welcome to the fifth episode of the tank Workshop Diaries which is a tank fest
special and this episode has been sponsored by great courses Plus which is
an online video learning site tune in to the end of the video will give you
information on a special offer
welcome to this episode of the tank worship Diaries specifically we're looking at tank first 2019 we had a
fantastic event with 20,000 people over three days so some of you would have
been there hopefully I hope you enjoyed it as much as we did it always takes a
lot of preparation and I'm very grateful for the guys everyone within the museum
to make this happen again safely so we're gonna look at some of the
preparation Gareth will talk us through some of the projects and some of the
planning of it and Jonathan we'll start by looking at the Churchill which they
managed to get ready for tank first in time
when we started the churchill project the idea was to get it ready for
tankfest the last time you saw it we're putting the gear box in and as you can
see she's now ready to go if you remember we changed the track on this by
salvaging a track from another vehicle even though this was Salvage track it
was quite tight and we had to run it several times up and down the apron
under tow in order to free it off and apply a bit of heat on some of the pins
gradually with all this wear what's happened is a track has now loosened up
and it's began to stretch so much so that you can see the loose bit down here
and the wheel is not coming into contact with it if you look at the adjusters
here you see that at the end of their run which means we can't take that slack
out so the only option open to us is to undo the adjusters and take the track
adjusting wheels all the way back and that will create enough space for us to
drop a link on either side of the vehicle we then reconnect the track
retighten them using the track adjusters only this time there will hopefully come
to about here with plenty of run left and all of the slack will be taken out
the last time you saw us we were put in in the gearbox and that's been
successfully done and we've hooked up the clutch with its associated air servo
the final piece of the puzzle was to make sure that all of the linkages
between the driver and the hull we're all complete bled and working correctly
the odd testing and the arena testing is important part of the project
it's our confirmation that the work we've carried out has been done to a
suitable standard we proved that the vehicle can run under its own power can
steer change gear and brake correctly we do that in the yard as much as we can
first we've done some eight from work with this vehicle to master the controls
in changing gear and then we take it out on the arena both for those drivers
confidence and for our confidence them that we've got no major leaks
things we typically find out when we carry out this testing the inequities of
a crash gearbox and we also have an added feature on the church or whether
it as a stopping a gearbox stopping facility when you put those down on the
clutch it works the same way as a stick change on a Centurion for those
it just slows the transmission down enough so that the gear can slot in and
that took quite a bit of getting used to a hydraulic clutch is also a bit
different to one that's on a linkage the field can be sometimes a little bit
deceptive and it takes practice in order to be able to control the wedge
specifically for the gear change when they're very important another thing
that we learnt is that when you start the engine first thing in the day you
have to let it warm up before you apply any pressure to the accelerator at all
this engine has to be what really hot in order to function well and to get the
correct response from the accelerator that we've talked about by way of a
summary the Churchill project has given the team an excellent opportunity to
work with hydraulics and pneumatics that work in concert in order to get the
clutch the brakes and the steering going on this vehicle every one of us has
learnt something about British tank design and about how to fix a variety of
difficult problems including if you think back to Bob's hydraulic testing
rig as you can see from the top the catwalks aren't fitted yet that will
create an awful lot of more dust than we would normally have that's something for
the driver to
from the apprentices to the seasoned technicians and we've spent over 600
hours on this vehicle for those of you that watch the Matilda Diaries you'll be
able to see the difference in appearance of will the work that we've done on this
Churchill and the finished job on the Matilda it's important to understand why
there is a difference our brief on this project was simply to get the vehicle up
and running in safe running order in order that it could take park in time
for s 2019 we didn't have the time or the budget to do a complete restoration
which is what you saw on the Matilda - that's not to say in the future that
that won't happen it's just at this point we've achieved the brief which was
to get it ready for tankfest 2019
from the previous episode of worship diaries she would have seen house
they're working on the type 59 clutch assembly this was in preparation to get
the vehicle ready for tankfest unfortunately due to a number of reasons
the vehicle can no longer participate as we have been unable direct find the
fault in the time required we had to verify LAN test and it was running
really well actually we were doing five six seven laps going
up and down through the gearbox and the vehicle was performing well near the end
of the test we went to go for our fifth gear change at which point the clutch
pedal then refused to re-engage we lost all Drive so Alistair and the team
worked frantically try and get the vehicle Prats but as I said
unfortunately to no avail we think that the main issue is the the
clutch plates on the type 59 they're steel on steel so on a conventional
collapse you'll have a steel plate with a friction material on with this it's
quite rudimentary so it's a series of steel plates that are forced together we
think what may have happened is the clutches were slipping slightly which of
course enormous Mahe there's actually cause the plates to weld together we
won't be able to ascertain this properly until we actually get the radiators back
up and start to strip the clutch down again we're now four days away from tank
fest and we just don't have the time but the vehicle will be on display in the
museum in the future and potentially we'll see on Tiger Day
when you're working with mechanics tanks complex pieces of equipment we don't we
can't always get it right this being one of those instances it's something that
as a department we've got quite little experience on working on me with
soviet-era vehicles we actually make quite a lot of
progress in terms of what we learn and how this vehicle operates equally as we
manage to rectify a number of other faults that we found with the vehicle
when we were stripping it down but it's a learning curve if you don't always get
it right and given the time frame which we've got now the tank that's looming
