My wife hasn't seen it yet

[Phill]

This is my new baby. Parking her for the winter outside. I have one of those big old canvas tarps. Too bad it wasn't camo colour, might fool the boss for a bit. I have lots of questions like where do I find armor, and a dash, a generator, several idlers with good rubber, all the accessories, I need to see Santa again. Phil

[NORTH-SHORE(CANADA)]

Hi

My wife hasn't seen it yet

Welcome to the club

[RichardT10829]

has that back plate been cut afterwards or was it angled like that from factory ?

Welcome to the nightmare of Armourless carriers, iam trying to find someone who would be willing to measure up armour on their carrier plotting all the holes and visors so i can CAD them, once that is done the file can be emailed to anyone in your predicament to get the sheet metal cut on a water jet. the next problem would be getting toolage to rivet them on as they should be.

i have heard you can get road wheels re done (here in the UK) for circa £40 per wheel, this would include idlers or any wheel with a rubber band person to speak with is Clive Hughes from www.milweb.net (Hughs movie supplies) make sure you speak with Clive and Not Ian as its Clive that is well clued up on carriers and is a really nice bloke indeed !

good luck with your quest buddy

Richard

[Maurice Donckers]

I can maybe help you with rear pannel , left side pannel , and a Dash pannel.
maurice

[RichardT10829]

yes please, Phill and a fair old few others could benefit from anyone willing to give measurements etc. I will create a thread for this rather than continue to Hijack Phils thread.

Phil. it looks like you have a great basis for a fantastic carrier i am greatly jealous

Richard

[Maurice Donckers]

These panels are left overs from my carrier restauration , I also have a right side for a carrier , but it has a hole in it . These pannels are from a Mk1 . I got also most of the rest as a pattern .

[Phill]

Thankyou for the replies, I feel like part of the forum already. Richard, the rear armor plate has been cut and is not bent. Good to know the idlers can be resurfaced. Thanks for the link too.

Maurice, thanks, it's encouraging that some of this metal is available, like the dash. I'm curious about the hole in the armor.

It was the restoration thread by Jordan Baker that inspired me to buy this from a friend. I guess this is a MK1? My son keeps asking me and I'm not sure.

A sticky on armor plate dimensions would be great!

I've got to ask, is a carrier devalued by having mild steel plate for armor? Is real armor plate available to buy and cut to size?

I've parked it for the winter, even though it runs and drives(according to the previous owner), we pushed it with the backhoe onto some 2x8's and wrapped it with 2 canvas tarps. The ground was back frozen today so the tracks are still clean.

I took lots of pictures of the inside before wrapping her up.Phil

[Maurice Donckers]

The orriginal armour plate has a rougher surface then mild steel , also it is Chisselled straight after hardening . This results is that you can see a lot of stripes on the surface of the plate`s .
I discoverred that riveting goes the best with a decent hammer , and keep the rivets cold . I mannaged to do about 10 an evening before my hand started to give up .

[RichardT10829]

my thoughts were to make the armour out of mild steel also, this would benefit by keeping the weight down slightly, but as mentioned it will not look 100% correct unless some prep work is done, you could put some fine media in the paint to give the surface some texture, and prior to paint the chinks and grooves type affairs could be put into the metal with a grinder.

in the UK you can hire a pair of pneumatic rivvet hammers quite cheap.

[Lynn Eades]

If your carrier is English built it does not have the "chisel marks" that the Canadian carriers have, so it will look fine with mild steel. The English armour had a pattern on it like you would get if you painted it with a paint roller, before the paint smooths out. By the time it had a coat of paint, the pattern in the steel is hidden. There is variation in the thickness of the front armour between the various Mk1 carriers. Talk to the McDell boys about it.

[RichardT10829]

Phil can you get shed loads of pics put on here so i can drool i take it the loops on the front pannel are the work of a previous farmer/owner ? or are they something added by the MOD ?

also with the front plate you are lucky as the Fergus carrier i have been looking at has been chopped around the second angle bar that runs accross the front and the steering box is just lying there rather than fixed as per yours.

Richard

[Phill]

Thank you for all the replies. I noticed the chisel marks on the rear plate so it must be original. Small portions of the original armor plate are left along with the rivets, all around the perimeter; we noticed the plate on the front was thicker. I got a picture of a decal on the front right fender, almost readable. Strangely when my son turns the steering wheel, standing in front, the machine seems to move. There is a layer of snow on her today. Phil

[Phill]

Here is the decal pic. Phil

[Ledsel]

It's a "command" decal But I can't tell which.

[Geoff Winnington-Ball (RIP)]

Originally Posted by Phill

Strangely when my son turns the steering wheel, standing in front, the machine seems to move.

That's a good thing, Phil. What happens with standard carrier steering is that for the first x-degrees the steering mechanism slides a crosstube connecting the forward bogies back & forth, warping the track to either side for a slight change in direction. Beyond that x-degree point, the steering mechanism applies the brake on whatever side you're turning toward, thus slowing that track and allowing the other side to slew the carrier around. Historically it's a simple but effective mechanism but with the caveat that the brakes tend to wear out unevenly and prematurely; with the T-16, the Americans went with controlled differential steering instead, which is more effective and more reliable than track-warp steering. The fact that your carrier moves slightly with pressure on the wheel means that neither the steering linkages nor the crosstube are locked up.

