Neil's Stolly Blog

[RSSRobot]

Made the most of the good weather today down at the Fort with Stuart (SaracenStump). Whilst he removed his Saracens silencer for repairs I had the load bed cover off little Maud and proceeded to sort out the mess in the back.

 

By 16:00 I'd managed to:

 

• Refit the towing cables (inc finding a lost shackle)
  
• Remove a side glass handle from a spare and refit to the near side glass - now both emergency exits are functional
  
• Fit the BV shelf in its appropriate place, fit the BV in and get the strap adjusted to fit.
  
• Find the new starting hanlde and fit that into position in the cab.
  
• Sort out some of the cab CES (work light, inflator etc) and stow in the correct positions.
  
• Measured up and refitted the Alvis triangle on the swimboard - had to put a clearance drill through the screw holes in the plate as the Ally had reacted with the steel screws!
  
• Fitted the name masks, sketched the letter outlines and painted them back in white (might need to redo as the paint was a bit thin)
  

 

Quite pleased with the days work - had to bring the bridging plate home as it needs further work and I also brought one each of the damaged mirrors so I can go get either total replacements or replacement lenses.

Going to have to ring Kerry at RR on Monday though - a pair of nearly new clansman aerial have gone walkabout from the loadbed. And I still need the inner hatch handles for the roof hatches cos without them it's a pig to close once they latch onto the aerofoil. Closer examination of the cab interior reveals that at least two of the rifle clips are knackered beyond repair so I'll to replace them as well.

 

Then - at some point - a couple of early spec deac SLRs might be in order. IF I can convince the missus they are essential to complete the vehicle.... :rofl: :rofl:

[ArtistsRifles]

One thing I forgot to mention in the last post - this was the first chance we'd had to turn the back of the vehicle out since the accident. And the news was not good....

 

In the couple of days it was in storage between Octobers incident and going to RR Services for evaluation and repair the following occured:

 

 

• Damage to the cab area was increased since the accident - comparing photos taken after the crash to the vehicles condition on arrival at RR the headlamp guards had been crushed and the cab front glazing all pushed in. At a guess they had used a forklift to push the hull around.
  
• The inner Tee handles on the hatches had been smashed off - we think they didn't realize the hatches lock onto the aerofoil when they went rummaging.
  
• Two new Clansman radio aerials, the shovel and pick axe handle from the pioneer kit all went walkies from the loadbed (side ropes were cut).
  
• Misc tools and odds and ends vanished from inside the cab.
  

Not so good - I now need to replace the inner Tee handles urgently as, once the hatch lock onto the aerofoil the only way to release it is to balance on the side rungs, lean forwards and under the hatch to release it by hand. - I've almost fallen off a couple of times doing this!! :sweat:

[ArtistsRifles]

After the fiasco of trying to get to FirePower last weekend and finding I had no air pressure after refuelling I nipped back down to the Fort yesterday to try and sort the problem out. Advice from the Yahoo based owners group was that the auto sense valve was most likely gunged up.

Got down the Fort ready to struggle at removing the R/H air pack and then the offending valve, thought " lets see what happens first", cranked the girl up - fired first flick of the switch and voila!!!

After the usual wait for the packs to charge we had air pressure. Tried starting and stopping a few times and each time the compressor kicked in (VERY unmistakable noise on a Stalwart) so maybe it was just a case of the valve icing up?? Anyways I now need to see what I need to do to get the Methanol anti-icing stuff into the system. Spent the rest of the day sorting out what was in the load-bed spares wise so I can actually get into the lower hull and transferring that up into the stores at the Fort (and as a result I can't walk again today 'cos my damned feet are killing me!!:-( ).

When we parked the girl back into her slot I also took the opportunity of trying out the dowty drives for a few seconds. Both worked fine - but by god were they noisy!! And I've no idea what was in the tunnels - but what ever it was got blasted out at Stuart and John who were checking to make sure everything worked OK. :rofl: I strongly suspect they are suffering from a lack of lubrication so I also need to find a way of getting oil into the nipples on the prop bosses as well as anywhere else in that drive system that needs it..