Richard Farrant

The first priority was painting the vehicles, when they left the sprayshop, they went to Inspections, who would then find repairs needing doing. I remember changing an engine in a 1 tonne ambulance (never know as 101 in army) and the paint was still sticky! May have mentioned this before, but late one afternoon someone posed a problem, the Intelligence had Ser.3 LWB Rovers with normal canvas tilt, and they brought in some new full length Brownchurch roofracks. Fit them was the instruction, but no holes in the canopy, we came up with some supports that fitted over the body sides but allowed canopy to stay in position. They were ready to go next morning....the ship was waiting. All sorts of strange things were done.

We had convoys of vehicles coming through the workshops for painting at that time. The worst was a load of coaches that arrived from Germany, to be painted and with red crosses, for a Gurkha Transport unit. Masking all the windows, before they went to the sprayshop

You should send that to Land Rover for their new slogan

14mm and it is 3/8" reach

I have a feeling that one belonged to Richard Beddall's brother (?), likely the QL's are Richard's. Later the Rover went to a chap I used to see, from around Church Crookham.

Talking about Aus, I am just listening to the news on ABC Melbourne on-line, we don't have anything to moan about thats for sure. :-(

Australian Army :-D

Just noticed that this sidebar requirement is for vehicles first used after 1st April 1984, so those MJ 's that do not have bars, may be pre-84, also don't forget the MK, which came out in early 70's, a lot of people are not aware of the difference between the two and possible refer to them all as MJ ( or vice versa).

:n00b: it was the 29th June that Degsy told you to go through the battery cables and their connections :-(........think of all the outings you missed.

and...................what did you do, fit a new battery?

Hi Topdog, An old work colleague was in one of these units in Kent. He told me quite a bit. The hides were never documented and they were built by Royal Engineers from other parts of the country to the location. It is only word of mouth from the auxilliary personnel that locations are know. A lot were destroyed after the war. There is a website that shows some as they are now, search "auxiliary" on this link : www.subbrit.org.uk He lent me a book that was published in 1968, called The Last ditch, by David Lampe, ISBN 0304925195. There were photos of members and a lot of personal recollections from around the country.

Over 20 years ago, the army was trying to introduce microfische instead of "hard copy" EMER's and AESP's. There is nothing better than having the manual in front of you when working on some piece of equipment. There were hand held viewers available to take out in the field, but they were rather pathetic. Copies could be printed off microfische, but not as good as hard copy manuals. Like Clive says, a lot of EMER's, etc. were issued in a photocopy form with rather vague photo illustrations, as he has found out. The reason that they wanted to introduce microfische was that it made amending, a cheaper and more convenient method. Instead of sending out a pile of new pages to replace those being amended, a replacement fische would be produced and the preceding one would be destroyed. Sounds simple, but not practical at the sharp end.

Hello Tony, Good to see you on here, no doubt you will have a lot of photos from the past which would be of interest. Look forward to catching up again. regards, Richard

Looks like it might be one of those weird and wonderful feasabilty projects that were done at FVRDE Chertsey (later MVEE and RARDE). I know of a Carrier that was converted to hydraulic steering by that place, it may not have been intended for that actual model of vehicle, but was for testing the principle of the design. I visited many years ago, and there was a Cromwell or Comet in there being used for a test bed.

agreed !

Very nice work there, what condition was it in before you started?

What about the Antipodies ?

looks like Mr. S

What about it? :confused:

Whats the prize, a rough ride on a Land Rover roofrack across Africa? :-D

Wing mirrors ? Truck cab rear windows? Civvy rear bumperettes ( grab handles on roof) ?

Re. the 2CV........if it is who I think it is, it sounds like Mike, from Bristol area.

Crooks were advertising the crated Carrier for years, along with some other WW2 vehicles, this was before they moved premises. There is a chap in Sussex who owns what has a crated Carrier, I have seen it on the road, still in what original paint is left with the maple leaf transfers on the side. One run we did, his coil packed up, other than that, it ran well.

Flav, Further to our conversation, I have just gone through this VOSA website that Lee has linked to, go to page 11 onwards, on the HGV section and after going through the exemptions, it states several times, that the list is "not exhaustive, but covers the vehicles likely to be encountered", which leads me to come to a conclusion that there are more exemptions and a "cross country / all terrain 4x4 vehicle" could be one of them, certain forestry vehicles are mentioned.

Hi Adrian, Thats the chap I was thinking of, David ......forget his surname. The poster did say "in the 80's" so it fits the bill.