphs Tiger Cubs , various Royal Enfields and Francis Barnetts etc... also lots of Lambretta scooters and such were pressed into service.....and.... ......one lad had a Parabike as we knew them as in those days..... as I recall his Dad had brought it home for him from some fella he worked with.. Like everything else, it was ridden into the ground until it finally failed and was then unceremoniously scrapped like all the rest of our bikes ...ah well........opportunities lost etc !

yep yer quite right Andy.....I should have made it a bit clearer ....thats my rubbish English for you ..hahaha! .I didn't mean how long the oil had been in use...what I meant was how old the transformer was........working on the reasoning that older transformers have oil thats a lot older in them which is heavier in PCBS than modern oils..........so I always understood anyways ! hehehe!.. ............and yep yer right.... a super heat furnace is about the only way to deal with it safely.

A fella was talking to his mate and asked .. "did you hear that Dave died the other day?" the other chap replies...."no I didn't know that ! what did he die of?" first fella says. "well I guess smoking killed him..... ................he was crossing the road to buy some fags and got hit by a bus"

I would be very wary of using ex transformer oils as they are usually PCB contaminated ...........especially if the oil has been in use for a long time... ....I don't guess ordinary diesel smoke is very healthy but PCB oil smoke is positively absolutely dangerous and VERY carcenogenic.... even if the oil just gets on your skin it can have dire consequences so be careful with that stuff.....:embarrassed: as to using Kerosene..??? ...you absolutely have to 'cut' it with the right amount of oil to get it back to being the thickness of normal road fuel.... .....the reason being is that Kerosene is only a 28sec oil and burns way way hotter than red diesel or road fuel which is 35sec..........your engine will certainly go like stink on kerosene but the exhaust valves , head and pistons won't last very long and the engine will run a lot hotter than normal doing gawd knows what other damage.......... for anyone interested..... a 'sec' rating is simply arrived at....:-|..... A given amount of fuel is poured onto a known cloth... and the number of seconds in time for a certain amount to soak through the cloth.... designates it's 'sec' rating.... ..the horrible thick black oil that a lot of industrial steam boilers used to run on was 3500sec by the way.....but if you can get that stuff it is very near in it's chemistry to crude oil... it'll need heating to be able to burn ....but as you heat it...nearly all the 'spirits' that are in crude oil are released at various stages of temperature.......SO!!!! BEWARE!!!!.. it's dangerously volatile when hot so be really careful should you try your hand at building a home made refinery!!!!! ..kerosene is a lot thinner than any diesel (red or white...which is exactly the same oil by the way... gas oil or red diesel ...call it what you will.... just has a red dye added to it....) and being thinner therefore burns a lot easier.. as most of you probably know.....ordinary diesel can be quite difficult to light with a match but kerosene will ignite almost as easily as petrol so beware......... PS: Not that I would know anthing about cutting heating fuels etc for use in a road vehicle you understand......it being rather illegal to do so... of course I have never ever partaken of such heinious criminal activities.....oh no.....no! no! no! not ever!.....:cool2:

Honest...as far as I am concerned...???? ..It looks absolutely great and if I had the money I would grab it right now......... .......for and against all of the previous reasons said in this post........ ......its a cracking looking WW2 'type' of Jeep and 99% of 'average Joes' wouldn't know it wasn't a 'proper' one any better than they know their head nor ass nor elbow......:-D........

def agree.....it wasn't a flop...just never properly deployed.. I think the only time it was actually used (from memory of the Wheels and Tracks Mag article many years ago) was as an actual floodlight (possibly on the Rhine crossing operation ?) ...nothing like the job it was capable of doing nor anywhere near what it was designed to do at all....... ....it'd been tested quite thoroughly on a range in Yorkshire as I recall and it proved incredibly effective at hiding troops and armour moving on a field... .......yet another great opportunity lost ! tsk!

A lot of fuel tanks in the past (not so much vehicle ones but more rather bulk fuel tanks that were buried in the ground.... (especially on airfields where the fuel obviously has to be scrupiously clean) ...were often lined with an epoxy paint that was more or less indestructable... ..Over the years I've taken out tanks especially on airfields...that were put in during the war when the airbase was built .....and over 40 years later ...the inside of the tank has been absolutely immaculate.............like standing inside a giant enamelled bath..:-) .......I really don't know who made such paints in those days or if such a coating would stand up to modern fuels?...but .....any current big tank manufacturer could probably point somone in the right direction as they may well still use a modern equivalent of the paint....??? PS: I used to sell these tanks on usually for holding silage effluent which believe it or not, is extremely corrosive and it shrugged that off no problems...

well I guess if yer gonna do it....you may as well do it proper...

hey up to you and welcome

Intrigued mate......under the water park?... ..I presume you worked on/in the gravel pits that were in the area before they landscaped and flooded it all??... .any ideas how come aero parts were buried/dumped there???? always interested in stories of WW2 kit of any sort being buried/stashed/hidden/dug up etc ! cheers!

