Canadair CL70 CFR 58-91588

[BCA]

Wayne, sorry I have not seen any other Canadair manuals. The Rat manual was a lucky find years ago. ... Brian

[Robin Craig]

So, yesterday evening I made initial contact with Mr Chisholm by phone and we had a good discussion.

He was RCEME attached to the RCR in London ON in the early 1960s and had a lot of time spent supporting the CL70 Rat. He went with them all over the artic and remembers them well.

I asked him what the biggest faults were with the machine. He said that the lack of any braking system was an issue. There was talk of an incident on an airstrip where one ploughed into the side of a Hercules and caused damage.

Another flaw was the cleats in the tracks on ice which allowed the machine to slide sideways as if on skates. Add to this the inability of the springs on the cable steering system to be able to full control the slack that develops when crossing major ruts and causing the cable to birds nest on the steering shaft.

All great first hand information.

We have agreed that he will come out and visit mine over the winter in a dry shop at work.

[rob love]

Originally Posted by Robin Craig

had a lot of time spent supporting the CL70 Rat. He went with them all over the artic and remembers them well.

I spent a couple weeks in the Arctic supporting a later bombardier snowmachine: the alpine. I thought we had cold in Manitoba, and don't get me wrong, our climate in the winter is absolutely life threatening. But up there was a whole nuther storey.

Mr Chisholm has my respect.

[Ed Storey]

I have never served in the Canada's north.

[Robin Craig]

So,

it has been a while and we have not been standing still. I say we, as my very good friend Gerry Foster and I have slowly been working away but neglecting to post our progress.

First of all, we had the most enjoyable evening with Don Chisholm. We met him at a restaurant locally and spent supper talking over his association with the RAT and his later career in the RCEME.

Don was stationed in London On attached to the RCR and recalls the vehicle with a tremendous amount of clarity, not bad as he is now 82.

Over supper he recounted the incident of the RAT at Bagotville and how an impression was made in the side of a very new Hercules C130. The operator of the vehicle had realised that he had too much speed and because there is no foot brake was not going to be able to stop before a collision. So he turned the machine sideways, at this point inertia took over and the cleats on the tracks were now in line with the former path and took over and became skates and allowed the RAT to glide into the C130, thud.

Don and I had spoken by phone and I was impressed how the same incidents were repeated without variation at supper. We found out that Don was obviously well regarded within his trade as he ended up in the UK during the development of the CVR(T) family of vehicles as the representative from Canada as it was thought that Canada would go down the light armour route.

After supper we moved our meet to the workshop where we had moved the units inside for the evening. Bear in mind my own garage / workshop is a work in progress so I use the shop at work by gracious permission of my employer. The only stipulation is all material has to be out by the end of the night. It makes for a bit of a circus but allows progress.

After many years here is Don re united with a RAT with his unit's marking on the front.

[Robin Craig]

I am blessed with access to a full sized tractor with pallet forks which makes a huge difference in being able to shunt the units in and out of the shop.

They we placed on pallets and then some extra pallets underneath to provide a stand off from the snow and ice of winter. Temporary covers over the top keeps the weather out.

Over Christmas I had time to leave them in our shop over the holiday and left them dry out and we cleaned out the hulls of many years of debris.We found many trinkets and had everything in cardboard boxes and I was struggling with how to deal with the myriad of parts that a job like this generates and how they would be inventoried.

We decided that the rear car would be the best to start with and Gerry has stripped it down and removed the drive train and track which then gave access to the underside of the hollow structural steel (HSS) chassis and the bolts that secured it to the rear car. We decided as the chassis is going to have to be made new we would doing any grinding underneath and not mark the tub which is aluminum. The underside of the tub had been coated with a rocker guard type of material likely to prevent abrasion from track thrown debris in use.

The track is a jointed track with a simple bolted and hinged connection. The axles butt up to the inside of the chassis and a bolt keeps it snug and located. There is a basic track tension mechanism in the sides. The front and rear cars drove from opposite ends, so there is a shaft running the full length underneath with a hanger bearing assembly along the way and a simple differential unit that couples to the axle with the drive sprockets. The shafts are connected with a strange tapered fastener with a nut n the end. Many f these did not come apart easily and were destroyed. The pattern piece that was saved will go to our machinist Andy for him to make some new ones for the rebuild.

Sadly Gerry has been doing most of the work as I have been working nights on the Township plow truck, but I can tell you Gerry is much faster than me when he works and is so much more skilled at least I know my hours of plowing is paying for his labour. That is just the way the cookie crumbles, but in the end progress is being made.

[Robin Craig]

We knew that both the front and rear chassis would have to be replaced, We acquired as part of the purchase a spare NOS unit.

We took some time recently to look at both of them side by side in some detail with a view to understand how they were made and how we will be making a new one. It was also time to closely inspect the NOS chassis that we knew had some damage owing to ice forming from ingress of water at incomplete weld joints over the years.

Our first surprise is that the the NOS chassis is not the same as the removed one. There is an extra axle support assembly that makes no sense to us, and that there are some longitudinal pieces missing. We don't know what other variant or earlier development this came from but in all other dimensional issues it is the same.

We have made a list of all the material needed for a new chassis and this long weekend I will be attempting to make a jig to build the new chassis on by using the old one as a template.