Richard Farrant

Alan, Great photos, the background details.......whow, High Speed gun tractors, AEC Armd Command vehicles, spotted a Dingo under a sheet, an AEC armoured car, but the most intriguing is the load of what looks like CMP 3 ton trucks with a traversing artillery piece on them, with fold down deck extensions. They look like Polstens although I do not recollect every hearing of a self propelled version.

Was it the Battle of the Somme on 1st July 1916?

I seem to think I have seen this before, and it fits well with your interest in WW1. As for the last question...........only a guess, recorded on a disc perhaps, for the first time, wax cylinders prior to that. A Mars bar.........oh thanks, that is more than I get from guessing Clive's Mystery Objects :cry:

Thanks Clive, The clue was the thin winged Javelin, a cancelled project. I did not recollect this from your articles, but found an article from 1957 issue of Flight magazine, on line. Photo of experimental launcher as well. A good one, keep 'em coming.

The sound of the guns in France during WW1, heard from London?

That building has a travelling gantry crane running along it, so moving hulls / bodies is no problem.

Aiming and firing device for a Vickers Type 891 infantrymans anti tank missile. Cancellation of thin winged Javelin affected the Red Dean missile project.

The last but one on the previous post has a folding cab top half, hinges on the front. These cabs were usually on RAF Leyland 19/H which carried mobile radar scanner equipment.

Image stabilised binos, perhaps?

On the possibility that my initial guess was not correctly worded, trying again; Binos incorporating an image intensifier..........as to when, another guess, mid-1950's ?

night sight binos by any chance?

Peter, I only quoted a thread from the Internal Fire forum, but on thinking about it, the 34cc JAP was a two stroke, which this one is not, so the original poster on that forum had a Swan charger with a different engine. The last poster on there, showed a photo of one identical to Gary's set and must admit it could well be a Villiers engine. That last poster was in the Royal Observer Corps and used them, in their Posts, so could date to early Sixties.

As the transfer box in normal High / 2wd is 1:1 ratio, then it is unlikely to have any effect to a 5 speed box

Turner 5-speed boxes were an option on civilian Bedford TK and coaches. When Bedford ceased making MJ, the Army had a contract with AWD-Bedford for further MJ trucks. These were identical except for a new badge on the front........but, the gearbox and transfer boxes had plates attached with Turner on them. I seem to recall that Turner may have bought the manufacturing rights from Bedford.

Hi Tony, I have had this problem recur on a vehicle in last couple of years. It stands a lot and petrol evaporates from carb and lines due to heat of engine after it last stopped. Hand prime and pressure up to the carb, slacken banjo on carb and it is pressurised. Dry plugs so fuel not getting through. Sometimes giving the carb a tap does the trick. This modern petrol tends to leave a lot of deposits on brass components, also it goes off after some months and ends up more like TVO, ie. will run in a hot engine, but cannot start from cold with it.

Float needle in carb stuck shut?

I restored that TACR1 for Steve S, about 1994. Trying to find a photo of it in bare metal.

Not quite as simple as you explain it, this went on for some time, with lots of trials and testing done. The contamination of the paper air filter.....I recollect a modification being introduced, I said at the time, what idiot would design a breathing system feeding crankcase vapours to the suction side of a paper filter, it was bound to clog as it was mixed up with incoming dust. As for dipstick levels, these were altered when rebuilding the engines, and measure ot the fraction of an inch......this amused me because once an engine is running, oil is splashed and pumped around, so unless the level was grossly too high, it would not be a problem. Another thing, vehicles, especially off road ones, work at all kinds of angles, so another reason why the oil level was a red herring.

Just to put you in the picture on what I am relating about. I was in a large Army workshops at the time and it was a major problem, eventually L/R got to grips with the problem and I believe that every engine in service at the time may have gone back to them, that is why those with 2.5 N/A engines in later years are now reliable, but believe me it has serious at the time.

Mark, Definitely not turbos, I witnessed the problems, they were all on in-service normal aspirated. No turbo 2.5 engines in service at that time. All manner of things were tried by L/R to solve the problem.

Back in late 80's or early 90's, the 90 and 110 engines were failing, pistons picking up, one cylinder in particular. The finer details have now escaped my mind, but it would have caused concern at Solihull. We had an engine rebuild line and these engines went through it with Land Rover engineers watching and checking as they were built, then load tested on a dyno. I think Santana pistons may have been experimented with. I think L/R took responsability and took engines back, not sure, but may have had new blocks. My thoughts at the time was that the block castings might have had insuffucient water around a certain cylinder as it always seemed to be the same one, but I never did get to hear the final verdict.

This has reminded me of one of these radiation checks, many years ago. Someone must have suddenly realised about the guages. The AEC Militant Mk1 lorries were found to have radioactive air pressure guages, so they stuck a yellow warning label over the glass, making it impossible to read the brake pressure.........now what was more dangerous? Another incident was when doing one of these checks in the Instrument shop, the meter read high around the sink. This was because many years before, when this paint was used on meter faces, the personnel used to wash their brushes out in the sink. The drains were all dug up and all spoil was sealed in steel drums and taken away.

for training helicopter pilots............circa 1960's?

It was the normal aspirated 2.5 diesel that caused the trouble, turbos were not fitted to MoD contracts at that time.

except when they are broken down..........then they are in the way :-D