Restoration of Hull 731- Carrier, MG (Aust) Mortar Carrying

[Darrin Wright]

With Mum & Dad over for a Christmas/New year holiday (bringing many spare parts of mine) we stripped the engine down, slow going as 3 pistons were seized and this made it quite hard to access the split pins and nuts on the end of the conrods. Managed to hammer down some of the pistons and this provided enough access to lift the crankshaft. When we did lift it, the ring gear got caught on the oil pump drive bolts. After a bit of a struggle using the floor crane to lift, we got it apart. Then it was on to removing the valves and guides, using all the correct tools made slow going but we did not break anything. If you try and pull them out without the correct tools something will break, I only broke 1 guide but stopped before breaking anymore.

Dad stripped down the gearbox and checked everything out, it is well worn and will need a replacement main shaft and most of the gears. The rear mount is broken but have a BGC mount to replace it with. Just have to clean it up.

I continued to weld in replacement mounting blocks in the hull, replaced the blocks for the fuel tank brackets, replaced the strap mounting plate in the front left of the hull, tidied up sections of the hull, mounted the diff armoured cover and drilled most of the holes in the back shelf (also welded on 2 threaded mounting blocks), measured and then drilled the 4 holes for the jack bracket.