Thread: The Ultimate FC

The heater out of the vehicle has given me good access under the dashboard, so it looks like I will try and sort out various small wiring problems I have and treat a bit more rust I found.
I have learnt that the leaking heater core stops leaking when the coolant tank is empty(rear LHS body pillar), the heatercore is still higher than the engine radiator(under the cargo floor) so it causes no real problems to the engine cooling.( only green stuff running around in the cabin and out though the hull drain holes.
I had it in my head to call the vehicle... Seabold... if I didn't find any other names under the paint work.
I though of another name....Waterhorse
I think it reflects the use of the vehicle????????????
I have been enjoying driving the old beast around the vacant blocks of land near work lately.
The adtension this thing attracts is hard to get used too.
Cars stop and pull over to look, or honk the horn and get a thumbs up, They follow the thing etc and wait for me to stop and ask me what it is.
People are telling me they had seen it driving around etc, when I meet them it town .
I think the fact that it is army and big and unusual looking with a noise to match.
Little kids love its Thunderbirds looks.



I am also out of money for things like paint and the heater core repair and is slowing up progress a bit, as the now very short days and cool weather.
Ron

Hippo (water horse)

Originally Posted by THE BOOGER

Hippo (water horse)

The Hippo.... That could stick ya know! The Waterhorse would suit it.

Seahorse and you could have a pic painted on along with the name.

Yes I was thinking how much the description ( Hippo ) suits the big silly thing.
Closer to the truth than said for a laugh...

Heater box coming along.
Heater core cost $50 dollars to get sorted out.
The original sponge foam used inside to seal things was rotten, I found down at the hardware store a special sponge foam stuff with like a tar substance soaked though it used to seal gaps in roofs worked really well but expensive.
The other good news is my cabinet sand blaster is up and running well again.

Access to under the dash board means the fuel / engine oil guage is now working.
Fuel guage working will come in handy as the tank is extremely hard to manually dip and it is difficult to judge fuel burn.
Rolls specs for the B81 motor is 80 litres per hour at full power..............more than a litre a minute!...
The fuel guage doubles as a oil level guage with a push button on the dash board so the engine oil supply can be checked with the cargo area loaded.
The cargo area is above the engine and so the oil tank dip stick cannot be accessed loaded.
The fire wire system is now working, I found it had been disconnected , so I suspect it may go off with false warnings when the stalwart is used more.
I am not impressed with the quality of the instruments and switch gear on this vehicle.( very poor in fact )
The Stalwart never used the standardised water proof instruments and switches of other CT vehicles of the British army as Alvis designed the Stalwart as a civie design and not the army design board.
water jet buckets are removed ( a easy job ) for painting.

The main reason for removing the water jet buckets is so I can needle gun and paint the hull behind them and the fact the weather of late has not been good for working out doors after knock off time in the very late afternoon.
I am very slowly winning with this project, bit by little bit.

I gave the Stalwart a good work out on the weekend.
It still has too many things going on to reliably drive it any long distances.
As expected the fire warning horn went off after 15 minutes of driving, so I need to do some home work on that one..........one of the fire wire circults must be shorting out.
I pulled the power supply to it.
The motor takes along time to warm up as does the transmission oils and then the machine starts to come alive.
I suspect I am getting fuel supply problems as the motor performs well and then will die with pumping on the accelerator pedal helping indicating a lack of fuel.
The mechanical fuel pump has been replaced in recent times before I got the vehicle, but I suspect the fuel pump replacement was not the answer to the problem.
I may have to drain the fuel tank and see if there is a in tank fuel strainer or some thing.
Too much work to do to the big silly thing and not enough time.
Some private land I was using to travel to a play area to another piece of private land I lost access to as the owner died in a plane crash.
Doing this saved any problems with driving on public roads and having to throw on the oversize vehicle signs, club plates etc.
I found some one taking some video of the Stalwart doing its thing and waved and I got a friendly wave back.
I gave him a ride and it turns out his brother is a 4WD nut and owns the land I was driving on.....cut along story short I made another friend and welcome to drive the stalwart though their place anytime I want.
Giving local land owners a ride in the stalwart has been a good PR.
They want me to take the Stalwart out to Yalwal.....:
One day may be over the rock steps....the Stalwart is too big to fit down Monkey gum.
I have a plan the replace the standard fuel filter with a very similar one as the elements for the standard one are too hard to find in this country.
I am going to use a standard CAV diesel filer housing , but instead of the R2132P filter element , use a larger longer version, I think it is a R2388P ? which is cheap and advailable.
Just use a adaptor plate onto the standard bracket and while I am at it mount a 24volt electric fuel pump as a back up and primer .........may also help with the fuel flow problems I have currently.
I hope the electric pump can do more than the 1.2 litres of fuel a minute needed at peak load and I suspect the standard mechanical pump can barely do.
I also found a really good mud hole for the stalwart to play in, but a lot of work cleaning the stalwart afterwards.
( sorry I was too busy driving to get any Video of it.)

Sons are some times useful in getting the mud off........I think he enjoyed himself playing shot gun in the hatch of the Stalwart.