antarmike

Maltese Mat

Maltese mat

AEC matador based Heavy armoured car

The AEC 6x6 ACV and a recovery vehicle built from one.

The Petrol version of the Oil engined O854 was the 854 Mtador

and one with a home made timber crane.

O864 Coles crane variants

Ex Hill of Botley (heavy Haulage) ran this O854

O853 Matador ACV converted to a fire engine with foam monitor etc. Used in an Ordnace depot.

Ex RAF mobile oygen plant, on O854 chassis. (used to refil oxygen bottles on Lancasters etc.

Three O854 ex RAF refuellers lying derelict in Cyprus

Rod Wilson, of Asheridge Tring. This was his spare Matador, much over restored because this is what his Matadors actually looked like.

Although never a Matador, my Douglas has plenty of Matador parts in it's spec. Seen here at GDSF with a Douglas built pole trailer

My first Matador bogged at Rushden

My present Matador on the Tractor pull at GDSF

The trouble with putting the photos back online is that I am going to have to go back to the original each time to check that I am giving acknowledgment to those people who have been kind enough to give permission to use photos they hold copyright on, I have pulled photos out of many diffeernt albums, copied and posted them and put them back. Finding them again will need a lot of time and effort. These are easy, noone has claimed copyright for these...

I haven't been keeping records up to date, but I can cross reference chassis number to quite a lot of Military and civilian registrations, and previous owners, but I haven't had the time to keep these listings up to date, the currency of my dated was lost in about 1995-6 but I have reasonable records up to that point.

I found that when I was using my Matador off road, loading trees onto my pole trailer with the jib, that everso often the horn cable would be trapped between these two plates, and I had to drive a wheel up on a log, to open up a gap to get the cable out again! Whoever recabbed this one didn't understand the principle, because the front of the cab is left flexibly nounted, but the lower edge of the front wings are bolted to the new bumper that is rigid with the chassis!

The levers either side of the radiator are probably the Cab springing. The chassis is very flexible and the cab is rigidly mounted at the rear onto brackets on the chassis, but at the front the cab rests on plates, and there are twin bolts which pass throughtwo more plates rivetted or bolted to the cab, The bolts aren't tightened down rigidly, but only enough to partially compress fairly strong springs which under normal road use keep the cab in contact with the chassis, but in extreme off road conditions as the chassis twists, one or other corner of the cab can lift, compressing tfurther these springs, but preventing it from tearing itself apart,

Re winching forward the Cassis view I posted shows the route the winch rope takes to the front. Although the winch is in the middle of the chassis it always comes out at the rear between the two closely spaced pulley wheels that lie towards the offside of the vehicle, but when winching out the front it is apssed round the pully on the nearside rear corner of the chassis, thence over various guide brackets o get it past the airtank and the exhaust before coming out of two vertical rollers on the front on early Matadors or a cage witht wo horizontal and two Vertical rollers on later Mats.

That mat is easy to find. Yes the winch rope will pass out the front, but as on the Scammell Pioneer and exlorer and the like it is only inteded to be used for self recovery when lead out the front.

That's the last of my most recent posts before the crash.... |Has everything really gone for good...Boo Hoo!!!

and these may not have been seen by everyone... Last photo by permission of Arthur Ingram

Cos these didn't go on long before the old board crash, I am reposting the last few Mats,