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Caddy

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Posts posted by Caddy

    New Ferret Questions

    in British Vehicles

    Posted

    Hey, I've got a 1970 David brown tractor and I love it! Your offending a huddersfield man! (could be a touch biased)

     

    I think either you must be a lucky huddersfield man or I was an unlucky Essex boy!

    I still hated having to use it; it used to get stuck everywhere, could never do more than power a hay zip. It was not a small thing either, and only the basic controls would work. Give me a John Deere any day! (Hell I might even take a New Holland)

    New Ferret Questions

    in British Vehicles

    Posted

    Actually, the Wilson pre-selector gearbox was designed by a man called Wilson. He formed a company called Improved Gears, to produce them and they were used in a variety of cars prewar, some for racing like the ERA. The company changed its name to Self-Changing Gears Ltd at some point. David Brown did make tank gearboxes, and I think the CVR(T) box is their manufacure, but I am pretty certain they had no input on the Ferret's Wilson box.

     

    SLightly off topic, but both the Centurion and Conqueror have David Brown boxes.....

     

    David Brown did make hateful tractors though........

    Chieftain main brakes

    in Tracked vehicles

    Posted

    Hi,

     

    Does the Chieftain's main brakes need the engine running to work?

    On Sunday I was asked to remove the master cylinder out of our Chieftain and strip and clean it. Apparently the thing was siezed.

    So I stripped the moving parts down, cleaned them up, and re-assembled them. All moving smoothly. I haven't touched the hydraulic side of the master cylinder yet.

    When I re-installed the cylinder I tried the pedal and it was still solid. The pedal itself is quite stiff, but I can't see this being a problem.

     

    Any thoughts?

    NSN to Vehicles

    in British Vehicles

    Posted

    Blimey, well they don't look that similar. There's a couple of M120's in storage at Duxford next to a couple of meteors and they do look different. I knew that they had the same capacity, stroke and bore. Didn't know if they'd share a common bottom end though. Are the cam profiles different? Would have thought so. Still how many engines have kept the same trousers but changed their shirts......

    NSN to Vehicles

    in British Vehicles

    Posted

    M120 is quite a different beast in some ways to the meteor. Looks are different, mags are on the other end of the engine. Different pistons, and castings look different. Cam followers, pedastals are the same. I think the firing order is different, but not too sure. Oh and fuel injection, different magnetos and starter motor.

    Recon it could be classed as the evolution of the Meteor, a bit like an Astra. Whether a 90's one or one from now it's called an Astra, but very different.

    NSN to Vehicles

    in British Vehicles

    Posted

    Lauren,

     

    Thanks for that, it'll help no end. If it's all right by you I'll copy it into .xls spreadsheet so that it will be searchable.

    The Conqueror engine isn't a Meteor though; it's an M120 (think that's right). There are lots of shared components, but it is a different engine. It'll be good to get lists for both the Conqueror and Centurion so that we can finally sort out what we've got in the way of spare parts.

    NSN to Vehicles

    in British Vehicles

    Posted

    Just out of curiosity has anyone got the NSN list for the Meteor engine? My Cent list has everything BUT the main engine parts list (apart from 'here's the code for a replacement engine'). We've got a lot of parts we want to sort out, think most of them are for the Conqueror, but there is reputedley cent parts in there as well (probably a lot of cross over).

     

    Cheers

     

    Paul

    Opps I done it again...bought another tank...

    in Tracked vehicles

    Posted

    Yes Andy, I guess I am very fortunate. Didn't come easy though, 10 years slogging it out from a 3 man startup to a reasonably sized business with lots of highs and lows in between. Running a company is hard, but actually designing, making and selling real physical products is even harder in the country! I have paid some eye watering size tax bills along the way so this is my treat to me!

     

     

    Pzkpfw-e: I knew someone would fall for that and without even reading my post too! My other tank is a Scorpion...:D

     

    You've paid tax?! Best get in touch with Starbucks then :cool2:

    IWM Duxford Centurion Mk III (that one off the telly)

    in Blogs of MV restorations

    Posted

    Good Morning all,

     

    The weather did us proud yesterday for Remembrance Day at Duxford. A very good service was held next to a Shackleton. Very moving.

     

     

    A little bit of work has progressed on the engine. Can't remember if told you that M had re-faced the valves and seats in B Bank head. He's happy with the valves, but the seats have a lot of burning and acid damage in them and there is very little meat left to play with. He's going to re-face the seats again to see if they are useable or do we need to change the head?

     

    On the HT loom front we went back and did some basic resistance tests with a multimeter as doubt was thrown up as to whether the meger tester was working properly. We found that in general the resistance in the steel cored HT leads was between 0.8 and 1.2 ohms, but when we tested a proportional length of new replacement copper core HT lead that had a resistivity of 0.3 ohm. So we had a quick chat with the committee and knowledgeable members and we were given the go ahead to strip and rplace the HT leads - Lovely!

    We started on the Exhaust set and managed to get A bank done (including repairing the rubber cover on the flexible conduit), and will do B bank next week.

    We would have done more, but we all went to the remembrance service and before that about 7 of us had a lovely time crawling all over the jagdpanther whilst trying to get a Chieftain tarp over the blummin thing. Lauren Child has some 'interesting'photos I believe.

    IWM Duxford Centurion Mk III (that one off the telly)

    in Blogs of MV restorations

    Posted

    As it was a tad wet yesterday I decided to find a job that would keep me dry. I thought that it would be a good day to check all the HT harnesses for the engine.

    As the Meteor is a derivative of the Merlin it still uses 2 sets of magnetos, harnesses, and plugs. This means that we have got to get a good set of HT leads for both Mags.

    We could run the engine on one set, but I recon this would lead to a very uneven burn. If RR designed it to run on 2 plugs then who am I to say otherwise.

    Going through our stock I found that we had 2 sets of exhaust looms and 3 sets of intake looms. (The 2 spark plugs in each cylinder are situated either side of the combustion chamber; 1 below the exhaust valves and you've guessed it, 1 below the intake valves).

    Out of the 2 exhaust sets one is of our engine and the other is still wrapped up and sealed. With the intake looms one came to us refurbished, one was off our engine and the last off a donor engine. The two from engines are in pretty bad condition, but we could probably make a good one out of the two.

    I decided that we'd use the rebuilt intake loom and the exhaust loom from our engine.

    Next step was to break out the Megger and stick 15,000 volts through them to test for continuity and shorting. The intake loom is in good condition. The exhaust had one lead broken but no shorts so I'll strip it and put in new HT cables in.

    Photos to follow.

    IWM Duxford Centurion Mk III (that one off the telly)

    in Blogs of MV restorations

    Posted

    I'd imagine, given the similarities, that you could use Merlin engine ones. It may be worth asking the fighter collection folks for a heads up (especially if anyone's got an b grade options that aren't suitable for the aircraft).

     

    Alternatively, I've got this place bookmarked as I'm sure they've come up on a different thread re meteor/merlin parts.

    http://www.aerovintagespares.com/

     

    Thanks Lauren,

     

    You're right about the merlin parts fitting; we've got a quote from Aviation Jersey for all the rings and seals we need, it's quite expensive though (well not that expensive the coolant transfer o rings are only £2.50 each), so we've been asked to find out if there is a cheaper alternative.

    I'm a little hesitant about using an O ring kit as Rolls Royce designed everything to do a specific job, and that included the material used. If we deviate from this path will we increase the likelihood of the engine failing?

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