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Another Pioneer


Jimh

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Bit of an apparent spurt on this weekend so a few more pics of it looking increasingly Pioneer like. Clutch, brake and throttle pedals in along with the linkages. It's only when you start reassembling things you look at them very closely and start to see just how much fitting went into building them to make up for "oversights" in the design process. You would have thought that bu the time they built this one they would have had enough practice to have got them right.

 

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Steering box and hand throttle linkage. We've got the webbing to go on the bonnet / side panel flanges so that can go on once the paint it right.

 

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Front off side showing some of the bigger bits have reappeared.

 

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Steering column tube, hand throttle and horn/dip switch mounting. And the sun was shining, too.

 

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Weight bracket, towing hook spring and guide rollers on. Oh and the radiator too. It's not bolted down because we need to get some new 1/2" BSF bolts for the lower clamps.

 

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From the nearside.

 

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And the front.

 

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Unfortunately with all of that on I had no excuse not put some wheels on the front, cover it all up again and go back to finishing the rear axle so the rest of Sunday was spent putting mascarra on.

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A clean and primered offside rocking beam. Big thanks to the REME for putting a new rear bogie in this one not long before you got rid of it. From hub to hub there is zero lash in the gears. Thanks lads.

 

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Clean

 

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Cleaner

 

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It is a lot of movement, isn't it?

 

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Ready for undercoating. I need to do these one side at a time because I'm not to keen on having both sides sitting on axle stands. I can't prop them up on blocks of wood because we need to swing the axlestopaint the back of them properly.

 

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The nearside front wing not looking too good. With this hole it might still be salvageable but...

 

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With this one as well and the dents and the edges gone it is probably not really worth the effort. Does anyone know of anyone who is making sets of these wings? Our usual supplier (Vintage Wings and Radiators in Manchester) wants £500 for a pair which seems a bit salty to me given that it is more that the huge back wings on the Sentinel. Anyone do them for less?

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In the absence of anything better to do the old man made a start on the cab. It looks like once the tinwork is off the frame is salvageable.

 

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Except those bits where the timber infills got waterlogged and rotted the channels away.

 

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Seen better days

 

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Any guesses what this bit is for?

 

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Hopefully it shouldn't take too long to get this knocked into shape.

 

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And finally today an air cleaner waiting to be cleaned and painted. It needs some new T handles made for it too. Someone had clearly misunderstood what the brake antifreeze system was for and had filled it with glycol.

 

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I would say those wings are saveable with a bit of work. Even if you have to get someone else to do them. I would be having a go myself. Small patches at a time butt welded in then grind flush. You may lose the shape slightly around the patches but seeing as they co-incide with the mounting brackets it shouldn't be that noticeable.

 

I know you'll want them right as the quaity of the rest of the truck is top notch, but you could always change them later on if you're not happy with them.

 

Seems vintage wings and radiators may be the only place making them new as they're the only ones mentioned on the Scammell owners forum. If you've got a unique product you can pretty much charge what you want.

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The wings are worse than they look. They have perforated almost all the way round the wired edge too.

 

Vintage Wings and Radiators' work really is spot on and their work is usually pretty reasonable. The front panel on the S4 is a complicated thing and they got it absolutely bang on (and I mean bang on). I couldn't believe how little work it took to fit. It cost £400 to make it in steel. I think certain operations take two people and that starts putting the cost up.

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I have worked (only fitting) in a body shop with men who could reproduce any thing, making parts from steel thick enough to work with, doing compound curves on the English wheel can often mean two men pulling/pushing the part and another carefully heating with a torch. Rolling beads and forming edges on complex shapes also often takes two.

 

£250 per wing may be worth if the result is as good as the work they have done for you before, however I would still have a go myself first given the patience you chaps have!

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  • 2 weeks later...

I think I can safely describe this week as being bit of a bitch. Anyway, the aforementioned bad week and some family activities have meant I haven't done very much for a fortnight. However, at least some people have been doing some work so here is an update.

 

Offside rocking beam and chassis in undercoat.

 

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It's pretty easy to make a decent job of painting it when you can swing the beam around.

 

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Not too bad. It should look pretty good when all the brake linkages are put back on.

 

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The nearside engine cover. This one had been driven over at some point and was in quite a state. It is straightening up not too badly. Far from perfect but it will do until the new ones get made. Someone has done some brazing repairs on it which is annoying because it means they'll have to be continued in those areas using brazing.

