ladies gentlemen welcome to the latest episode of the tank workshop diaries
here in the tank workshop in the new workshop that we keep calling it the new
workshop we're doing a bit of a slightly different format we're looking every
other month we're looking at just a bit of an overview what's going on in the
workshop I may be able to tie it in with why we're doing it some of the events or
the activities or some of the priorities in our looking after our big running
tank fleets and then every second month Jonathan and the workshop guys were
looking to more detail more depth of the actual individual projects and I'll
point the projects out that they will spend more time on later on but I just
give it a very simple overview so if we if we walk through the workshop and look
at different projects you can see the velum town a few years back we just did
the engine and gearbox we call the systems overall and we always said we
need to get back to the suspension because the suspension was very worn out
so that's what we're doing now as planned quite pleased that we actually
stuck to our plans and so the guys have been taking as you can see the vehicle
is trust hold up even though the crane has a bit of a backup and we've taken
the front suspension units off it they were completely worn out and once again
it's amazing and worrying how things keep going with a lot of wear and tear
but we knew it was worn out but we had decided it's time to take the bid so it
took it to bid as you can see these units on both sides left and right a
completely removed they're still in place in the back so the guys have done
I've got a lot of quotes for the bearings and everything but again
Jonathan and the guys will talk about a lot more later on but we're now waiting
for parents to get it back in in one piece but that's what we said engine
gearbox few years back and now the suspension so one step not a complete
restoration just a systems overall making mechanically saving sound if we
now wander over to our engine clean room I'm not sure if you have seen this
before this was one of our requirements for the new workshop is have a space
where we can build engines and gearboxes or more technical items without having
to worry about all the dust flowing in from the workshop where every time you
start up a vehicle you open the doors it's like a bit of a Sahara all the dust
blowing in so we want to keep it a lot cleaner and tidy so what we have in here
at the moment is we have the engine here that belongs to the light Vickers
Vickers light mark for this was currently restored to us a few years
back and has run in our arena but we're to prom with the clutch we
it's in here there's the pressure plate the flywheel but here's the actual
gearbox and steering units and this was the clutch which was worn which had
burned out because the springs were a bit worn out so we've realised the
clutch with a special spring material it's what we do every time we work on
the vehicles here if there is potential asbestos involved we remove it now
replace it this spline as well was born it and was a rebuild made a new one in
site to workshop in the machine shop here in the workshop by our own staff
I'm very very proud that we did that and so as you can see it hopefully fits back
on here again there was a lot of a lot of play on it before and stuck but now
as you can see much better so this is just waiting assembly now I think we
have to machine this down a little bit to make sure it fits again on the on the
engine they will be reunited and then the whole thing will be fitted in the
vehicle we're looking in a bit while we're in the engine clean room you'll
probably recognize it this is a Rolls Royce meet here so it's the Technic
version of the famous Merlin engine even though it's quite different to the
Merlin it shares the basics it's a 27 litre v12 engine fantastic motor for the
for the the tanks like the the comments the Cromwell's
and of course the Centurion this one isn't out of our particular cincher but
we are going to bring our Centurion take out in here because it's currently not
running we need to do some engine work on it next to it on the pallet we have a
cylinder head and Bank so this bit of the engine which we managed to acquire
from some of our friends at Duxford from the company that restores and flies
historic aircraft these were fitted to a merlin engine but of course that's not
for air worthy standards so they kindly offered it to us we managed to purchase
it so we have a spare had some banks for our meteor so once this is out we are
very keen the guys are very keen to start working on a rolls-royce meteor
because it's one of those things we want to get a grip on here at the Tech Museum
because we were on quite a few of them so moving on
probably best this way again more bits and pieces there's a stillage full of
scorpion more of that later there's the Vickers light mark for you
look that in the clean room will be reunited in there so once it's being
reassembled will be lifted back in bit more work on a suspension and then again
go out again behind there to four three two that's P fours as a prototype 42
it's actually quite a significant vehicle for the tank museum it was alone
to a Railway Museum in Scotland it came back somewhat unexpectedly and we didn't
have any space for it so at least and this saves Lee safely in here after a
big vehicle move that we did last year for the world were together we have it
quite a few vehicles left over in here at the moment so almost every second
vehicle is storage but they need to be safely inside so yeah let's look at the
next project so again the chassis for example that's a bit of a it's a running
vehicle but we don't have any space for at the moment so just lives in the area
safely inside this vehicle the leopard warm Canadian leopard 123 see we have
two Canadian leopards 23 and 23 see we had a lot of work done on the the turret
and we had some experts from Holland helped us to change the hydraulic pump
for the turret system there's still some tweaking to do with it it needs to be
reset probably a bit like when you remove your radio from your car it
probably needs to code when you put it back in they did a fantastic job but
yeah it needs to bit of a reset control over leave probably more on that later
in one of the more in-depth a tank works of Diaries some suspension units just
came back from the Valentine another vehicle it probably wasn't featured any
of the previous tank workshop episodes is a mohawk piranha eight wheeler
normally it lives with the turret but we don't have the turret with it this is
sort of the mother vehicle of the Mohawk family we also have the Cougar X
Canadian cougar which may have seen here as part of the tanks an action display
that we run but this is part of that same family so you have the aid wheel
version is six mil version all different types of build ups on top with the
