Drop Bear badges to both Keith and Richard! It started out in life as a rear engined Armoured Car chassis, to which the New Zealanders built their own bodies patterned on the Indian design. These proved underpowered and had poor off road performance, so were offered to the NZ Forestry service who converted them into "Quad Tankers" and "Quad Pumpers". That bloody bushfire red paint gets everywhere!
I found this arrangement quite interesting for a couple of mechanical reasons:
Broken rule no 1: Being a Ford transfer case, the shifter bracket is not bolted to the side of the case. It is operated by a series of linkages from the front of the vehicle.
Broken rule no 2: The rear facing part of the case has the cover (as usual), but the case now slopes down to the left side of the vehicle. Why redesign a whole new case, why not just turn it back-to-front?
Broken rule no 3: As there is no provision in the case to reverse the rotation of the input from the engine, the axles have been flipped over to rotate the other way. This means that the diff centres are on the left side of the vehicle, unique amongst CMPs.
Have we no GM rear engined Armoured Car owners out there to compare the GM version?
Picture below is of a C011QRF chassis ex Canada destined for India (10.50-16 tyres):
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