Humber FV1600 - ARN 105-819 - Restoration moves forward.

[Dave Mills]

Learning fast about the application and use of POR 15 paint. Some recent shots of preperation work.

#1 - Rear drive axles overhauled and ready for reassembly.
#2 - Rear brake backing plates completed, Shoes away being relined
#3 - Chassis rail POR'd and waiting for reassembly
#4 - Rear Diff and Transfer Case assembly, waiting on shaft seals.
#5 - Outer rear Tracta Joint showing wear from misalingment.

Have had to replace at least 60% of the mechanical parts due to poor maintenance and repair. Thankfully the donor vehicle supplied all the parts i required. Best $400 i have spent.

In town we are lucky to have a Steam preservation group and they still run their machine shop. Had all new steam quality brass bushes made for the drive axles, installed, reamed and honed to suit for an amazing donation of $150. Nothing like having retired tradesmen doing this kind of work 5 minutes from home.

Next stage is to gather the remainder of the parts required and then reassemble the rear end. Finally starting the uphill climb to completion, at least for one section of the vehicle.

The cab is currently getting the rust cut out and repaired and stored off site as NO room left in the yard.

Cheers,

Dave.

[fv1620]

Coming on nicely, your efforts are greatly admired. That's quite a bit of wear on the Tracta, are you planning on doing anything about that?

Incidentally I was looking in EMER WV N253 June 1954 & the bearings are packed with grease of course & on assembly the hub is filled oil as one would expect.

Put an amendment in June 1956 states:
Delete "fill with oil"
Insert "pack with grease LG-280"

Yet all Servicing Schedules up to the final one in 1976 ignore that & still require topping up with oil OEP220.

Did the Australian Army run off EMERs for the Commers or did they produce their own angle on things in the form of EMEIs I wonder?

The Commer handbook I have refers to oil top-ups as well.

Many Pigs in N.Ireland were fitted with lubrication nipples on the hubs to facilitate speedy top-ups. Unfortunately some owners interpret this as an invitation inject grease into the hub rather than oil.

[Dave Mills]

The Tracta Joints are scrap value only. Management to retrieve near new joints from the donor vehicle. Very lucky indeed.

[fv1620]

Ah that's good yes a donor vehicle, I have one of those. Not much left of it now though.

One of the most unusual donations it made was a torsion bar to a Pig owner. His had snapped over night, a friend tried to repair it .....by welding it

[Tony Wheeler]

Originally Posted by Dave Mills

Have had to replace at least 60% of the mechanical parts due to poor maintenance and repair. Thankfully the donor vehicle supplied all the parts i required. Best $400 i have spent.

Glad to hear it Dave, we didn't get to save much out of that yard so it's good to know the Humber was worth recovering. Like most vehicles there it appears to have been in excellent condition before being parked out in rainy Gippsland for decades. Heartbreaking stuff really.

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[Dave Mills]

Yes Tony, and I am very grateful for your efforts in saving this vehicle for me from the scrapper, a great job indeed and of course to Euan for recovering it and transporting it to Seymour.

Having a donor vehicle certainly helps with any restoration, a shame to dismantle one to make one but this is how it must be in this day and age and we must make decisions which go against our conscious.

Keeping in mind that 130 only had been purchased by the Aust Govt, they are rare vehicles over here in the land of Aust and in fact world wide as many had been converted to the PIG in the UK, hence the time, money and effort to restore this vehicle is well spent and invested.

Dave.

[fv1620]

Originally Posted by Dave Mills

Keeping in mind that 130 only had been purchased by the Aust Govt,

That's interesting Dave I never realised it was as many as that even. Does anyone have any details of the chassis serial numbers I wonder?

I have the details of all 3,700 UK issued ones, allowing for the armoured conversions, missile support variants & wireless light leaves about 1,668 that remained as FV1601 or FV1602.

Of those 130 Commers were they all FV1601 or were there any FV1602 I wonder?

[Tony Wheeler]

Originally Posted by Dave Mills

Keeping in mind that 130 only had been purchased by the Aust Govt, they are rare vehicles over here in the land of Aust and in fact world wide as many had been converted to the PIG in the UK, hence the time, money and effort to restore this vehicle is well spent and invested.

Absolutely Dave, I couldn't agree more. I've become quite a fan of the Humber through you, and given their extreme rarity in Australia I'm pleased to have been involved in some small way in saving one. I imagine very few of the 130 will survive for posterity, largely because they present an extreme challenge for restorers, in terms of body rust and mechanical complexity. I see them lying around occasionally and they're invariably in bad shape, with no prospects even as a donor vehicle. Hopefully this one at Bookham will find a good home eventually, as it looks to be quite restorable, from a distance at least! Anyway I commend you on your dedication to what is shaping up as extremely high standard resto, and I look forward to seeing it in glorious full gloss DBG!

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[Dave Mills]

Bookham, have been through this yard on a Champ Camp and have been up close and personal to the Humber in the pic. No go zone i am afraid as well as the champ sitttng beside it, just to long in the open and rather butchered.

However, there is another couple of gems in that yard, one is a Ferret covered in blackberries still upright on its runflats as auctioned from the army disposal auctions; we managed to prise open a hatch and take a sneek peak inside, it is all there and from memory the crew helmets are still plugged into their sockets. It also was carrying its last units colours still painted on the gaurds.

The other hidden gem is in the top shed in the right hand corner as you look up the hill and it is a Humber FV1600, unmolested and 100% complete as sold from army disposal auctions, Richard Couttes-Smith and myself drooled over it when we found it buried amongst all the wartime jeep canvas stacked in crates sitting on the trailer of a Blitz semi also in the shed and the many, many other vehicles stored undercover in a nice dry environment although covered in inches of dust.

The owner will not sell a thing and it took a lot of talking by others to get all of us scroungers into that yard. It is a shame that this kind of hoarding goes on but each to their own i say. Rich and i both felt that we could have just added fuel, dipped the oil add 24 volts and driven the old girl out of the shed. Of course we would have had to remove the back wall of the shed.

From memory Rich scribbled down the Serial Number of this vehicle.

Dave.

[Richard Coutts-Smith]

Yellow Humber had been converted to a spray unit, would have been quite a useful set up in it's time. We certainly did have a good poke around, plenty to see and cry over, like the DUKW converted to a mobile grain bin... Being the sort of Gentleman that typifies Champ Owners, not a thing came out through the gate except photos.

Humber/Commers for Clive
Chassis number 6310001 to 6310150
150 trucks, 14 of which were FFR
ARN 105 674 to ARN 105 823
Sold off '67, '68, a couple in '69

[fv1620]

Thank you Richard I knew I cold rely on you. Nice to have the definitive info. They started selling them off a bit earlier over here 1962-67, mostly 1964. But the Pigs started going 1967 & this continued into the early 1970s until they started buying them back again!

That Commer handbook I have had a print run of 250, whether it has any significance I don't know. Perhaps they wanted a lot of spare copies or maybe they hoped there might have been more than 150 sold!