it's just not possible to do that's not to say that we won't have it sorted in
the near future though
as I mentioned on the type 59 we can't always get it right the Challenger 1
behind me it's different to this we've actually managed to get this
vehicle fixed we've had support from horsemen suspension up in Bath we shall
see in a future episode this vehicle has had a lot of work
on its suspension and when it was on test we noticed that the engine it generated
an oil leaks so the guys you see working behind me we've had to pack out we've
ID'd whether fault was it was actually the oil feed and return pipes from B
Bank turbo they've now been refilled with new gaskets and as you can see the
guys are just getting ready to put the decks back on this vehicle will be
running a TANKFEST and you will still go around the arena
for TANKFEST 2019 we managed to get 50 vehicles together again some of our own
vehicles and some of the guest vehicles of course the army with 13 vehicles so over
60 vehicles inside which is obviously quite a logistical challenge but every year is
quite difficult for us to select hopefully a new selection of vehicles that are
different than the previous year to get the variety going and to be able to
achieve this over the last few years we started working more and more with guest
vehicle owners private collectors some foundations but also foreign armies and
their historic collections so not only did we have the British Army obviously
on site with 13 currently serving vehicles but we all had the French army
with their fantastic Panther from Saumur their Museum in France we had the
Belgium army with the National Military Museum joining us with their Sherman
Firefly and we also had the Dutch army joining us with five low-loaders this year
three of those were vehicles with the liaison exercise with the British Army
two boxes and a recovery vehicle recovering leopards that later performed
in TANKFEST as well and they also brought the amazing PRTL the
anti-aircraft gun which could be seen on Saturday and Sunday here at The Tank
Museum so it's always a big challenge to make sure you have enough vehicles
plenty of variety for over 60 vehicles needs to be all in one area in the Tank Park
that's where they leave from to enter the arena and come back from the
arena as there's a lot of logistics going on and the lineup is very
important what vehicle leaves for what slots and how they come back who
marshals them in how often the big has being used so now we show Jonathan and
Gareth planning this ahead of TANKFEST to see how much thinking goes on before
we put the vehicles out there in the tank park
one of the key features at TANKFEST is the tank museums tank park the tank
park is where approximately 50 vehicles operate from during the displays
throughout the day not only that the tank park was actually open to the
public in between vehicle displays allowing visits to get up close speak to
the crews and really actually get to see what these tanks are like up close and
personal this year I've put Jonathan in charge of the tank park
Jonathan will explain to you some of the difficulties we have in terms of getting
the vehicles in the correct order so they don't inhibit each other
throughout the course of the day because of a success TANKFEST year on year we
get more guest vehicles and we've got an increasing amount of platforms to move
within the same amount of space and in order to plan that we need to represent
each tank with one of these cards we set them up where their starting positions
will be at the start of the day and then we run through each serial because a lot
of the tanks are parked in front of each other some of them are up to three
vehicles deep and we must be absolutely sure that when we set them up on the
ready line for a particular display when they come back in we can put them
in position without them boxing in a tank that we need for a future serial
from the Friday and a Saturday the tank park needs to be really
the Sunday it's less important
so by having the numbers on we can make sure the vehicles are reversed back into
their correct lane as we've got here on the table you'll see we've some of the
layout already in place the main reason for that being is the main battle tanks
we always try and separate out from the smaller vehicles for a number of reasons
first things they take up the most room and secondly and their mobility is a lot
lower so you'll see across that this back row they're all parked up
individually as you can imagine if you had three deep main battle tanks you run
out of room very quickly equally at the end of the tank park the British Army
their vehicles their was there as well so the tank park is a combination of Tank Museum vehicles
guest vehicle owners and the British Army the main planning tool that we use is the
order of events this one is on version 11 which gives you some idea of how many
times I've had to massage this it contains all the information for each of
the serials that we run during the day from the time that each serial goes out
to the crew that actually man the vehicles and as I said before we need to
lay these cards out at the start point so we can run the entire day without
boxing any of the tanks in the tanks for all laid out as they will be on the
day and now Gareth and I will run each serial individually putting them on the
ready line and then going through the recovery phase where we get them back
into their original positions not only for the next serial but also at the end
of the day ready for the next day of events for example the first serial or
includes the Hotchkiss Jeep the Daimler Dingo the Morris Armoured Car the Daimler
Armoured Car the M16 half-track the Universal Carrier
the Valentine DD the Stewart M3 Sherman Sherman Firefly as you can
imagine getting them out getting them back getting them into position is OK on
the planning table we'd have problems if one of these broke down on the day we
already know that there will be a few situations that we'll have to deal with
on the hoof but we have to start somewhere
we saw it out on the tabletop as you've seen but sooner or later we're gonna
have to - out on the tank part for real and here
we are where in a few weeks time this will be the hub of operations for all
vehicle related movement for TANKFEST 2019
I need to know that everyone is on the same sheet
serial set up the right hand side when the first serial come back in they come
back on the left-hand side get them on the way in and then we reverse them in
in the same order that they're in now so everyone happy very safe please do
not reverse anything unless there is somebody behind it you see how tight it
is in there and make sure that the guy at the back of the vehicle has got eye
contact with the guy at the front of the vehicle
drink plenty of water and from
as you saw on the table that was the table planning and we've done the
shuffle of the Thursday and now this is the first serial just about to go out
be prepared to turn right and wait for the Half-track and carrier to catch up
nice and slow please
inaudible
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