goanna

Here's a nice one.. the CS8 ..not the girl !

Why didn't you buy it Hanno ? Looks to be a good starting point . You should see the wrecks here ... they are all totally stuffed ..to the stage of being good for parts only . I would jump at the chance to buy a CS8 in that condition . Mike

Hanno interesting link to the MCC vehicles in movies ..thanks check out these: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hogan's_Heroes http://www.hogansheroesfanclub.com/ http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0058812/ Mike

Hi Hanno.. we met again ! People will be talking about us and our secretive rendevous .Yes, now you mention it, Virginia ... Talking of Morris' in the USA: did you ever see the many times a Morris CS8 appeared in the 1960's TV comedy series 'HOGANS HEROES ' , with Sergeant Shultz and Colonel Klink etc. The Morris appeared in many episodes .. The show was made in Hollywood . So where did the Morris come from ? And what became of it ? Mike

A Goanna is a large reptile .. I sometimes see them foraging for rabbits along the fences here.. during the summer months . They normally run up a tree when a human approaches .One day, I spotted one sneaking into a shed here.. a rabbit was hiding in there. Mike

Here's two from the AWM archives . The Australian 2/1st field regiment ( artillery ) , Palestine circa 1940. Whats amazing is.. all of the trucks are Morris Commercials . PU, CS8, and CDFW's And, PU's with the Aust. 6th div , again in Palestine ... Mike

Hi Ripp here are my 4 ..sorry but you cannot have one ....He He he Mike

Pic from the Australian war memorial archive : North African bogged MW .

Until about 10 years ago.. a surplus yard in Coburg, Melbourne , had a huge pile of those WW2 Vokes concertina air filters .. they had been out in the weather for many years and they were all rusted through where water had been sitting in the cylinder... the ends were Ok however . Would have been hundreds of them there. They were all scrapped . The Aust. L.P. bren carriers use them. I've got 3 new ones ..I grabbed them for the Morris' .. stuff like this was around 20 years ago, but you don't see it anymore these days . The original felt filter material tends to break up after 50 years.. when we had the WOT2 on the road, we used a modern round filter element from a air compressor or something, it fitted inside the round Vokes cannister perfectly. Mike

Ok and great input to this topic. Not being a MW expert, I'm learning though - I've only taken a few pics over the years of the relics around . I actually just missed one on a farm not far from here ....it was purchased around 1946 and stayed on the farm til about ten years ago... I know who bought it as he's got another 2 of them.. remains of . At least it was saved from the scrappy. That red one may have been a tanker: I know of a single surviving water tank from a 15 cwt tanker ... it is in QLD and could be from a MW . I'll try to find some more pics of them. Here's another one I pictured last year : http://www.class-five.com/~mlu/forums/showthread.php?t=10070&highlight=mike+kelly Mike

Found this piccy : its a vehicle park here in Aust. WW2. I believe the the line of vehicles in centre background are British 15 cwts ... the three on the left are Bedford Mw's. The 3 cars in foreground are 1940 Ford staff cars .. and a chevy 3 tonner . The row behind the staff cars are a mixture of the civvy pattern light commercials, the army here used them in vast numbers .. Dodge , International, Ford and Chev etc. Pic is from the AWM archives ... Mike

Here's the remains of a bush fire brigade example .... in Victoria . Pics taken over 20 years ago.. it's probably still sitting there,but even in more of a rusty state. The original Z number is almost readable . Mike

I'm liking this topic.. Some Bedford MW's did make it down here to the antipodeas.. Aust. and N.Z. Over the years I have seen around 12-15 of them .... never seen a early aero screen version , only the later type with the metal doors and full windscreen. They are usually found in a horrid state with no woodwork surviving at all and rust is a major problem. I'm not aware of one having being restored down here in Aust. which is a shame. Being a non-standard vehicle over here, they were disposed of very quickly ... 1945 ish.. Years of neglect and abuse by civilian owners means all you come across these days are remains ... I have seen one with the chassis almost rusted right through ! Some of them went into bush fire brigades and these are normally found in better shape... although these had a hard life too .. depending on the volunteers who drove them to perform basic maintenance. I have a ex-fire brigade CS8 here and it's the worst one I've got ..it's a shocking mess of neglect. I think one or two restored MW's exist in NZ . The cost of importing parts probably turns many people off attempting to rebuild one. Like me and the CS8's.. you need to find 3 or 4 wrecks before you can gather enough bits . With all of these 15cwts down here, I've only ever come across the bog standard GS versions ... Although the exception to that was: I did half own two WOT2D's .. the van version ..not much different from the GS models .. Mike

We get that show here ..but its about 5 years behind the UK . And It's always out of chronological sequence too.. In one episode you see Carenza holding her infant .. then, 5 episodes later she appears and she is obviously pregnant. I've seen the 3 episodes where they dig up WW2 aircraft. Spitfire .. B17 and the Invader . I spotted the kiwi girl Brigit ,her accent is very noticeable.

