CF HLVW Photo reference gallery

[Robin Craig]

When the folks at the Newburg Fire Department won the bid on the truck they went to the factory at UTDC to collect it. They were told to drive around the building very slowly and keep going round and round, "just do it" is what one person recalled.

So, in the vehicle they got, and duly drove around slowly, as they did people opened doors and walked out and stopped them carrying boxes of random spares and were told "better you have these than they go into the dumpster".

They got quite a haul in the end.

The vehicle if I understand, was the prototype for the wrecker and I think has a different rear axle spring set up than the Karsons water truck.

The folks at Newburg built the whole of that tanker body themselves. After finishing the work they approached Dupont, another local Kingston business in an attempt to cut costs and get some free paint for it. The reply was swift from Dupont. "No, we wont supply free paint", the next sentence floored them, "But give us the whole truck and we will paint it for you" which is what happened. The vehicle went to Dupont and duly returned in a paint job better than they could have ever done.

I will try to link up with them over the winter and see how the truck has survived.

Curiously that photo shoot turned up a weird cargo body section that got turned into a civvy trailer, must look that up..

The Karsons truck is an unknown to me, I never did get anyone within the company willing to speak nor did I have the resources to chase them. I think Eagle Eyed Eric (Booth), the editor of CMP magazine, was the first person to alert me to its existence. As it has a provincial licence plate that could reveal some data.

[Ed Storey]

These two civilian HLVWs could have been CFRs 80924 and 80925 as both of those vehicles were disposed of in April 1993.

[Robin Craig]

ED,

That is great news, I'm thinking that if they had CFRs that you can quote they were crown property by then?

Do you have any pictures of either of those two vehicles when they were still in use by the CF or trials team? Can you post them them?

Thanks

R

[rob love]

I believe that CFR plates could be applied to an "on-loan" vehicle in order to provide accounting and liability. I think I have seen CFRs on some armour that was borrowed for testing and trials.

[Frank v R]

this makes the future for the fleet look very good ie. when DND is done with them as 2 are on the road and plated,

[Ed Storey]

Rob makes a good point as I have observed that LETE used to reissue CFRs to trials vehicles which can making tracking them difficult when the same CFR has been used on two or three different vehicles.

For some of the post-1980 vehicle fleets there appears to have been a small number of trials vehicles that were plated, used for a couple of years and then disposed of early in the life cycle of the fleet. I have noticed this with the MLVW, Iltis and the DEW M101CDN2 and now perhaps the HLVW.

[rob love]

Originally Posted by Frank v R

this makes the future for the fleet look very good ie. when DND is done with them as 2 are on the road and plated,

Then is then and now is now. It was only 5-6 years ago you could buy a running leopard hull in the $14,000 range, or MLVW hulks for a little over 1K. We see very little green released these days. T

he HLVWs are really showing their age as well. Transmissions are very very hard to repair. The Cdn Army is short over 100 transmissions at present, and if the truck is not a wrecker, or a special variant, it will wait a long time for a transmission. Basically, they are driven as long as they will keep moving. Front suspensions have been found to have elongated in both the brackets and the frame. They were a great truck 20 years ago, but parts are becoming scarce and with the relatively small quantity the CF has, it is hard to get companies to produce just a hundred or so of anything.

[Scott Bentley]

Originally Posted by rob love

Then is then and now is now. It was only 5-6 years ago you could buy a running leopard hull in the $14,000 range, or MLVW hulks for a little over 1K. We see very little green released these days. T

he HLVWs are really showing their age as well. Transmissions are very very hard to repair. The Cdn Army is short over 100 transmissions at present, and if the truck is not a wrecker, or a special variant, it will wait a long time for a transmission. Basically, they are driven as long as they will keep moving. Front suspensions have been found to have elongated in both the brackets and the frame. They were a great truck 20 years ago, but parts are becoming scarce and with the relatively small quantity the CF has, it is hard to get companies to produce just a hundred or so of anything.

Sad but true.

I had the pleasure of driving a 10 ton PLS in Meaford back in the summer for the first time in nearly a decade. Great truck yes, but all the busted or missing plastic parts really showed its age. Something as simple as a broken driveshaft required deep reachback into the supply system, and IIRC, the final approved solution was to pull one from a truck in Petawawa and send it out in order to get it home. I realize its not exactly a tank, but I can't even fathom the amount of $$$ that would be required to keep one of these rolling in private hands after the hard years they've had.