Starfire

That looks awesome. Thanks for sharing.

The deck chair certainly looks appealing. One of those, plus the water carrier full of ice and a few beers would be pretty nice at the next show...

If you want to play those kind of games, you could always get out the cranking handle...

Hi Steve, The theory is certainly sound, but the 50's vehicles weren't designed to work that way, unfortunately. Once things like the K60 powered FV430 series came along, you could literally do a pack lift, put the pack in front of the vehicle (backwards), hook up a few wires and pipes and test run it out of the vehicle. It could be argued that the 430 series weren't too much better as a combat vehicle than the earlier 600 series, but they were certainly much easier to maintain. Cheers, Terry

I'd assume that you would be keeping the 24V starter, so there shouldn't be any problems with the conversion and no need to switch it out. About the only thing you'd need to do is adapt the 24v generator/alternator to fit on the Chev. Or, you could just keep the stock engine... For the most part, engine conversions always take twice as long and cost twice as much as expected, at least, and are often rarely worth the effort. While I do like modifying cars, when it comes to MVs, I think that originality is important too. Cheers, Terry

The problem is that the Ferret doesn't have a "Pack" per se; rather a series of components bolted into a hull and connected together. In order to run it, you will pretty much have to take all the various bits out of the vehicle and then assemble them together outside of it. As Bob has pointed out, the oil system will be a significant issue. Depending on your requirements, you might be best off taking it to an engine dyno; aside from the oil system, they will have everything needed to test and evaluate the engine in controlled conditions and won't be too expensive. Cheers, Terry

Thanks Richard, I'll have to read the manuals again, more carefully this time I also have to hassle you about ignition on a Mk 3 Dingo at some stage, but I need to gather a bit more info first.

If that happens, it won't really matter, as all 5 gears work in both directions

Really? I always understood that the Dingo and Ferret lacked a differential and that all 4 wheels were driven constantly, while the Saracen and Saladin had a differential splitting left and right. Cheers, Terry

If all of the driveline components were in place, you would need to jack up all 4 wheels to check it, as the Ferret does not have a differential. Cheers, Terry

Interesting. I thought that FR/RL and FL/RR were identical... Are the bits that you're talking about bolt-on to the standard unit? You should be able to just swap them over, although getting to them could be painful, depending on what state the vehicle is in. For the rear, I'd guess that you would have to remove the engine. Given that this is the same Ferret that had the reversed steering box, I would exercise some caution and check over everything, as I don't think that too much attention to detail was put in during reassembly. Cheers, Terry

I do like the Eager Beaver and would like to get my hands on one, one day. Cheers, Terry

I'm not sure of the full feature list, but this site is running vBulletin 4.2.2, while the current stable release is 5.1.9. I'm guessing that there is a lot of new functionality in the later version. Cheers, Terry

My Saracen has an electric pump in series with the mechanical one, on a manual switch. Most of the time, it's turned off and the mechanical pump just draws through it, but sometimes I turn it on to prime the system when the vehicle has been sitting for a while, and theoretically, it could help with vapour lock, although I've never experienced that.

The correct oil for the flywheel is OM13; which has a commercial equivalent of an ISO 10 hydraulic fluid. I the UK, I believe that Morris makes a suitable one. The flywheel isn't too sensitive to fluid type though, and plenty of people run them with regular auto trans fluid without problems (something like a DX3). I'm pretty sure that the seals are available as a generic item. If your leak is from the bellhousing, I can almost guarantee that it's the fluid flywheel. Because f the design of the housing, they tend to fill up with a pool of fluid, even from a relatively slow leak, that will then be splashed around everywhere as soon as you run it, making it look like a major disaster. It will then settle down to a slow leak again. I would suggest topping it up with OM13 and possibly adding a bottle of commercial seal conditioner that is rated for automatic transmissions. Then I'd just keep an eye on it to see how much it's leaking. If it's a museum vehicle that doesn't get driven much, like ours, then you might be best to just top it up before use and clean up the mess afterwards, as the amount of work involved in replacing the seals is pretty insane and leaving them sitting around won't do them much good anyway. Cheers, Terry

Yep, we'll need pics. By Ford Dingo, do you mean a Ford Lynx, or an Australian Dingo armoured car? I suspect the latter. Cheers, Terry

Before you fix it though, you need to take the ferret, a video camera, a few of your mates and some beer to a large open field and challenge them all to drive it around a track. Post the results on Youtube

Awesome, keep us posted on your progress.

I've been annoying Tim a lot lately. I'll hassle him again in a few weeks Cheers, Terry

I'd be keen on a Saracen one.

My first thought when I saw it was that it looks like some sort of enema pump or something, but surely it wouldn't be that and it must be just my dirty mind.

This picture showed up on Facebook the other day, and again shows my Saracen's rego number as an ambulance, so I guess there is more evidence that it spent some time as a blood box. The picture was supposedly taken outside of Musgrave Park Hospital, Belfast, in about 1975. The vehicle had already been converted to a Mk 5 but this was about 17 years before it was disposed of by the MOD in Hong Kong, so there are quite a few differences - especially conversion back to an APC role. I really need to get on to Bovington and get her history cards. Cheers, Terry

It sounds like you should relocate to Texas

In all seriousness though, I really do think that the B80 with a mild turbo setup on it, pushing 5 PSI or so would be good for another 40-50hp and would really wake it up, without adding too much extra strain to anything.

I think that the B80 would respond well to a turbo or two