We are in front of the amazing 1920's Rolls Royce and we are joined by Captain Fitzgerald from the Defense Forces of Ireland.
Thank you Captain Fitzgerald for joining us.
Tell us a little about this amazing vehicle.
It's one of 13 that were handed over by the British to the Irish in 1922.
It takes pride of place in the Irish defence force vintage fleet.
It was refurbished in 2011, following an eighteen month programme.
It is a vehicle that is steeped in military tradition and in historic tradition regarding the Rolls Royce vehicle.
It's based on a Silver Ghost chassis, 1920's pattern.
It's approximately 4.5 ton fully combat laden, 3.5 ton unladen.
It's a 40/50 horse power engine.
It's a side valve engine.
It is a vehicle that is steeped immensely in the Rolls Royce history and one that we are very proud of.
We are now joined by Sergeant Downey who is the driver of the fantastic Rolls Royce.
He is going to give us a quick brief outline of some of the technical components.
Thanks very much for joining us Sergeant Downey.
It's a pleasure.
I'm going to introduce you here to the engine and show you some of the main components of the engine and how it works.
Then we will start it and we can see it running.
Okay, right.
On the front of the engine here the fan belt is made from leather and it's sectioned so that we can take out a link.
And replace that link if the fan belt was to break.
We don't have a problem looking for a new fan belt.
We would just check, take out the link, make the adjustments.
The distributor.
It's a 6 cylinder engine and each cylinder has 2 spark plugs to it.
One set of spark plugs works on and off the distributor.
If your distributor fails,
you will have a magneto on the other side of the engine that will keep you running in case you are caught up in a battle.
Moving on is the carburettor.
The fuel system is controlled by pressure of approximately 1.5 to 2 pounds psi.
What happens is, when we are starting the car, we have to prime the fuel tank on the car with a hand pump,
to bring it up to approximately 1.5 pounds to 2 pounds of psi to keep the fuel running to the carburettor.
On the car we have a Claxton horn.
If we listen carefully, I'll give you a demonstration of it.
That's fantastic!
The car has been completely refurbished in 2011.
We stripped the car down completely.
We took the paint work off and every nut and bolt out of the vehicle, re-conditioned everything and built the car back up.
So here you see a perfect example of a car that is 93 years old.
What's it like physically driving then?
It's actually a quite comfortable car to drive, surprisingly, and the steering is very light on it.
When she comes to a junction or anything like that even in 4th gear, she will take off again in 4th gear.
Changing up and down the gear box is not a problem,
so you just generally start her, get her going up into top gear and away you go.
Fantastic!
Unless you stop, you don't need to change gear. - Fantastic!
Unless you stop, you don't need to change gear.
Brilliant! Can we hear her running?
Yeah, I'm going to start her up now for you...
That would be fantastic. - Yeah, I'm going to start her up now for you...
That would be fantastic.
Thank you very much.
No problem at all, it's a pleasure. - Thank you very much.
No problem at all, it's a pleasure.
We are now going to start the car and I will talk you through the start-up procedure.
Very simple, really.
Because we have no fuel pump, we have to prime the fuel tank.
We use this pump here and we bring it up to approximately 1.5 to 2 psi.
Okay, there she is.
I can see here on the fuel gage that I've got the required pressure up.
I'm turning on my ignition.
I'm throwing it over to run on the battery and the magneto, so that if one was to fail the other would start the car.
I advance my timing, bring up my governor of speed and give her a rich mixture.
Checking that the car is now in neutral and the hand brake is applied, I push my foot on the starting button here.
And away she goes like a true Rolls Royce on the first go.
I'm now going to bring back my governors a small bit.
Weaken my mixture.
And I'm going to retard my ignition.
The car is now started.
This item here is a hand-cranking magneto.
Should your ignition system fail at the engine compartment and you had to get out of a situation fairly quickly,
turning the handle will give you a spark in the engine to get you out of there.
Light switch, interior light switch.
This panel here controls our side lights, our head lights and this switch here is for our charging system.
There is no cutout on our charging system, so we have to do it manually by just pushing in and pulling out the button.
This is our speedometer.
Here we have a temperature gage.
This lever here opens the front covers at the radiator,
so if you are in a situation where you are fired on, we can close the radiator covers to stop the radiator being shot up.
This clock here is our amp meter, this is our voltage.
This is our oil pressure gage for engine oil.
And this clock here is our fuel gage.
Okay.