N.O.S.

There's something special about a bare Matador chassis with original cab and timber crane - they just look right for the job! Is that the one still used occasionally by Garnham?

That is not "Commer cabbed Fordson", it is Rosebay Willowherb. Oh, by the way, there is an interesting old mv behind it :whistle:

I wouldn't want to get stopped for too long at traffic lights in that!!

Time to spill the beans Mark- what make/model of diesel do you plan to install in the old girl?

Experts needed here, but until they arrive, that definitely ain't a Matador axle or springs. The transfer box is puzzling me as is the hub.

You're right there, Tony. As with going down a snowy hill with planks fastened to your feet, if you keep looking at the tree, you will end up hitting it. Perhaps that's the thing - people find the mvs so fascinating they can't take their eyes off them :-D

Confirmed as a permanent resident, the grub truck for all events held at the circuit. Can get more info if anyone is desperate, failing that go and enjoy the vintage racing and a burger/doughnut one day!

It has been around for some years now, I've seen it since 2004. All the Goodwood period sets and equipment are stored in a hangar, some only come out once a year for the Revival weekend. I'll ask a friend who is involved in the organisation about this truck, I suspect it might be a Goodwood "resident", and no chance of being scrapped!

Great pics, Mike. I made quite a few visits ("Hello, Master") to the yard, from around the same time and also after Joey's demise. Sadly I took no pictures, but always enoyed the experience of just 'wandering and wondering'. The front wings from an exeedingly well-buried Martian donated the 'top rear outer' double radius for my Constructor front wings (I had to wait a long while for these, as they were not removable without the hot spanner and someone doing the same thing had caused a devastating fire a while before :shake: and it was a fair while before they got around to clearing that area). I had a fair bit of good s/h steel out of there during the last days, the Albions alongside the entrance road were amongst the last to depart for fundries new, the axles were being carefully dissected for the bronze diff worms.

On the other hand........... Just imagine a dear old couple out for their peaceful weekend drive down quiet country lanes, when suddenly 15 tons of what they had mistakenly taken for hedgerow leaps acoss the blacktop straight at them :shake:

Looks a great spot - and you have the chance to plan a full-length service pit in the lounge, a steam cleaning bay in the en-suite and lubrication bay in the utlility. And don't forget enough garage space for visitors. Nothing short of paradise, really..........

Well I have to say it certainly looks the part - very useful extra dry accommodation too!

Forcful has a very useful tilt and frame- was this a typical "in service" adaptation or a 'preservation special'?

I had supper last night with the man who, it turns out, first bought MTB102 for preservation, in 1970. It was then still a houseboat, he bought it for the local sea scouts who did a lot of the initial conversion back to original spec., and also donated a cut for mooring. Good on him, I say! As Tugger said, it was in The Eagle has landed, disguised as a German boat. Nigel said the film company paid for and installed a pair of new engines in her as the fee. Eventually the sea scouts tired of the never ending repair work and she was sold. She was on the slipway outside the shed at the Lowestoft yard where the dreaded fire occured, but didn't even get a blister!

Stunning pic - your own work CW?

:rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl::rofl:You should stick to injections of the "diesel" kind :-D

I know it's a little late, but I had meant to comment before on your fabrication and machining skills. A great bit of engineering, Mike! Do you, like me, have a hankering for the good old (?) days of make-do and mend, and using a bit of creativity - making stuff off the scrapheap? They sadly seem to be long gone. The philosophy now seems to be - if you cannot aford to buy/lease the latest bit of machinery to do a job, why are you bothering to do it in the first place? :-( Oh well.

An interesting idea, Tim. I recently spent a couple of days at the International Machine Tool Exhibition (don't have much involvment in m/c tools but taking wife's elderly uncle from Oz around - he runs a precision m/c business, how about batches of miniature lathes to put the radius on the edges of contact lenses, or re-profiling Mazda Wankel engine cases). Anyway, m/c tools are going multi-axis and multi live head, and the demonstration m/cs were busy profiling all manner of complex shapes out of blocks of recycled coke cans. I was completely mesmerised by it all, and spent ages watching the processes. It just seemd bizarre to generate so much swarf! The technique seems to have been given a boost with the Aero industry moving away from forgings and castings to machining from solid block as the best way to ensure consistent metallurgical quality. The point is although the block of ali is £££, so is the value of the swarf, so you only pay for the ali left in the component and the cost of recycling the swarf into solid again. The other fascinating side being the computer software which works out the machining sequence - what most of us would regard as impossible is someone else's bread and butter work, like Mark's mate? I for one would be very interested to see 'machining from solid' or 'casting and final machining' is the cheapest solution.

Nelson Green's yard at Bourne by any chance? One came out of there for restoration 2 years back.

I know, it's driving me mad! Here is an interesting marriage between a Constructor and a Ward laFrance. It was offered for sale up north a year or so ago, does anyone have any info on its whereabouts? I think it was 680 fitted.

6 X 6, the rear body is "compartmentalised" but not quite as much as the steel body. I'll get a pic when I remove the tarpaulins in the next week or so. And yes the wheel carrier is recessed as per MOS vehicles. The ballast compartment is a bit longer than that in the steel body I believe. The steel top was added by the research squad together with lots of switches and wiring - may have been a cut-down Matador top? - now removed. The previous owner had obtained the limited service info from Army Transport Museum, Beverley, and also (if my memory is correct) a copy of the original Scammell sales order and build sheet from Leyland. But it might be worth giving them another try perhaps? This was one of two supplied against an orignal order for four - the order for the other two, which had been cancelled, was subsequently reinstated and they went to Christmas Island - see the posts about Andy Fowler's dad's Constructor used on the H bomb tests. Mike - just remembered I did end up with the ground anchor and mountings from Paul Badger's truck

abn deuce, the whole vehicle goes 17 1/2 Tons (39,200lbs to you, which is 19.6 US tons :???). I'm sure the chassis was 10 tonnes on the weighbridge, so skid unit would be about 7 1/2 Tons. The weight is not a problem, and the trailer must have been 26 Tons - not a problem for a Mountaineer. The trouble is the high centre of gravity, which coupled with the centre-pivot transverse front spring (common to Pioneer, Explorer, Constructor as well), means there is very little latteral stability. But it does say max. speed 12 mph on the truck! That one too was fun loading onto a slightly narrower stepframe trailer - the rear left inside tyre was in fact flat (well spotted!) and had chopped the valve stem off, so the truck would not run in a straight line :argh: Andy - I reckon the dodgems would be a bit too quick with 400 volts going to them :-D

Well I hate to think of it going over backwards, but the rear bogie pivot point is getting pretty close to the centre of gravity :shake: Hope I'm wrong and it clmbs over the bank :sweat:

The driver jumped out with a grease gun to lubricate the rear prop U/Js? :whistle:

And possibly more than that, Mike - I know a certain gentleman who (in the forces) used to disable the governor on the magneto to get considerably more speed - 60mph I believe :shake::shake::shake: