timbo

Wow, nice pic..!

Im with Chris it sounds electrical, although it is always worth cleaning/ changing the fuel filter if you haven't done so recently... Cheers Tim

A couple of pics of the engine in situ. All the bolts are successfully located, although require final tightening. One thing I forgot to mention is the spacer washers. Mine had one on each side, which sit on the front engine mount. As I have refitted the original engine mount, in it's original location, and have not disturbed the gearbox I figure this should be fine. A visual check seems to show the boltholes in the driveshaft line up fine. This is not a great pic, but this is the captive nut which is an interference fit in the engine mount, assisted by a knurled ring machined into it. As I said the later style comes with a flange to prevent it pulling out. A quick word about alignment. There are two things to think about here. First the gearbox must be aligned so that it is parallel to the bulkhead. This ensures a straight run for the fan belt. If your CVRT came with a gearbox still in place, you shouldn't need to worry about this unless you remove it. As I understand it alignment is accomplished with shims. You then need to align the centre of the gearbox input shaft with the centre of the crankshaft before fitting the drive shaft. This is simply a case of measuring from the floor and side wall of the engine bay at both the gearbox and engine ends. If you need to raise the engine you put another spacer washer on top of the front engine mount. If it needs to move left or right you slot the mounting holes for the engine mount itself. Quite an early mod was the replacement of the original driveshaft, which had a universal joint simply bolted to the engine and gearbox at each end. This was replaced with a carden shaft, at each end of which is a resilient rubber mount (technically known as a donut!).. If you have a Belgian vehicle it will probably have the original UJ, easily replaced with a mod kit from Marcus Glenn. Donuts are also readily available, but if you get the alignment right they should last a very long time...

Transport sorted today Stu. Engine went into the Sabre at the weekend - now just have a couple of days grunt work to get it running and back together..!

Jack Im not sure this tells us anything we didnt already know does it? I have the utmost respect for the guys commitment to his dream but for a long time it has felt increasingly like a shaggy dog story. From Wargaming's perspective they have spent a lot of money so this lecture business just gives them a bit more publicity which is what it is all about for them, whether the spits actually exist or not...(now watch them get found next week! ) Cheers Timbo

Hello Alien Well primarily I meant the civvies - looking at period photos it was clearly VERY unfashionable to have short hair in the early 70's and must have been a dead giveaway for squaddies in civvies. It does look like they have made some effort but all the hairdos just look too tidy to my mind! Cheers Timbo

Great stuff Bruce, keep going - remember every job done, no matter how small is one job less to do! I find my motivation comes in fits and starts, but sometimes you can get on a roll if you get a bit of momentum up... The hardest bit in my experience is the point where you end up with a big pile of grubby bits, the temptation to sell the lot can be quite high! I find that once a few things are cleaned and painted, and you can start putting them back together it's a great feeling. It would be great to have the discipline to refurb everything first and be able to just go to a shelf of nice clean bits, but sometimes you just need to feel youve made a bit of progress! Cheers Tim

Will post pics tomorrow but the main news is the engine is in!!!! Press ganged the father in law into working the crane for me and she went in with only a modicum of thrutching. Only problem I had was, as usual, one of the captive nuts in the front engine mount popped out on tightening.. The later ones have a flange underneath to stop this happening and as the recon engine mount has these i lifted the engine up again, bashed the new one out and popped it in - worked perfectly. All four bolts are now in and just require final tightening to the usual torque setting, yes you guessed it - bl**dy tight! I now have 3 weeks to get it running and moved which should be OK but lots of other things to do too unfortunately. I dont have any spare gearbox hoses at the moment but will have a think about where to get some to use as a pattern. Cheers Timbo

I also picked this up this week. It will save me refurbishing the rather scabby existing seat which should save me at least a day..!

Also finished fitting the drivers floor. The rear mountings holes had long since given up the ghost so just to stop the floor pan flapping about I filled the holes with kwiksteel, then drilled and tapped them, then gave it a final hoover and wipe, refitted the floor, pedals, and tillers..

Final job was to swap the earth strap, again these don't seem to come in the crate. I also took the plugs out, popped a bit of oil down the bores and very gently turned it over to make sure no valves were stuck. They weren't but this engine was quite well sealed so that helps. This is the old engine by the way. At least two hours was added to all this because everything I swapped over was so crudded up and took ages to clean properly. Finally I hooked up the engine and started getting it ready to lift in (hopefully tomorrow!)..