turret without a turret recovery you name it again one of those typical
things within the military you see one standard family of vehicles on different
uses chieftain in Berlin camo this wasn't loaned to the National
Military Museum in the Netherlands has returned from loans so here it is again
sort of storage till we find a home for it
Marquand centurion came out of the World War two exhibition it goes back in in a
few again a temporal is a very significant
vehicle so we don't want the just to be dotted around and move back and forth so
that's why temporary leaves in the workshop another vehicle we just
finished and again I think it was featured in previous tank workshop
Diaries is the Elvis scorpion we had a lot of work done on it and then just
what we thought it was right the engine failed engine had been in it for years
so Jacob our apprentice has done a fantastic job to rebuild a previous take
out we had so we're always very keen that instead of just replacing that we
repair what we have when we can and that's oh you saw the stillage of bits
and pieces early they were left over so basically what we did out of two engines
we built one he did a fantastic job I'm very proud that he did this and that we
have done this so hopefully a bit of testing and it should be fine again for
the tanks in action season and for later in the year just a very quick and all
the vehicles you see in here obviously part of a running fleet apart from the
vehicles restoring all these vega's are listed are scheduled in throughout a
year to take part in tanks and action tankfest or tiger day so that is a bit
of a there's a plan to what what we prioritize in the year and the type of
work needed that we make sure these vehicles can be ready for the upcoming
events just behind us here of course we have the m60 another vehicle that we run
for tankfest will go out it also has a week of tanks in action every week we do
of the nine tanks in action weeks is slightly different and this one will
feature for one particular week as well it's quite interesting out the v-shaped
hull very typifying on the m60 again big vehicle but yeah it's just currently
living here in the workshop a vehicle that we will spend a lot of energy on
the next few weeks is the t-72 we have two running t-72s a green one and a
sandy one as we call them so this is obviously the sandy one we have a group
coming from Slovakia with two t-72 trained technicians that will help us
with this vehicle we've had a quite a challenge getting this starting sequence
right on this vehicle it has an air start an electric start but there's
quite a sequence of sensors that need to be correct before it will operate the
starting system so they know everything about it we probably have to take the
engine out because there's quite an oil leak as well so yeah exciting to work
with people like we did on the leopard we're
needed we bring in the experts we can't know it all and we were getting better
at limiting ourselves to knowing what we're good at for example we've done the
matilda - we don't fantastic work on vehicles like the Scorpion or the
Valentine but at times we also need to know where we said put our hands up said
hey let's get some help in before we just having a go and that's a good
example on the t-72 and on the Leopards when it's sort of beyond our current
experience expertise let's bring in the experts so it's a t-72 hopefully being
worked on in the next few weeks and we'll hopefully report it the next tank
works if there is a bit more in depth as well how we doing with that not sure if
this has featured in a previous tank workshop Diaries but this is our small
machine shop here in the at the tank museum we've had a lot of fantastic work
we've got Bob kendall he has featured before he is building a jig at the
moment in the background there that's Jake for the suspension that's one of
the suspension units from the Valentine that we looked at previously so he's
making hoe clamping arrangement to safely disassembly there'll be a lot of
tension on these things to make sure we don't have a suspension unit blasting
through the workshop so again fantastic but Jonathan will talk more about it
later in one of his specific Valentine tank workshop Diaries we've got a sort
of got a a mill we've got a lathe and another thing Jacob who I mentioned has
been doing our j60 engine for this scorpion has done a fantastic job on
that he's now also machining some bits and pieces for the Valentine suspension
for example these are all for the top rollers again he's fantastic what he has
done some machining work I hope I don't mix him up here but just to give you an
idea how worn out some of the parts were this is the top roller from Bush's for
the Valentine so yeah it was time for a renewal there and he's done all this on
this on this lathe another thing I think Mike Hayton mentioned before in one of
his updates and a tank workshop diary about the talking by building a spare
Maybach engine and as part of that process we're also working with
University College London and they want to measure the air movement and the
other on the breather pipe of our Maybach Angel Tiger 131 to see how much
air moves actually doing operation and when it sits still because
with changing temperatures you have engines that breathe in and out so this
is one of the plugs that fits on one of our spare Maybachs
actually and the guys are just machining one so we can put a sensor in we didn't
want to modify the original so the guys have made this one and they will be
fitting a sensor to it so we can attach this to Tiger one through one to see
what sort of air movement there is and moisture movement through the breather
of one breather pipe of the Maybach on Tiger 131 so that's the lot of good work
goes on that really supports what's happening there without this we would
have to farm it all out and that wouldn't be very cost-effective so again
a lot of experience here and a lot of great support for the projects going on
there so hope that gives you a bit of an overview of what we do sort of on a
daily basis here at the Tank Museum a lot of the vehicles planned in for for
tanks and action for tank fest and different types of work from a serious
sort of suspension overhaul to more basic maintenance but it's all important
to keep these we've got about 55 rolling Vickers keep those going throughout the
season and get a better idea of how they work and we work where I need it with
sort of expertise from outside the organization to get the best of our team
and make sure we can keep looking after these vehicles so I hope you enjoyed
this episode if you want to subscribe to our Patriots team please do it really
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YouTube channel and if you can support them on patreon and standard pedo set up
like a car your gas you know a foot brake and you've got a clutch
yeah it's gonna take a while