Military Lightweight Forum

Bob Fell wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 20, 2018 8:34 pm

Ongoing refurb - gone is the UJ but had to respray the rear of the tub LH top quarter panel as the colour under the UJ was so much lighter, also did the LR badge - 2 weeks or so it'll darken off and match the rest of the tub, the light was also playing on it too so looks brighter than it is being fresh paint. Next to do is removing the tow hitch and getting rid of the ridiculous PO red paint that seems so common these days - should be black or NATO green, period. Always was on our wagons.
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Looking good Bob, and as always a mine of information. Thanks for posting. One day, one happy day I shall have a landy half as good as yours.

Andy

Well it's been an exciting day in lightweight land down here.

First we drove onto Salisbury Plain via the northern access road and on to Imber as it's the summer opening. We also drove down the southern access road and back to Imber before departing by the eastern access to Devizes for a rather nice sandwich and a cup of tea. The café had amazing cake on display but due to the size of sandwich no space was left .

On returning home I phoned to book an MOT next week and found they had a space this afternoon! After a quick check of the brake lights I popped into town and got a 'no advisory' MOT which was very nice. I'd done 1953miles in the past year.

Quite enough excitement for one day.

Nice to know it’s still running reliably Chris - someone must’ve done a good job on the rebuild

Tow hitch fitted back on today, now black as it should be, gone is the silly red.
Next to go is the yellow on the trailer socket cover, hopefully that will be green next weekend time permitting as I have a remedial job to do on the trailer before P'boro. Regards
Bob

Question for the adjudicators about the overriders on Bobs LWT. I have identical ones on mine and wondered what colour they should be. They are currently galvanised with black paint and other colourful splodges here and there. I was just saying tonight to a neighbour that I thought about painting them black but clearly this is not the case as evidenced by Bobs very tidy LWT. Can someone clarify that this is the correct appearance please?
Regards Kevin

Treehugger wrote: ↑

Mon Aug 27, 2018 9:10 pm

Question for the adjudicators about the overriders on Bobs LWT. I have identical ones on mine and wondered what colour they should be. They are currently galvanised with black paint and other colourful splodges here and there. I was just saying tonight to a neighbour that I thought about painting them black but clearly this is not the case as evidenced by Bobs very tidy LWT. Can someone clarify that this is the correct appearance please?
Regards Kevin

When they left Solihull all galvanised parts of Land Rovers, including bumpers and bumperettes, were unpainted (not least because paint doesn't adhere very well to galv). When vehicles were then repainted in units they nearly always had their galvanised bits painted as well to match the rest of the body, whether this was DBG or NATO green and black. They would not normally be painted completely black or left unpainted. Of course, the paint would very often start to peel from the galv bits relatively quickly so could look tatty. Exceptions might be for vehicles tarted up for recruiting teams or for use by inspecting senior officers and the like. Other exceptions include the gun tractors used by the HAC in London which had chrome and white paint added to highly-polished DBG schemes.

Thanks Fred. I must admit I thought it was odd that they were galvanised in the first place because they would stand out in situations where invisibility was essential. To my mind painting the,m seemed the right thing to do. However now I have seen Bobs neat little lWT I think I'll get them cleaned up. Any suggestions/recommendations as to how this can be done without it affecting the galvanised surface?
Regards
Kevin

Take them off and get them soda blasted.

It all depends if you want an 'in service' look or something to look as it did leaving the factory...

Personally i love the 'in service look'

Some interesting comment has come of this.
Rob is quite right in saying it's what your preference is, as is Fred in what he says.
For me, my vehicle is based on what it may have looked like in it's early service life. This comes the info I have managed to glean from very limited pictorial evidence of Gurkha vehicles in Hong Kong and the New Territories (I am still researching and need to visit the Gurkha museum in Winchester to trawl their records) and of my own experience. Back in the early 80's,in the RAF, on answering my query as to when our recently received 109's (KB's) would receive their IRR black and green camouflage, I was informed by the squadron MTSS chiefy that not for a minimum of 6 months as they were not allowed to do so. This was, if memory serves me correct, something to do with warranty? Whether this was true of the Army I do not know.Those 6 vehicles remained ex-factory finished for nearly 2 years before they went into the station workshops for their spray jobs. After that, they were resprayed every 2 years or so. As I believe your vehicle was a station runaround, they tended not to paint the galved parts, except in Germany on the clutch bases where they were IRR all over.

Bottom line it's your choice, whatever you want to achieve.

Regards
Bob