Next job was to swap the coolant pipe for the header tank... Then start fitting the oil pipes to the heat exchanger. This has four pipes and is used to cool both the engine oil and the gearbox oil. This is the first pipe being fitted, fresh out of the packet... When you get a recon engine it will usually come with the two oil pipes that carry the engine oil, but not the gearbox pipes, which have to be swapped from the old engine. Annoyingly the second new pipe that came with this engine had the fittings set at the wrong angle so I had to swap this one as well from the takeout. Being liberally coated in oil, grease and crud, I gave them a good jetwash before fitting. How tight do you do these babies up? Answer=flippin tight!! It would be very annoying to have to lift the engine again once it has all gone in... Bear in mind if you are fitting an engine into a vehicle that has been stripped you will need to buy the gearbox pipes separately (that go through the bulkhead)...

Some good progress made today. The lump is now all ready to go back in. First job today was to swap the fire pipes from the old engine. They look like this.. And attach to the coil bracket... And the Kigass blanking thingy... This is where the pipe from the extinguisher screws into. When the external extinguisher trigger is pulled it discharges through the nozzles and hopefully puts out the fire.!

Welcome Richard. Cvrt eh...? Good man! I got the cvrt first then did the test....thankfully I passed!

http://hmvf.co.uk/forumvb/showthread.php?37252-RIP-Private-Gary-Barlow I wonder if the ending will mirror Gary Barlows tragic story? 40 years this year. Will leave those more knowledgeable to comment on the vehicles and uniforms but my one observation is that the hair should be longer!

Went to the shed but the bl**dy landlord still hasnt sorted the power out so didnt get much done after all. Should have gone for beer!

Some more minor progress to report, with the drivers floor straightened, blasted and given a coat of silver mist. It still has a few dings but this is a part of the vehicle that has a pretty hard life so I dont see the point in going too mad with it. I used my home blasting pot and compressor, which is OK for smaller components but a bit slow for anything bigger than this. I use plenty of polythene sheets and put the part to be blasted into a large box. In this way I find I can recycle most of the sand.. I also cleaned up the pedals. I painted the throttle pedal, mainly because I went a bid mad with the angle grinder and it looked too shiny...! I also had another go at the left hand steering master cylinder and am now quite happy with this. The left hand cylinder connects to the right hand steering caliper so has a longer pipe run. I suspect by leaving it for a few days the last bubbles worked through the system. It now feels as firm as the right hand tiller, so I'm pretty happy with that. If I'm going to hit my deadline the lump absolutely has to go in this weekend so watch this space for more progress soon..!

You guys crack me up!!! I realised that when talking about a grinding disc you probably meant this type of grease pot... But I have this type of grease pot...!! So anyway I thought how hard can this be....extend plunger, put end of gun into grease and withdraw plunger... Within two minutes I was (as usual) like a drunkard wrestling with a bucket of live eels...!! Grease everywhere, as per usual, masses of rags needed to clean up, as per usual, and the grease gun now scattered around the garage in its component parts until I can be bothered to sort it out..!!! Hope I dont need to tension my tracks anytime soon (though I do have a half full olly pump so I will stick to that for the moment!)... Cheers Timbo

Now Im torn. I was going to get down the unit and do some more work on the Sabre in the sunshine, since Im rapidly running out of time to get it finished. However, the temptation to kick off my shoes, put my feet up, crack open a cold beer or two and watch this is almost overhwelming..! I.....must.....resist......!

This made me chuckle - I will have to try this as, like Paul, I only seem to be able to make an almighty mess!

The barrel is fine. If that is the only bit that can be seen, I would go for it. It beats paying thousands for a deac (if you can find one!)..

The MM gimpy is a bit rough but basically ok from a distance, I have mine on top of my spartan with an ammo belt and it looks fine until you're close up. It is also cheap and was delivered very quickly and efficiently.. Pays yer money and takes yer choice...!

And on a slightly more serious note I think it is 'By Tank into Normandy' that describes how the chaplain took it upon himself to attempt the recovery of remains from brewed tanks. A job which must surely have defied description!

I am reminded of the AFV Society's camouflaged lawnmower, parked up in a row of vehicles. 'It was used by the SAS to mow the long grass ahead of snipers'. And yes some people did believe it!!!

11th Armoured Division if I'm not mistaken. Presume that's not the chaplain as carrying a sidearm!