croc

What a way to treat a Landrover, that's just the kind of picture us Gipsy owners appreciate. :evil:

Watch HERE Added by: da bomb Tags: Scammell Explorer,Recovery,Scotland,Diesel Date: 2008-04-18 Thanks for that Adam. This was the first session out playing with it, in a handy field behind the house. It was very soon after I had it delivered, before I had dumped the spare wheel off the top or found glass for the headlamps.

Great plan, but I am not sure an Explorer would keep up with a Robin :-D The traffic is never bad when you drive something big and slow, but it doesn't always look to good behind you :rofl:

There were some comments about running winches out of the front fairleads on the Matador thread. It is only supposed to be done for self recovery but I can't see why there would be a problem for "light" work and it is much easier to see what is going on. I took these to show the route on an Explorer. Newly fitted serving gear. This moves up and down to guide the rope onto the drum and must be timed correctly. View of serving gear from back of unit. Rope passing round the back pulleys and forward to front. View from front fairleads. Rope comes forward from pulley behind fuel tank and passes through the loop bracket, this bracket is to protect the brake pipes.

The main winch on Explorers is quite big, early ones were rated at 10 tons and later ones 15 tons, the only difference (as far as I know) is the setting of the overload switch, which killed the ignition on the petrol engine. As mine is a diesel this switch wouldn't work anyway and I suspect it has worked quite hard as a commercial recovery unit; as the winch rope is down to about 150 feet of the original 450, and the serving gear, (paying on device) which layers the cable on the drum, was broken. I managed to get a spare serving gear and bracket so I fitted that and ran the rope in and out a couple of times. Winching up the road to my house, just enough of a hill to get the rope tight. Adam Elsdon and the Explorer.

I had managed to let the main winch cable pull in a little to far when putting it away, not far enough to damage anything, but enough for the rope clamps to get behind the fairlead rollers from the side. There is no way to power out the main winch on the Explorer so I set up some snatch blocks to pull it back out sideways with the jib winch.

The weekend was spent cutting up bits of Humber chassis (see Pig pictures thread) and playing with winch ropes. When I got the Explorer there wasn't a rope on the jib winch. I am not sure what the correct size rope should be, but I had a one 16mm by 36 metres, SWL 3 ton lying about, so I used that. I suspect it is narrower and longer than the original fitment but the SWL matches the jib. The length gives be about 100 feet of usable rope and means I can use it with a snatch block to pull the main winch rope out to 50 feet. With it fully wound in the drum is over full but it's not a problem when using it.

A few months ago I put Adam Elsdon onto a scrap Humber 1 ton chassis for pig spares. Most of the easy bits that would unbolt are now in Adams' shed, so the rest of it has ended up at my house for cutting up, as it is easier to move with the Explorer. To explain the frame on top of it, this 1 ton used to be the recovery motor in Braemar, when I first saw it in the early 90's it was complete and would have been restorable. I heard that the bloke who had bought it from the garage had given up with it and it was for sale so I went to check it out. The moron had tried to make a "monster truck" out of it by mounting a Cortina shell on top of the frame, and destroyed the 1 ton bodywork in the process:argh: so it ended up in the scrapyard.

The Antar Gallery must belong in here then.....

The Explorer is post war, therefore far superior then wartime stuff that was put together in a hurry, out of whatever was available, and not expected to last long. :evil: :whistle: As far as Explorers are concerned only the first contract (batch / order) were specified with heaters. I have a copy of an EMER instruction dated April '60 titled "removal of unserviceable cab heating system" for removal rather than repair of the heating system. What is strange, is that my Explorer which was of the second contract, has a heater and demister fitted. It is the correct system for the Explorer but, by the book, it shouldn't be there; I suspect it was sent somewhere cold and someone fitted it, but whether this was done "in service" or not I have no idea.

My first motor was a Bedford CF250 4x4 in April '91, it was originally Scottish Hydro then a Cairngorm Mountain Rescue Ambulance, I bought it off a Ski School in Aviemore. When it died (although I still have the 4x4 bits of it) I had a car for a few months until I got my first Gipsy (a Police Moblie Column one) in October '93. I bought a "Home Office" AFS Gipsy in April '97 from the sale at Measham. Five of the Gipsys I have got are Ex Home Office which I suppose makes them as military as a Green Goddess, but it is the Green AFS one, with its fire pump trailer that got me involved with the "military" scene. For me, the interest has always been the utility side of the vehicles that has held the interest rather than the history, what they can do - not what they did. (In the case of AFS stuff what it did, most of the time, was sit in a store.) As I have said to a few people over the years, it's not a hobby, it's an affliction.:-D AFS Gipsy, Brockhouse trailer, Fire Pump. Letting the cadets have a go, Montrose '02 (you can just see me operating the pump.)

Here's the one we spotted on the way to look at my Explorer, it was on the north side of the A96, can't remember exactly where though.

The last picture in the drifts is about ten yards short of where I stopped, the Explorer had no problem at all through three to four foot deep drifts on the flat. Beyond this point the track goes down a dip with a climb out of the other side, none of it is particularly steep but there is nowhere to turn untill you get right through. I decided to stop rather than risk getting stuck or having a very long reverse. A couple of days later it had thawed a bit so I had another crack at it, there was less depth of snow but it was heavier going. I needed a few runs at the deeper bits uphill but got through no bother.

They make them just down the road from me. http://www.landmineclearance.com/index.html

:rofl:Adam has a point though, all has been quiet on the ASSFART front since the crash :cool2:

Here's Mike Gilberts' old bus recovery Matador, these were taken in 1999, it has since been sold back to Yorkshire Traction.

The index page for Blogs and MV chat are still listing oldest first, I don't know how many others are. There is a button at the top of the "posts" column to reverse the order though.

That's what I thought at the time. It was only a few hundred yards from the house so if it had got stuck I would only have had to wait a few days for it to melt out, but I decided to play it safe anyway.

and here it is in action, trying to get the Milly unstuck we didn't manage it with the bar but had no problem with the winch.

Thanks for that Mike. It's hard to believe it's the same vehicle.

And that brings it back up to date, I had sent off an enquiry for the log card to the RLC museum but it has come back that they don't have the card. However, Brian Baxter at the REME Museum has been able to let me know the ERM was 01 BD 98; and the date on the winch plate is 2-10-51. So the next thing to do is to get an age related plate for it.

Then it started snowing, so I went out to play.

The next job was to fit some side and indicator lights.

Without a windscreen it was a bit draughty, so the old one was replaced with one off ebay. Not original but it filled the gap.

About the same time that I got the Explorer, Adam Elsdon got a Pig, just the thing to test the jib with.