[Jordan Baker]

You have the remains of a MK2 Carrier. I can tell by the upper engine frame rails and the lack of radio battery holes in the rear plate. The other partial give-away is the fold up seat attached to the armoured rad cover.

[Barry Churcher]

I have duplicated the chisel marks with a dull axe and you can't tell the difference.
Barry

[Ledsel]

Originally Posted by Ledsel

It's a "command" decal But I can't tell which.

I will bet that it is "CENTRAL COMMAND" It's very hard to make out but you can almost see it.

[Phill]

My son was looking at the 'command' decal picture again and came up with this on the top line: _ INT_A_

I think any loops on the machine have been welded on to help with it's previous roll in a hunt camp.

Geoff, that's the most interesting steering system I've ever heard off. I think I'm better off than some to have that system working.

Jordan, is it a good thing to have a MK2? Are they more common? I'm really in the dark about the differences.

I've never heard of using an axe for metal work. That's very innovative. I was trying to figure out what kind of chisel would make that long groove. Here is another pic. Water pumps appear to be built in to the block. Hope it's the original motor. Phil

[Ledsel]

It's possible that it is the original as it has the cast iron intake. There is a engine no. on the top left rear of the engine. It's between the intake and the head, there is a flat surface there, right beside the feul pump base, and being a MKII it should start with a "T"

[Ledsel]

I see that you still have one number that you should be able to find other than the engine number and that's the lower hull number. It is on the piece of angle iron that the bottom of the rear armer plate is riveted to. it's on the left side over the left track It should start about 2-3 inches in from the end of the angle iron. Good luck. P.S. It's below that little pice of pipe that someone welded there.

[Ledsel]

Originally Posted by Ledsel

It's possible that it is the original as it has the cast iron intake. There is a engine no. on the top left rear of the engine. It's between the intake and the head, there is a flat surface there, right beside the feul pump base, and being a MKII it should start with a "T"

Do the water pumps still have double pulleys ?

[RichardT10829]

a good way of telling what the engine is, is by counting the head studs as they are different per BHP i cant think off the top of my head what each is, i will grab my service books and let you know.

The Mk2's are slightly more common but nevetheless any working Bren these days are getting harder and harder to come by.

Richard

[RichardT10829]

right i have had a read and reminded myself. the 85bhp commonly associated with the carrier No.2 (mk1 and 2) and the 95bhp associated with Carrier No.3 Mk 2 have 24 head studs and 14mm spark plugs. the older Mk1's only had 65Bhp engines in (if they were British) that said all the engines were interchangeable so it is not uncommon to find an old carrier with a 95Bhp lump in it is however important that you make note of what you have in the carrier as the components of the 85/95 bhp engines are totally different to the others.

speak to Kevin Powles who can provide you with a service manual at a good price ! if he cant or has none left come back to me and i will sort you one fella.

cheers

Richard

[Phill]

My son did a search on 'Central Command' and we dreamed about where that carrier might have been.

We didn't take the tarps off today to find the engine # but now I know where to look. An elderly acquaintance of mine came by today, so I showed him the snow covered shape. By gosh he knew what it was, I couldn't believe it, then he said "Is that the 85 hp engine?"

Knowing where the hull # was really helped. We think the # is 27418.

Attached a picture of the water pump pulleys. I have never seen a distributor up front like that, except on the Ford tractors. I don't think they were very popular for maintenance work. Phil

[Ledsel]

Buy the looks of your hull no. It was probably built around late April or May 1944. And for the dist. they were fairly easily taken off to be worked on. Just pull the caps and three bolts They cannot be put back on the wrong way as they will only fit one way. There is a slot that it fits in and it's set to one side. Your carrier is a little bit newer than mine as my hull no. is 24742. Your engine no. should be some where around TL 29-----F ?. Serial no. maybe 28----? just a wild guess but perhaps close. Buy the way there are two hull no.s but your upper no. is long gone. Buy the looks of that engine I would say there is a fairly good chance that it is still the original, as I doubt if it was ever over seas.

[Ledsel]

One way to know if it's a carrier engine is it should have two large oil lines at the rear left of the engine just behind the place where the engine no. is. They may have been pluged off if the oil cooler is diconnected. I can't tell from the picture as it is on the left rear. If it has just small plugs then it is an automobile engine. I see that the engine has a few modern upgrades like the starter is the automatic bendix instead of the mechanical one, a remote coil, a car carburator, and an alternater.

[Phill]

I was going to take the tarps off today to get another look at the engine, but the weather changed that plan. Close to 0 F today after the storm.

Attaching a pic of the engine left side but it's a little fussy. Good to know I need to be looking for some original engine components. I want to clean up the hull # and make sure it's correct.

Is the air breather original?

Is the Mark 2 armor the same as the Mark 1? The reason I ask is that the Legion in Belleville has a restored carrier and I was thinking of asking to see if I could get dimensions of it's armor over the winter. Phil

[Ledsel]

I can't see it very clearly but I think that mite be a automobile engine. Th plugs look small. But that's not anything to worry about as it's the same anyway. And, those oil holes can be redone if you were to go with a carrier oil cooler. The air filter is not original. The oil breather is.

[Lynn Eades]

The block looks OK in that I see the other hole in the bell housing for the oil cooler. The fan is original, The exhaust manifold looks correct.
What is the block of wood for, to the left of the clutch pedal?