ladies gentlemen welcome to our fourth episode of the tank workshop Diaries
thank you again for your positive feedback and the comments and the
question have had we are in one of our vehicle sheds with vehicle around me as
you can see a lot of the vehicles we use regularly for tanks and action the
chieftain the Leopards behind me here and that's a project for the future of
Warrior Project and the t-34 that's against been parked up there only have
time to actually work in it properly a lot of these vehicles will also be going
out for TANKFEST it's only four weeks to go for TANKFEST and the guys in the
workshop are flat out at the moment preparing for all these vehicles we have
just under 350 vehicles out for TANKFEST as an update on the last episode we're
working hard on the churchill mark 3 one of the key vehicles we're trying to get
ready for TANKFEST first the engine is has now been placed back in the hole and
all plumbed up so that's ready to go Bob made a specialist tool to test our
hydraulic systems and a lot of the systems are hydraulic hydraulically
operated on that on the Churchill so tell more about that and last time as
well they showed you how they made a tool to disassemble one of the
suspension units and let's start with that side of it to see how that tool is
being used
we've got this steel back from the laser cutters and as you can see although the
profile of the tool actually runs down here we've had an extra bit added on the
bottom the purpose of that is so that we can put it between centers on the lathe
and then turn it into round and put the thread on later we'll cut this bit off
and then it'll match the profile on the engineer and drawings we've also made
the pins that go in the bottom and if you remember they'll go into the plate
at the bottom of the spring in order that we can compress it they'll
obviously be two of these at the top then we have the thick piece of steel
that goes across the top of the suspension unit and both of these
threaded bars go through the holes and then we have a couple of slip washers
and finally a bolt and by screwing down on these bolts either side of the plate
will then compress a spring and be able to move the plate from underneath
wonderful cannot from drawing to manufacture first time it's been done in
some here
yeah
right
Thanks
we also had to do an awful lot of work on this ta wheel the bearings were
completely shot and the seals were gone there hadn't had much oil in a while and
so it had to be stripped and completely rebuilt just to highlight the best
practice and why we do that if I roll the one on the left hand side that's now
been completely serviced and the one on the right you'll see that the one on the
right that still needs work doing to it comes to a halt a lot quicker and this
one spinning nice and freely that's Judah to old oil barons that need
cleaning seals often you can strip these apart and put them back together again
and they'll perform much better but it just sort of highlights really why they
need to work on the suspension because this is down to resistance the more
resistance you create and multiply it through all of the running gear means
the engines got to work harder in order to overcome it and if it does that then
it increases wear on the engine and reduces its life so it's always a good
idea where you can to service all your engine
having completed all of the engine testing on the stand the next stage is
to put the engine in the tank itself and you can see now the engine is in
position and it's all been plumbed in and connected up because of other
controls that control by the driver a hydraulic we now need to know that when
for example the driver presses down on the accelerator pedal the engine
actually accelerates at this end and Bob's made a test rig in order for us to
do this on the bench the Churchill has got quite a
complicated hydraulic system for its controls so the brake throttle the
clutch and all the steering is operated by hydraulic cylinders to make sure
these are functioning correctly before we fit them into the vehicle we've made
up this simple test rig that's the master cylinder so what we'll do in
terminal 2 in turn test each master cylinder for the separate systems
together with its slave which is the other end the sweetcorn thing actually
acting as a hydraulic reservoir a moment for the fluid and then I'm just
operating by hand in the vehicle normally beyond a foot pedal or the
steering tiller this particular example here is part of the clutch setup you've
got the master cylinder there this is part of the slave cylinder system it's a
slightly complicated on the Churchill you know it's an air server assisted
hydraulics so you're actually using the hydraulic system to open a small piston
in there which then opens an air valve that's air at 80 pounds per square inch
through the valve in there which then operates this air servo which pushes on
the clutch withdrawal system
in the vehicle there's a compressor driven off the gearbox which gives us 80
psi air pressure to operate all these subsidiary systems we're running off a
ring main hydraulic an air ring main which we've set to a key PS I'll just
put the connection on there so there's no air into the air side of the system
that's the hydraulic side I move back here now and operate the lever what's
that is done the hydraulic side has opened an air valve which has let the 80
psi air into the system the servos in advance I simulate the redraw spring and
they close it up and we'll repeat that
one of the problems we've got with this particular part of the system is that
over a period of time say about 15-20 minutes after we've initially bled the
system on the rig is that it's getting air migrating back into the hydraulic
system and therefore stopping it functioning so somewhere along the line
there's a seal not operating correctly inside the system I suspect I've checked
any external links we don't seem to have any of those so it's almost certainly
going to be something in there so I need to go on inspect that find out what's
wrong with it fix it and insert it back up again test it to my own satisfaction
what we normally do is then leave it overnight something like that and then
if it's still functioning in the morning we're reasonably happy that everything's
okay this is exactly the reason why we do this on a tip on the bench because
it's much simpler to do here than inside the vehicle where as I mentioned earlier
we had 16 feet of piping the way puts the rest of the vehicle and an engine
and everything else so if we're happy with this the only thing that can
possibly be wrong in the vehicle is any malfunctioning inner pipe work
just to orientate you and the engines now in and in the front as we've already
explained in between the engine and the gearbox that goes in this big space that
we have here is the clutch and the cooling fan which will bolt on the back
of the flywheel of the engine if you think back to the Matilda Diaries and
issues that we had with the gearbox because it was so tight and there was so
much going on you can see here how much more room we've got with the three
simple mounts know also that there is no coolant pipes going underneath it all of