 

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You can see some of the brazing on the left top corner. It looks straighter than it is. When the dark paint goes on it things won't look anywhere near as good.

 

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The offside engine cover. This one hasn't been driven over and is consquently in quite good condition.

 

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The bonnet stripped and waiting to have the prep finished.

 

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I was struggling to take a picture of the cab frame because of where it was. Stripped, cleaned and new members put in where needed. We've tried to keep as much of the original frame as we could to the point where some of the members at the back are a little moth eaten but we felt it was a bit too easy to make a new frame altogether which spoils the originality a little too much. You shouldn't be able to see any of these bits anyway. The front uprights are new.

 

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Winch cover stripped.

 

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Cab engine cover. Anyone know how the painted on instructions were done? There was one on this cover telling you what did what and a couple on the scuttle telling you which neutral to use when. Thoughts?

 

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The cab frame again. You can probably spot where new cross sections have been spliced into the back of the cab.

 

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The plan this weekend was to do a trial fit on the frame and fit the front uprights to the front panel. After we are happy with that it can get skinned.

 

And someone needs to finish cleaning the back axle. Whoopee.

 

Off to fetch a Green Goddess. If anyone sees one broken down between Beith and Stirling do stop and lend a hand to push.

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Well we made it. Looked a bit dodgy to start with but things settled down. I won't bother too much with it here because it isn't an MV. However, it's DBG and has chunky tyres so it is probably allowed one picture.

 

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Guest catweazle (Banned Member)

During the firemans strike the army drove them in London,thats good enough.

That gas ,light ,coke ,co steam wagon in Old Glory this month?.

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the army fire sevice did run green goddess, but they were a seperate batch, I have seen 2 in preservation, one of which is on my fotopic site.

 

As an aside, I am sure I have read somewhere that the army would have manned either a civil defence rescue column, or a AFS column, will have to see if I can find the info

 

Mark

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Aye, the NI ones were yellow. There were a few operated by the military as fire engines on bases but as far as I am aware this one was Home Office owned all its life.

 

Catweazle's argument that they were operated by the military is a convincing one, however. I'll stick some more pictures up in a more appropriate place. Back on to the topic in hand...

 

Overegging the pudding in an attempt to make it look like we did some work this weekend rather than trying to make space for other things here is the repaired cab frame in place:

 

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The numbers in chalk are just so I put the bolts in the front panel in the right place.

 

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It's been taken off again so it can get undercoated on the floor and get the panels cut for it and fit the sections of timber into the channels.

 

That's all for now.

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It's been so long I've forgotten what the thing looks like. Starting off gently here is a semaphore arm for no reason other than it was sitting next to the thing I was taking a picture of.

 

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The nearside engine cover. You can see here it isn't the straightest thing in the world. The shrinking hammer arrived yesterday so hopefully it will get a lot straighter.

 

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Cab frame in undercoat

 

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Wood infills for the channel sections. Not one of Scammell's wiser design decisions this one.

 

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New roof panel

 

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NOt very easy to take pictures of these but the new cab panels. The one on the outside is the offside rear one. The cut out at the bottom is for the winch brake handle.

 

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This is hopeless. Can you see that this is the rear centre section? You can't? Oh come on you can clearly see the cut out ffor the winch clutch tube. Yes you can.

 

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Bonnet, engine cover, winch cover and air cleaner body in undercoat.

 

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Offside engine cover undercoated and in place.

 

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And finally this is a nice piece of work. This is the crank and con rods out of the brake compressor. You may recall that one of the direct run big end bearings had failed on it. Give the costs involved it was decided that it was hardly worth making everything needed to do it ourselves so sent it away. Crank reground and both big end bearings remanufactured, machined and fitted. A really nice job at a price best described as "I really don't know how they do it for the money". JEL Bearings of York take a bow.

 

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I'm going to finish that back axle this weekend. No I am. Really.

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Not a nice way to spend a hot, sticky Saturday but I got the NS rocking beam and rear axle finished. Ended up looking like a Black and White Minstrel tribute act by Saturday evening. Full of wiry shrapnel too.

 

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Got the diff housing done too.A bit fiddly to clean and pretty fiddly to paint. As you can see it needs a second pass to get it done right. Getting cleaned around the drive flange bearing took an age. Didn't fancy taking anything on the diff housing to bits just to clean it so I decided to struggle.