Cracking old bike mate :cheesy:...very tempted to have something similar I must admit! ........I got a very genuine & totally restored BSA 441 Grand Prix Victor that could be moved on to make room/funds! :-D

mighty impressive the way they chuck it in the mud / sand /stream etc ... then dust her off and it still works....

did Hitler escape the bunker?????? well.............far be it for me to say but....I always thought my maths teacher at school in the early 70s bore more than a passing resemblance to Adolf.... .certainly in his temper anyways.............

yep you're right there.... ......what always annoys me even more than the petty rule enforcing though is this.... if you are (like us) generally 'law and rule abiding' folk.... then you are easier to chase and prosecute.... .I'll stab a guess that we all have Tax and MOTs on our vehicles...our vehicles are all properly registered and they are all (more or less) always kept 'up together and safe' .....and we do at least endeavour to not overload usually too..... ...however...when we occasionally slip up...there is no 'getting away with it' for these very reasons... the 'authorities' know exactly where to chase us to and get their fine because they have a solid and more or less permanent address ....and we being 'normal' folk with a business/family/home to keep going dutifully always 'pay up' and carry on.................. how about if your address was .. "the layby up by the roundabout just off the dual carriageway Officer......for this week anyway............." mind you .. ...the ironic thing is, such folk hardly ever drive rough old vehicles these days.....they make so much more money than a legitimate business ever does due to moving on every couple of weeks and never having to worry about nonsense like O licences and vehicle tax and insurance and income tax etc etc ........ ah well...........gonna look for me a nice big caravan I think...... mind you ..... I'll probably get done for towing over weight then! hahahahahaha !

:cheesy:........'tis a veritable minefield fer sure .........

I must admit I don't know about any kind of exemption for various uses..apart from perhaps if you are a licensed showman????.anyways like I said.. ...maybe things have changed....but All I can say is that back a few years ago...if you fitted a towbar to a vehicle that was 3.5 tonnes gross, then you also had to fit a tacho...there had to one 'fitted and available to use' .you didn't need to actually use the tacho just as long as you didn't have a trailer behind you.. I guess the way the Police saw things was... that even if your trailer was empty when they stopped you....you may be about to go just around the corner and put a full legal load in the van and on the trailer... and then you'd be way above the 3.5 gross limit and into the realms of tacho land.... I stress!.... ..things may well have changed! but I can assure you ..thats how the law stood (at least in the mid 90s) I know there are thousands of vans /pick ups out there with towbars fitted and yes you're probably right ..most of them never ever get pulled......but you only need one smart arse officer who does know the correct 'interpretation and application' of the law and yer knackered.... Like I say.....check it out for yourself and get aware of the current regulations.. it's easy to do.. just find the transport authority and ask for a current pamphlet on the various laws regards non HGVs and towing/etc

I got busy with loads of other things in those days and never saw any follow up to the Panther.. .are there any photos of it about now? PS: there was a very amusing postscript to the M10 Mike Phelps had... the yard he worked in was on a small industrial estate and when he fired her up one day the clutches stuck in and before he could shut her off she went straight through the wall of the adjoining industrial unit belonging to a double glazing business demolishing the corner of the building and a fair part of the display units all set up inside.....it made all the local newsapapers back in the day........:-D

Fair play Ray it's a while since I was a full time driver so things may have changed but I know thats the way they interpretated the law back then....(mid 90s)..... also ....... ...It was my expirience that you should not trust a Police officer to know the law properly nor to apply it properly either.....it's very much worth you knowing the law regarding these things inside out if you're in the business of trucking/haulage or even if you are just shifting the occasional load about for yourself or mates.... .....one mate of mine was in an empty twin wheel transit van towing an empty Ifor Williams twin wheel trailer and although he had tacho apparatus fitted in the van there was no tacho sheet in it.....the fine was around the £300 quid as I recall........... I was taken to court in (I think it was) Droitwich Crown Court once for having no Operators Licence on a 7.5 tonne flat bed..having been stopped on the M5 by motorway police.... The officers were pretty adamant that I was in the deep brown stuff and charged me with the offence....so........ By reading up on the law (Gaunts House in Bristol used to be the place to get the information )....I found that you did not actually need an Operators Licence on an HGV/lorry ... as long as you are NOT carrying goods 'for hire or reward' if you can ( as I did) prove that whatever you have on your lorry is being carried for your own 'personal and private use and not for profit'.....then you do NOT need an O Licence. Also ...as the law stood in those days...as long as a HGV tractor didn't weigh over 7.5 tonnes and you removed the 5th wheel...(very important that bit mind!)...you could drive it around as your family car if you chose to on an ordinary car licence and never bother with an O licence.... get this... .I even got paid compensation for my time and trouble by the court and the Judge very clearly and very frostily told the police prosecutor and the charging officer off in front of everyone there for not knowing the law as well as I did....... like I say...........things may have changed since... but it pays to know your onions!!..........

Rotten luck mate but there may be a bright side...........(you didn't mention Tachos so I'll ask.....) what was the gross allowable designed laden weight of the pick up?.... ....if it was over 3.5 tonnes and you were pulling a load bearing trailer... (...and whether empty or not makes no differance) ....... ....consider yourself very lucky they also didn't do you for having no tacho fitted or being used...... (assuming the truck didn't have one........???) thats a neat one they do like to use on occasion... ..bear in mind that if you drive a vehicle of 3.5 gross tonne weight you have to have a tacho apparatus fitted if you have a towbar .....regardless of if you are towing a trailer or not!!!!.... ...(if you're not actually towing... you don't have to actually have a paper in the tacho but the vehicle does still need a tacho apparatus fitted) not as strange as it sounds you see....... cos........... if you have a towbar on a 3.5 gross tonne vehicle....... they can assume that the vehicle is capable and may well be used to.... carry/tow more than 3.5 tonnes gross weight... ... and then it has to have a tacho by law....whether actually towing a trailer or not.. I know drivers that have been done for this so can assure you it is not 'folklore'.....