the pipe work is all nice and neat and going over the top so they have kind of
learned some lessons from the Matilda so compared to the Matilda then you can see
from the open space down here that it's a much simpler lift and not only that
but actually once you've got it in there's a lot more room to play with
around the outside of the assembly
we're here in one of our vehicle shirts where we keep a lot of the running
vehicles for the season and the warrior we've added to our running list again
and a lot of the work was done by Alistair who'll be talking about it next
what he did to the vehicle we had a fuel starvation problem it
turns out it was caused by an algae and the diesel so it's clogged up a lot of
the diesel lines and the filters so Alistair would talk more about what he
has done to clear all these lines to make the vehicle running again we've
used it during our tank selection display and it will be used again during
tankfest later this month hi this is our warrior command vehicle and suddenly
we've got a bit of an issue with her we've found there's a problem with our
fuel system this here is our fuel tank and to the left the fuel tank we have
what's known as the collector tank and what we've ascertained is the vehicle
was actually been running on all the field that was remaining in the in the
collector tank there and as a result the collector tank is obviously emptied and
we now have fuel starvation issues so what we've got to do is basically every
single pipe we have to try and clean out get all this contaminant out of it
there's a lot of contaminant in there just looking on it on the end of the
screwdriver there but this is one of the fuel pumps here and you can see how the
contaminant has got into the pumps who will be able to clean these so you can
see the veins of the pump there you can see the buildup and terminan walk
through so it's pretty the process of giving it a good clean flushing it out
that will resolve the issue and should be up and running soon as
as well as our permanent staff we also have workshop volunteers who two
weekends a month come in in order to work on projects such as this this is
Matilda - it was used as a gate guard and it's now been donated to the museum
so that we can transfer it into a desert vehicle for our new World War two
display which is opening next year as well as tin work on the outside and
working on the track adjusters there's also bigger jobs such as repairing this
broken a towing eye not only are they working on the Matilda - but they're
also working on the dingoo this is an opportunity for the workshop staff the
permanent ones and the workshop volunteers to work together our guys
down the new workshop were building the gearbox and the main engine for this
vehicle whilst the volunteers do the paint job which has been transferred the
other way from a desert vehicle back to a Western European one
on these pallets around me our suspension is off of one of our
challenger one main battle tanks they've currently been overhauled by Horseman
defense systems the original manufacturer of higher gas units were
actually in the process of waiting for another six units to be delivered so we
can then do the repair to our challenger one which will be seen running at tank
Fest this year the actual overall we also documented in a future episode of
workshop tires
so here we are in one of the other vehicle she has an F shet as we call it
on our Polish t-72 we had some fantastic support a few weeks back from our
Belgian colleagues from the National Military Museum in Belgium the war
heritage Institute as they're called now because they have a lot of experience
with T tanks because they have been operating over quite a few years and
have a Polish gentleman France who has been coming over with Dani to help us
with that t-72 and I type 59 and some of the work we have done on the t-72 is we
always we put new tracks on at last year but it's jumping tracks at the moment on
the sprockets they drop the sprockets round because really you need to produce
pockets on when you change track but at the moment we do not have any spare set
so if any of you can help us with a set of t-72 rear sprockets we would
appreciate it because we need two new ones so until that's resolved the
vehicle will not be used we using our other our sandy t-72 for tankfest
instead but they did also some great work inspecting the vehicle with us that
our technicians understand better what exactly it is that is important to look
after we changed quite a few of the filters we did some engine tuning and
the engine runs better than it has ever done so thanks again to our colleagues
Danny and Franz in Belgium who will be coming back to the tech museum for tank
fest in four weeks time with their Sherman Firefly as a guest vehicle but
we've done this a lot more in recent years working with other museums or with
operators that have particular experience on a vehicle because we find
out it's the best way to teach our staff and volunteers how to operate a vehicle
how to maintain the vehicle so it's a good partnership with other museums we
have established over the last few years
so with literally four weeks to go for tank first we are now in the busy period
in the workshop getting everything ready we have just under fifty vehicles for
tankfest lined up this year the vast majority are ready to go we still have
two vehicles on the display fleet side the chieftain ARV the armored recovery
vehicle and the type 59 tanks still being worked on and Alistair and Rory
will talk in more detail about these two vehicles well here we are in the
business end of a t59 this is another vehicle that we're
trying to prepare ready for tank fest - coming tankfest we've had a plethora of
problems with this vehicle it came in initially for the bearings on the clutch
and the contamination on the break throughs where I'm actually stood is
where the actual transfer box is we had to take the transfer box out required a
couple of gaskets to be replaced on that which was now completed we had to remove
the gearbox which basically is where understood now with the gearbox out what
was exactly wrong with the clutch we found out to be the output bearing on
the the main shaft and also the bearing on the release bearing had gone
fortunately one of our surprise has been able to come up with the bearings once
that's been completed and the clutch has been rebuilt we can then put the the
actual gearbox back in position the transfer box which sits in along this
side of the vehicle here and on top of the transfer box is actually the starter
motor so a fair bit of work to do but we're confident that we'll be able to
get it done ready for you all to see at tankfest this year another vehicle
that's appearing at tankfest would be achieved in half we brought it in
because we had some problems of the HTT ram which is a hydraulic tensioner weld
at the back of it it cracked which caused it to leak which meant that we
had to replace it with the new one that we've got now all that's left to do
now is to fit the stub axle the refit the idler wheel and then we can put the
track and then we can take it on the road test to make sure it works as it
should be
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