 

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And from behind. Took a while getting the nearside sping clean. Again I wasn't mad keen on the idea of removing the spring and splitting the leaves but there was a lot of scale between them. In the end I opted for wedging them as far apart as I could manage and chipping the scale out. Have you ever noticed how far gear oil can travel on a hot day?

 

I'm glad this is done now. It was starting to get on my wick.

 

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The winch drum with the gear back on and bolted up. Needs a blow over with DBG and it can go back in the frame.

 

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The assembled compressor in primer. Looks like sky blue in this picture but it isn't.

 

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A first aid box. Question. Why is the top shelf divided with that pice of wood at 45 degrees?

 

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The bellhousing cover. Needed a bit of repair because the nearside of it was rather moth eaten.

 

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Time for another update. One of the problems is that because everything is sitting clean, painted and ready to go is that lots of things get bolted on at any one time so things tend to go in big jumps.

 

And off we go. The offside rocking beam with all the brake linkages put back on along with a few more bits.

 

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From behind. Brake servo, air tanks and some other bits and bobs.

 

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And the nearside many of the bolt heads have been spot primed which is why they look a bit odd.

 

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wich drive shaft in along with the main servo. I'm not convinced that gaiter is going to work but I'm told that I am wrong and I will see that it will be just fine. Yeah. Right.

 

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Trying to work out what pipes go where which is why nothing is clipped in place at the moment. You'll also see the fan isn't in yet.

 

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Aircleaner and antifreeze container in place. Here's an odd one. The paint looks exactly the same when I look at it. It came out the same tin and was applied by the same person. I take a picture of it and it looks completely different.

 

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Engine cover off so you can see the compressor all nice and blue and in place. Bafflingly there is no adjustment for the compressor drive belt so we're getting some shims to go under it. It's a bit crude but there isn't much else to do.

 

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The cab frame and some other bits in DBG.

 

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Last few covers and odds and sods in DBG.

 

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The rocking beam a little closer so you can see the brake linkages looking clean and tidy.

 

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Trailer servo in place. We were going to blank this off because we didn't see any point in it being operational when we are never going to tow a trailer with it.

 

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Real axle brake linkages in place. Remember that butchered taper from a few pages back? That was what came of the rear linkage you see here.

 

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The rear axle looking green and somewhere near finished. You'll also notice that the oil refuses to stay where it is put. Damn stuff.

 

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Inside the nearside rocking beam. We still need the felt to make up the seals for the beams.

 

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The brake riser links just to show it is all clean in there.

 

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And finally the transmission brake shoes in place. We are just short of the bolts for the propshaft to bolt that back in. Someone must have had the propshaft off before because half the bolts were missing.

 

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What's next? All the pipes need fitted and clipped in place and then the winch needs to go together and bolted on. Unfortunately the bolt people have closed for their summer hols which is going to hold things up for another week.

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Unfortunately the bolt people have closed for their summer hols which is going to hold things up for another week.

 

Hmm, Diamond Industrial Supply, Brown Street, Camelon might be worth a try for bolts? They supplied nearly everything I needed for the DUKW and a pile of Dodges, I just stumped them when I needed wing nuts. No connection except (relatively) satisfied customer

 

Diamond Industrial Supply Co

 

4 Brown Street

Camelon

Falkirk

FK1 4QF

Central

Tel: 01324 629151

Fax: 01324 627363

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Engine cover off so you can see the compressor all nice and blue and in place. Bafflingly there is no adjustment for the compressor drive belt so we're getting some shims to go under it. It's a bit crude but there isn't much else to do.

 

Jim,

 

Are you sure it isn't a split pulley and there should be shims inbetween the two halves? The long taper of the faces effectively alters the belt running diameter and tension. There's a similar system on the Cummins engine on my Ward. Had me baffled how to adjust compresor belt tension until my friend explained.

 

The way you're progressing you'll have it out at one of this years later shows I suspect. Pioneer looks great. Every time I see It I wish I'd bought it but couldn't have done such a thorough job as you are and certainly not in the same timescale.

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That was my thinking. The pulley must be split and shimed Beetle stylee. But no, it is a blimmin' great lump of steel which is most definitely in one piece. It does seem to be bit of a botch job.

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