timbo

I can't do any of them! Though bizarrely I did once try knitting - it is flippin hard! Anyway good luck to the Collings Foundation, though I date a petition signed by someone from Yorkshire would make much impact on the town council - lets hope common sense prevails....

You should put aside £200 or so, and get the user manual, parts listing and possibly technical handbook as starters for ten. These will tell you most of what you need to know, and are well worth the investment....

Not always the case sadly - in the 1981 Bessbrook attack 5 soldiers were killed by an IRA landmine under their Saracen. However, if you look around the web there are plenty of examples of Saladins in particular which have been mined, with only minor injuries for crews. If you look at the shape of the Saracen/ Saladin hull, whilst they are flat bottomed, they are at least fairly narrow, and with a bit of a v shape. Certainly much better than say CVRT which replaced them, and which have had to go through numerous uparmouring programmes due to casualties in Afghan. The Scout SV which the MoD have just ordered to replace CVRT is also flat-bottomed, but then at 40 tonnes it is presumably much more heavily armoured!

OM13 should be fine as it seems to come up as an ISO12 equivalent. The important thing is NOT to use brake fluid. I would imagine GL4 is also fine and most people seem to steer clear of GL5 on older kit due to its ability to destroy bronze bushes..

Welcome Tom... Salamander eh ? Cracking vehicle.... Just seen your other post as well...great stuff!!!

Very interesting report! Amazing how only the 81mm mortar comes even close in terms of noise - even the Cent and Chieftain are significantly quieter. Glad to see the Sally is virtually a stealth weapon by comparison. It's also amazing the amount of analysis you can do on earplugs...!

Pavl These should not need hitting with anything to get them together...! It is basically a quill shaft so should be able to move quite freely. When I've removed any of these they have been reasonably loose. The rubber doughnuts should be fine provided the engine crankshaft is aligned with the gearbox input shaft. Provided the alignment is good they should last for years. Tim

Last year I spent ages trying to properly time the J60 in my Sabre (should be 19 degs +/-0 btdc at 2500rpm). It was way off this when I put the timing light on it, but bizarrely seemed to run ok. After a lot of head scratching and faffing about I realised the previous owner (the army!) had refitted the flywheel with the timing mark 5 or 6 degs away from the actual TDC point! Doh! So never take anything for granted when working on old vehicles...though Im sure you all know that anyway.

According to my Saladin technical manual, Richard is as ever correct. It is a Saladin operating strut (guess also Saracen). There is a diagram showing it side on and it looks exactly like the photo....

CET looked tidy as ever John, nice to see you on Sunday... Tim

Matt For a minute there I thought you meant the Greek philosopher....i should have known better! I should put that back on the shelf mate it will come in handy one day you know.... Tim

Depends on what you want it for - if not used on the road the rubber pads serve little or no purpose. I would imagine bush wear/ stretch is a more common cause for track to be condemned. If you look on Cooks website they also offer a version with replaceable pads, but Ive never seen these on a vehicle, and in addition they offer one with an extra thick pad. Whilst £16k+vat is clearly out of the reach of a private owner (well most of them!) it is still actually less than I would have thought... As for trying to rebond new pads onto worn out track, well anything is possible but what is the point if your bushes are nearly worn out anyway.. Actually given that Staman reputedly charge €26000 + vat for their repro sherman chevron track, the £16k doesnt seem so bad after all!!

Pavl Youve got it in one! Tim

Pavl For the turret basket you should get some of the plastic rollers, FV840475, from xmod. You will need a total of 10. Seb Brady had a selection of shonky J60's for sale, if you could squeeze a couple into soemone else's container you might be able to make a good one.... Tim

Stanhope site seems to be the current manufacturing base for Cooks...

Max If you are talking about CVRT I don't know if it would work but it is not really a big deal to change to mineral seals and they are easy enough to get hold of. In my experience it doesn't do to take chances with braking systems! Tim

Im sure Cooks would produce it for you if you stumped up the large amount of cash they would no doubt require. I suspect there is enough track out there to last the private market for a while yet though. Lots of people have spare track stashed away so it does filter out from time to time.

Well enjoy yourself Bob. Kettle will be on should you change your mind!

Truly awful music! But a good vid nonetheless. I wouldnt like to try that in a rough sea! With apologies for thread hijack Bob are you planning on attending YWE at all this weekend? Tim

I dont know if these will come out very well but if it is item 30 on this diagram, then it is FV718974, or 5305-99-136-4725... USI have them but I doubt if they will deal with individuals, but you can always try... Hmmm, these appear to have come in upside down, not sure why, but hopefully you get the idea!

Attached is for Saladin - I thought Saracen was the same but could be wrong...

I put a bungee cord on one of my Sabre's tillers about a month ago to try this out and promptly forgot about it. Remembered it tonight while playing with the Lightweight. The result is a tiller firmer than I have ever known (oo er missus!) so it is either perfectly bled or the caliper is now stuck! Have put the bungee on the other one so will see how that goes. Will be charging batteries and first parading at weekend ahead of ywe so will be able to try it properly then...

Martin Depending how far your parades are if you are adding 20 gallons at a time you may find you have a nearly full tank....this is how I ended up with 300 litres in my tank...! Tim

I have bought a new gauge assembly to fit - it is only really a problem when the tank is more than half full (rare). You could always just replace the glass with a piece of metal - after all how often do you need to do a visual check on your fuel level? If it stops, just stick a jerry can in! The 'glass' actually seems to be some kind of perspex or acetate, which may explain why it softens up over time. If you remove the bag (horrible job), then you might be able to rig something in the empty space, but size would be limited by what you can get through the 'porthole'. Reading your post again however, your bag hasn't actually failed yet, so why go to all this trouble for something that might never happen!?

SGS Engineering look very reasonably priced. Haven't got the website to hand but you should find easily enough if you search for them.