yes it is a WOT2 beside the Morris ..pic was taken at a Govt. owned museum in Canberra .they disosed of a few unwanted vehicles and I got lumped with the pink morris ..Its actually faded red as it was a bush fire truck in civvy life. Its got a water pump on the gearbox drive where the tyre pump shuld be .the WOT2 bits they had were very bad.. worse than the Morris ! Rick.Yes it has been consigned to the spares department ! the chassis is probably useable ..but needs work on it ..the rest of the car is junk... I've never seen a CS8 here with the towing attachment still in place ..thay are always gone. I played with 3 WOT2's in the early 1980's two D models and a H .

this one I swapped some stuff for . You would not believe how stuffed this vehicle is ..the steering pitman arm has been broken in half and somebody has brazed it together !! All the steering tie rod ends have been welded on to the tie rod ! Motor seized . Spring hangers crudely welded onto the chassis . the king pins have about 1/4" of play in them . the GS body wood is all replaced with high boards . Somebody has even damaged the wheels ..they used a gas axe to cut off wheel nuts and they cut into the rims . Mike

This is another one . Again , somebody got to it and removed all the best parts before I bought what was left of it ..just a rolling chassis . mike

Jules I noticed the holes in the floor next to the gear stick.. Are these holes original ? They had a little rod that sticks through the floor , you pulled it to engage the tyre pump ..the rod has a loop shaped end on it . My 3 Cs8 wrecks have no woodwork left , it all rotted away years ago .They changed the design of the near side long tool locker too .. I' ve got 2 different styles . The aero screen models are not common here .. most of them here are the later type with the full windscreen and metal doors . No-one here has restored one yet .. just too exotic and alien ..hard to get spares for and you dont see them on old war movies ....unlike Jeeps . Many collectors here are unaware that Morris built military vehicles. This is one of the wrecks i ended up with... chassis is badly rusted . it was broken up for spares before i owned it . Mike

This Humber PU 8 cwt ( or the remains of it ) resides in New ZEELUND .. where sheep are a happy bunch ....won't go into that . Mike

This CS8 was pictured in the USA of all places.. I think it belongs to a re-enactment group over there ...I may be wrong however . Does anyone know more ? Mike

Jules Nice truck you have there ... we only got the G.S. Wot2's here ..never seen or heard of one of those . In some cases they improvised and used a standard 15 cwt GS truck, they rigged up the wireless set in a 'ad hoc' fashion. I've seen pics ( attached ) of what appears to be G.S. Morris CS8's with a radio set mounted in the back . Soldiers did improvise when the need arose.You could even use wooden planks as a radio table and get away with it . I like the cute little Austin 7 . Dads army stuff. Mike

They were also built in Australia ..AWA made a batch of them in 1943 using locally made valves ... The AWA sets differ quite a lot from other variants ...the valve lineup is different . ... the connectors and ancillaries are the same however . 19 sets didn't reach the battle fields until at least 1941 ... before that the No. 11 set was issued to British armoured regiments . Pre-war, the No. 1 set was the mobile set and they fitted em into tiny Austin 7's. The 19 set was really not a good radio .. it was barely adequate enough for the job . Its biggest downfall was that they crammed too much onto a single chassis ...in terms of maintenance ..it's a nightmare of a thing to work on. I've owned many of them and I dislike them a lot ! Look at the contemporary German tank radios of WW2 .. a master piece of design with clever sub-units that clip together for ease of repairs .. rolls royce versus a cheap nasty mass produced , badly designed waste of time . Mike in Australia ..I'm a ham too

heres one Rick A Canadian Ford F15 cab 11 .. it has been captured and modified by the japs ... then re captured back ! AWM number 116992 Mike

hi Rick, Well, unlike the Germans and their mass produced AGFA's and Leica's and such, I guess the average Japanese soldier didn't carry a camera around as personal gear. Snap shots of captured vehicles in Jap use are rare . But we do know that fair numbers of British army Humbers and Morris and Austins and so on did fall into Japanese hands ... along with Indian pattern and Australian pattern vehicles .. The defeat was a major setback .. with around 100,000 allied soldiers ending up as POW's. It's a sore point here as 20,000 of our guys went into years of cruel abuse ...1 in 3 of them died . It was all blamed on inept British commanders.. but Percival wasn't the whole problem, he had been screaming out for more modern aircraft and more support for years - the stupid wally's at the WO in Whitehall ignored him.... Malaya was a backwater and anyway... they thought the Japanese were a useless disorganized bunch - never underestimate your enemy ... first rule of war. The Japs did re-cab some captured trucks with a simple design .. somewhat like the Germans did , but not as elaborate . The AWM archives at http://www.awm.gov.au do have a few pics of re-captured vehicles .... mostly chevs

On the subject of Morris Commercials in enemy hands . I wonder what became of the Morris' and other British vehicles captured in the Malaya / Singapore defeat . There were CS8's and other vehicles on issue to the British army in Malaya. I guess the Japanese ran captured trucks into the ground , along with the Ford Marmon Herrington gun tractors of the 8th Aust. division... none survived. At least one solitary captured LP bren carrier has survived .. it is in the AWM Canberra today ..having been recaptured back from the Japs. . Mike