LP2a SAR restoration

[John Mackie]

Absolutly great work on your carrier . I only just found your thread, I do not know how I managed to miss it. I would like to add some comments learnt while restoring my carrier.
Exhaurt system. My muffler gaurds were so badly bent that I had to replace all 4, I asked a company to cut some 2.5 "strips from a sheet. they said they had some 2.5" X 0.25 " I gladly bought some . On my carrier the tail pipes were still attatched to very sad mufflers, I re-used the old tail pipes and joined them up to the exhaust pipes , it is alittle throaty but not noisy,
The 2 piece sump you mentioned will not let the engine sit down.. I found out!
On seting up the differential you indicated that you had minimal backlash , maybee the axle may have needed some shims between the axle housing and the pinoin bearing housing.
you have most likley found solutions to these problems but I mention them just in case.

[Phillip]

Thanks John,

Its been a fun learning curve, they are very basic, sooo much easier to work on than the Ferret that was my first project.

My muffler guards had coped a hammering as well, but an oxy and a large hammer got them straight!

Looking forward to being able to get back down the shed soon.

[Phillip]

Well it’s been a busy 2019 but not enough movement on the restoration front. Fighting my end of year apathy, I pulled my finger out (as well as smacked several of them with a sledge hammer) and finished sorting out the track enough to get the old girl mobile.

It steers so just fine-tuning, get the rear tool rack and engine cover restored as well as continuing with all those ‘small details’ to get it finished for April 2020

[Phillip]

I was lucky that one of the covers for the mortar rounds survived from being turned into a BBQ plate and provided a reference for the missing cover. Darrin Wright kindly supplied a laser cut ‘kit’ the same as he used in his restoration.

It was good that Darrin had the original drivers side cover, whilst mine still had the opposite side cover. Between the two covers, this has formed some excellent reference points as they are not mirror copies of each other and there are varying construction techniques between Darrins cover and mine.

Not quite finished, but almost there...

[Andrew Rowe]

Hi Phillip,
You say this lid is the cover for the mortar rounds, I always understood this cover was for the radio set? cheers Andrew.

[Phillip]

Andrew,

When I first saw this carrier, I also thought that the brackets were for a radio cover and that the other odd brackets were a few civvy mods. It was Wayne Henderson who pointed out to me that it was one of small number of converted carrier given the nomenclature ‘Carrier, M.G. (Aust) Mortar Carrying’.

Darrin Wright documented his outstanding restoration of other Aust Mortar carrier on this site and also did a lot of research into these vehicles at the AWM.

The covers themselves are very much simpler than the radio covers, being simple flat plate with no return around the lip.

I’m trying to work out where the bipod was stored?

[Lynn Eades]

Isn't the bi-pod stored in the left rear up the front? Does it go into a ring welded to the floor?.... or is that for something else?
Andrew will know.