Adam Elsdon

Probably been sat on his shelf for years slowly absorbing water (Its Hygroscopic) unless it had a good seal!

Or does it....

And this is our little gang, convoying it back home, we mostly live within a few miles of each other. This was a good weekend, Allan Brownie who runs the show really made an effort with the facilities for us, its a nice site, its free to exhibitors and its all for charity, you even get an exhibitors award this year is was an event gold rimmed china plate with a picture of a CMP featuring . The N.E. Liason officer of the SMVG, Mike Ogston is keen to make this a regular big thing making this our North East of Scotland MV get together, we know there are alot of vehicles in Aberdeenshire, and Moray and having something like this more northerly is a fantastic thing, they were unlucky with the weather on the Saturday, but it turned out great in the end! For those who cant wait till next year, we have our own get together on the second thursday evening of the month at the Hunters Moon in Auchleven, near Insch, anything goes, its more a celebration of rust driving in close formation, than a purists MV gathering, and the pub is an active member for the Campaign for Real Ale! And you can also look at the Scottish Military Vehicle Groups website for an updated list of what going on. :thanx:

Centurion Recovery! sounded fantastic and it made the ground shake, there was big agricultural stuff at the show, but nothing that was on par with this thing! And if you have a Cent, you probably need something fairly useful to help haul bits of it off and around, so the ex Dutch International wrecker comes in handy, along with a Leyland Martian recovery (Not photo'd) if you think this is one big petrol burning nightmare to own, he also has a couple of Stalwarts and a Humber truck. :bow:

CMP with 25 pounder and Limber, this and the previous CMP have attended shows all over europe. The owner has an extensive display of shells and fuses and puts on a magic display when all set up. Crocs Scammell Explorer, still in its Sutherlands of Dingwall livery, it may look a bit down market, but it still managed to suspend tow a Ferret to the show and back, and extract itself from some nasty mire when it got hopelessly stuck, using its main winch routed through the front, a very useful beast to have around. Notice the Explorer version of a 9x9 on the rear!

1944 Albion CX22, In the livery of a local garage that converted it to a recovery when released from the Army, everybody knows it as such and is a local "Hero" in its own right, the present owner has removed the exceptionally heavy recovery Jib and kit, and is turning it into a ballast tractor set up. Still running fine on its Albion oil engine. The CMP truck has extensively toured about europe and is a regular on the Scottish show scene.

A dutch M38 Jeep and a GM C15 formerly an APC in the same vain as the later pig, this one has been converted post war for logging, but makes an interesting wrecker.

A Dodge M37, built in Canada for the Canadian Army in the early fifties and recently imported into the UK, its in very nice condition, and has all the improvements over the earlier WC51 that you would want, like glass in the doors decent 24v electrics and a heater! the next picture shows both types together.

Mk1 Ferret marked in 4 RTR colours which it served, and my Mk1 Humber Pig.

Terry, have a look at the Scottish Military Vehicle Group website, under sales and wants, there are a couple of pigs for sale, they have been on for ages, so maybe well open to negotiation, and he is on the west coast. http://www.scottishmvg.org/1.html

You must be mental! :-D As you might of noticed, HMVF stands for "Humber Military Vehicle Forum" a search will produce no end of Pig related material, and Clive Elliot has a few articles in "Clives Corner" which are centred around the Humber FV1600 range of vehicles. This is my MK1 FV1611b (with winch). Not happy with the fact that it is the lightweight & nippy MK1 GTI version, i like to retard the performance with a Brockhouse 1 Ton trailer!

If you are going over to Normandy for the D-Day memorials, just remember, fly the flag, quite literally, put the biggest Union flag on your vehicle you can find, how dare they use it as a self important political staging event. Here is an interesting set of figures from the battle for Normandy: Twenty-seven war cemeteries hold the remains of over 110,000 dead from both sides: 77,866 German 17,769 British 9386 American 5002 Canadian 650 Polish. All the countries involved, and that includes the Germans should have a mechanism for a proper memorial on 6th of June. Unfortunately the Hollywood effect is rewriting history.

The brightest lit part of the site, after the beer tent!

Here are some photos from the Vintage working weekend, organised by Alan Brownie, at his store, the money raised this year going to the Heart Foundation. We were invited along, as he wanted to give it a more "Wartime theme" the show been previously more agricutural vehicle orientated, although they arent snobs, if its old and interesting, its in! The few days running up to the show had been very wet, and Saturday morning hadnt improved, infact it was stotting it down! all day and into the night this kept numbers down, but as they say up here "there is no such thing as bad weather, just inappropriate clothing" so we pretty much carried on as if it wasnt raining, barbecue, drinks etc alfresco. Fast forward a few hours into Sunday morning, and it turned out to be a cracking day, and the turn out was fairly respectable for our first large organised foray with MV's at this event, so we are hoping to make this a regular feature in this part of the world, like a mini Great Dorset Steam Fair! Here are a few pictures from the show, all of our vehicles, and as usual i was so busy looking at everything else i didnt get any pictures! Starting with saturday nights beer fest and barbecue and then into sunday and pictures of the majority of vehicles, i missed a few, the Leyland Martian that was with the Centurion and International wrecker amongst them.

Funny how the Pigs become the epicentre of events, at our recent bash, i landed up carting all of the canvas and most of the living gear for our small part of the military vehicle group, brought along the barbecue and supplied the electric, turned a very dismal wet saturday night into something amusing and liveable, when most people had hit the sack early.

You are one sick puppy!

I am well impressed with the trailer, it is barely noticeable on the back under tow, and its the same width as the Pig near enough, so nice and easy to reverse. And been deep, it swallows up the camp gear and my 7 KVA generator, which is a bit excessive for a dozen bulbs and pin prick lighting, but it will run a number of big electric kettles if required!

My Pig at the B.A. stores, vintage working weekend, complete with trailer.

Couldnt do two could he?

The modern equivalent to OC600 is SAE140, pretty thick stuff, however, you dont need alot of it in the steering box, and would cost a bit of money to have alot of oil for only one small application, so i filled mine with a mix of EP90 and bearing grease, stir it together until you have a mix that pours like treacle, then on top of the steering box, you will find a filler plug, unscrew and fill, works a treat in my steering box, made it feel a little lighter. The inner and outer hubs i filled both with EP90, without referring to the book i think it specs the same for ins and outs, although last time i topped up i used EP80/90, i dont think it is super critical, the main thing is you arent pumping grease into them. While you are looking at levels, make sure the diffs and transfer box are topped up, again EP90 or as clive found using a slightly thinner EP80/90 in the transfer box, his was foaming up and blowing out of the breather. And very basic SAE30 Engine oil for the gearbox, without the detergent, which is what was originally specified for the engine (OMD110). Im going to stick some Molyslip into the drivetrain at some point, i had an old series 3 landy which i dropped out the old lube, filled with fresh and it was still a bit thrashy whiney, although better than before, then i put Moly slip into it and it really quitened down (for a Land Rover, its all relative!) so im hoping it will have a similiar result for the Pig. Sounds like you are getting on OK with your beast

I like Honeysuckle Weeks, Foyles driver, she's lovely!!

Totally agree, this is great (HMVF) certainly the first point of reference i go to now. As for pointing Catweazle at this forum........:shocking:

I do seem to be collecting a large amount of ex British Army S/crap on my drive!

I know 19 Sqn RAF Regiment at Brize Norton had them for the Rapier kit, and they really really didnt like them, but as you say im not entirely sure why.

The Shorland brakes must be really sh*tty!