N.O.S.

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..........

'Preservation special' I'm afraid as he lives out doors

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!

great view from the roof.

Stunning pic - your own work CW?

:rofl::rofl:

my shrink sed i should get a girl freind to take my mind off it i sed i cant possiby ime HGV posative

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

But to fit this winch I had to build a power take-off that sat above the transfer gearbox..........The casing is welded from 6mm, 12mm and 38mm plate, fully machined. I used a series II Bridgeport Interact CNC to do the machining.

 

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 still cannot remember what you bought from us, but it was around the time you were restoring the RAF Constructor.

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:

What happened next?

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

and the speed of rotation - almost 3500rpm flat out in 6th:shake:

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:

I think the answer is to always leave something broken, therfore balancing the "CARmic" forces.

Well I certainly haven't fixed mine yet, Vince, so don't blame me!

Good job WLFs have cranes, Mark, lets hope you're back guzzling petrol very soon :thumbsup:

That M1941 thing, Jack - you sure it's not an Elsan with built-in stench pipe?:whistle:

Yes, Mike, I saw it on the cover of a Vintage Commercial magazine and tracked Paul down, but could not persuade him to part with it!

Some while later it went to someone on the south coast, from where Donald Cook in Northumberland acquired it. A lovely truck, ex Mines Rescue with a Leyland 680. My first bout of Scammellitis!

And even more off topic, here is my own Mines Rescue Scammell (Meadows diesel), and I believe the only one left with an intact genset - 2 C6 Rolls in tandem driving through one output shaft to a 400Vdc generator.

Having said that, the Royal Navy had a short wheelbase Mountaineer artic unit, saw service later with Hills of Botley

Thanks for all this information - a very interesting history

P.S. Please post a picture of either A) your assault boat or B) a large ferocious dog (just to keep Catweazle happy)

What can I tell you about PKG888's past? Well sadly not a great deal.

Was with Research and Development, Chertsey in 1955/6 when new on a M.O.S. registration plate.

She was with Aitkens (quarry / plant hire contractor) at Bury St.Edmunds, and I'm certain I saw her in an agricultural contractor's yard near Thaxted either before or after this. In both instances (I have pics of Aitkens yard) she looked equally as sorry as she did when I went to Northumberland to collect her on 18th Dec 1994 (no rush, guys :sweat:).

I'm fairly certain then, that the prop was off all that while, so might even have been demobbed in that state?

PGK's problems weren't quite over, as the services of a Mountaineer were required to extract her from a snug hideaway up a muddy slope to the black top, and then 3 miles up onto the Northumberland moors to the nearest parking space for a low loader.

While we were achieving this, the low loader driver, who was finishing on Xmas Eve (the haulage company were closing down and it was probably his last load), had succeeded in tearing off all air and electic connections whilst uncouplng the swan neck :argh:, so after loading we rushed around that bleak area to eventually find a most helpful tipper operator who let us rummage through his workshop for various odd bits of cables, airline, copper pipe and clips. It was very dark by the time we got on the move.....

I quite like the Basingstoke conspiracy theory :rofl: