mtskull

You are a braver man than I am, cranking the engine with a known foreign object somewhere in there, horrible noises or not. The clunk you heard when the engine stopped dead was probably a piston making contact with an inlet valve that had been jammed open by the screw, or maybe the screw becoming trapped between a piston and an open valve. If so, it was exteremely fortunate that it happened while you were turning the engine by hand and not cranking on the starter or, even worse, with the engine running. Sad to say, I fear that your options are either to do whatever is necessary to locate and remove the screw, even if it means taking the head and manifolds off, or playing Russian roulette every time you start the engine. :-(

The quality of your work and attention to detail is just amazing. I bet no Valentine was ever that good, even fresh from the factory!

I knew what I meant to say. Need proper adhesive not just gasket sealer. I've been using some stuff called Tigerseal doesn't do a bad job

Tigerseal: now that's good stuff. Just don't use it on anything you might want to take apart again anytime soon...

Superb work on your resto so far; looking forward to seeing pics when it's finished.

Spotted this on my travels. Couldn't get near enough to see any markings but the wheel, with its twin, appear to be fitted to a trailer axle. Some marks of Spitfire and Sea Fury were fitted with wheels resembling this; any further suggestions?

When they were built at Southall they used what appears to be glaziers putty to seal the joints. I have found several bits of it that were still soft and sticky when I took it apart. Going back together with modern silicone sealer

Don't use silicone, it emits acetic acid as it cures, which will promote corrosion in your nice new metal. Polysulphide is much better.

To put it very simply, radial tyres give superior grip compared to crossplies (particularly when cornering) due to their ability to keep more of the tread in contact with the road, in theory a good thing.

That said, proceed with caution: leaving aside the practicalities of finding radials of a suitable size and profile for older vehicles, there can be a safety issue in that the steering and suspension of some vehicles was not designed to cope with the increased loads imposed by the extra grip. Apart from the possibility that something might break, you could potentially encounter undesirable changes in suspension geometry when steering or braking, as well as an increased tendency to roll over.

My advice would be to leave things as they are, unless you can find someone who has already tried it successfully with your type of vehicle.

Hardly call Ducky a leftover!! That might be his current incarnation, but he has been previously known as Lt Cmdr Ashley Pitt RN (The Great Escape). Flt Lt Carter RAF (Colditz), and a Man from U.N.C.L.E.

Don't forget those who went on to less distinguished things: The actor playing the CO's navigator (the sole survivor at the end if I remember rightly) became Shughie McPhee, the chef in Crossroads; also Johnny Briggs (the pilot killed in the aforementioned crash) who became Mike Baldwin in Coronation Street. 😳

Never mind the trucks, normal procedure with the Ju87 was to release the bombs at around 1500 feet, then the automatic dive recovery system initiated pullout. They would not have got anywhere near such a low altitude, or so close to their own bomb bursts. The French Curtiss Hawk in pursuit is a nice touch, although it is very unlikely that it would have been able to follow a Stuka throughout its dive and pullout manoeuvre.

Been a while since I watched this film and had forgotten just how good it is, at least if you like Mosquitoes and sundry British WW2 vehicles!

WW2 vehicles which include at least two Land Rovers.....

Love the Mosquito action, though.

Very interesting. I can't tell you anything about the pedal cycle but the motorcycle is British made: Triumph model H.

Every detail that can be clearly discerned in the photo is consistent with Chevrolet. Here's a photo of a 1311x3 from a similar angle.

There is some foreshortening in the photograph, but the coachwork looks tall for a standard station wagon. It's a type that lends itself to Shooting-Brake bodywork though.

 

There appears to be a rolled and strapped tent or net obscuring the bonnet line

I thought that was a tree or bush in the background but on closer inspection it appears that you are correct; bonnet etc. are there but obscured.

Some civilian type Chev's were bought locally from Egyptian dealers and converted for Desert use by Army workshops, could this be one of those vehicles?

Certainly the front mudguard and panel immediately in front of the door are consistent with Chevrolets of the period. Intruguingly, the bonnet & radiator appear to be missing.

I would be wary of drawing any conclusions from the bodywork, as this could have been built or modified locally.

perhaps a militarised version of this?

This could be a mixture of another true story :-

 

http://www.edp24.co.uk/news/picture_gallery_tanks_at_titchwell_rusting_relics_of_wartime_norfolk_1_911815

The Titchwell Covenanters certainly exist: I set eyes on them earlier this year. I would be very surprised if there's anything there worth recovering, though.

A query from a certain Mike Harding (who I am sure some of you have heard of):

"Serious question - any motoring experts out there who know whether WW2 Army Bulldozers 1945 (ish) would have used diesel or petrol? I know it seems daft but I need to know for something I'm writing.

....the peculiar arrangement below the piston, I've never seen anything like it elsewhere. It reminds me of the sort of thing you see on two-strokes, although the engine is definitely a four stroke. As I understand it, one of the problems with the Daimler engines used in the very earliest tanks was that they smoked like the devil and the enemy could see them coming from miles away by the plume of exhaust smoke they were puthering out. The Ricardo engine seems to have addressed this by improving the engine breathing, hence the strange quasi-crosshead design, and by improvements to the piston rings to reduce the amount of blow-by.

Sleeve valve engines were inherently smoky anyway, so merely changing to a poppet valved engine would have been likely to have improved matters considerably.....

Having studied a number of cutaway photographs, it appears that the function of the Ricardo crosshead piston was to reduce piston ring leakage (and hence oil-burning), by relieving the piston rings of the side thrust loading associated with conventional engines. With the Ricardo design, the "lower piston" could be made to bear the side thrust loads, allowing the rings in the "upper piston" to be optimised for sealing.

I'm not familiar with the CVRT ignition system but if it has a conventional distributor with contact breaker points then the symptoms are consistent with the condensor being u/s.

Don't assume that all is well on the ignition front just because you get a spark at a plug in the open air; it takes a much greater voltage to jump the gap under compression.

If the spark at a HT lead is weak or absent, check if you get a spark at the master lead. If there's a spark there, you have either a faulty rotor arm or distributor cap.

Hope this is helpful.

Nice photo! I see that one is visible on Google Maps (as are the Titchwell Covenanters).

It appears to have lost the three-pointed star from its radiator cap, nevertheless I am pretty certain that the car is the ubiquitous Mercedes 170V.

Not the first time these have been featured here but this is what the Covenanters on Titchwell beach looked like a couple of days ago.

I can not agree to it being an AEC. The tubular cross section for AEC is too high up the dumb irons and the dumb irons themselves are curved. Those on the original question are squared off dumb irons with that cross member well down.

 

Having compared the "mystery" truck with another photo of a known AEC, I don't see any inconsistency in the areas mentioned, whilst the finer details are all highly consistent between the photos.

Are you 100% sure that every passage in the carb is completely clear? Even a slight restriction would give the symptoms that you describe. I know it is easier said than done but if you can borrow a carb off another bike and try that, then at least you could either eliminate or confirm the carb as the source of the problem.

Just a thought: How about fabricating a new tank out of thin sheet, which would sit inside the original, with its flange sandwiched between the flange of the original tank and the upper tube plate? I understand that the cooling system isn't pressurised, so a dab of silicone should be sufficient to seal where one filler neck sits inside the other and the original radiator cap could still be used. Mild steel would be the easiest material to use, with the added bonus that if it was powder coated then it wouldn't be at risk from dissimilar metals corrosion. It would require a threaded boss for a detatchable top hose connecting pipe but that wouldn't present an insurmountable problem. Worth considering?

Once upon a time, the only problem with stale petrol was that its more volatile constituents would evaporate over a long period of time, possibly making the vehicle reluctant to start.

More recently, ethanol has become an almost universal constituent of petrol and, aside from the effects on older fuel systems, that brings two problems: for a start, it is hygroscopic, i.e. it absorbs water from the atmosphere. Not a great problem as long as it stays absorbed but with variations in temperature the water can separate out and settle to the bottom of the tank; not good. The other problem is that the ethanol itself can also separate out, which not only affects the octane rating of the fuel but also gives rise to the possibility that the fuel system may, under certain circumstances, pick up pure ethanol, which would not burn well in mixtures appropriate to petrol. I suspect that this might explain why the previously mentioned MG Midget would only do 45mph on stale fuel but a Land Rover ran fine on the same fuel: this probably had more to do with the ethanol being mixed back into the petrol during the process of draining and transferring, than different engine characteristics, although an engine in a low state of tune will tend to be more tolerant of low quality fuel.

I run a 1959 BMW bike with a 7.5:1 compression ratio, which runs fine on any old rubbish and will start first or second kick after being left standing for a year with half a gallon in the tank.