Off Topic- Boys Toys

[Adrian74]

I very nearly bought a Scorpion when I was younger but I'm rather glad now that I didn't - I admit freely that I am one person who should probably never be allowed to drive a tank on the road.

Some call it "road rage", I call it "Manoeuvring aggressively around feckless idiots who can't drive and shouldn't be on the road".

Totally agree re "feckless idiots who can't drive and should definitely not be on the road"! I encounter them every day and especially around the narrow roads of the Lake District. Climbs down of soap box
Novie
3-2-1 your back in the room

The narrow roads in the Cotswolds hold some equally interesting idiots. Driving the Diamond T can be a challenge at the best of times but when someone stops on a mini roundabout ahead of you to examine the vehicle trundling toward them, containing an increasingly irate driver (me) who has to now go down the crash box, you do have that urge to keep your foot down and teach them the errors of their ways.

If you can't see my mirrors I can't see you......tell that to the Vectra who almost went into my rear diff the other week, 'cos he couldn’t see the Zebra crossing I was stopping at, well actually he could see nothing as he was 2ft off the backside of a lorry that is 8ft 6" wide

[Richie]

you see when driving a carrier, you just hear a clunk and ask your mate "what was that" worry free motoring...

[Terminator]

Do these carriers cost much Richie as they are beginning to sound very appealing whats the top speed and fuel economy like?
Novie

[Richie]

Here is a link to one which has just been finished,it's a mk2 with new engine rebuild.. I know the restorer (his grandfather served with mine during the war hence his love for carriers)

http://www.milweb.net/webverts/68924/




£50.000 will take part ex WHY


You can buy a scorpion for anything from £17.000 and they are easier to drive... 70mph forward or reverse.... A go kart on tracks !!!!

[Dominic Owen]

I have a fair few accessories for my Bren but not one of those. £50k, you say? I'll take 2!

If Scorpions are going for upwards of £17k now 'd better not say what I was offered one for 17 years ago - the SCRAP value of the aluminium alone would be worth about 3 times that now! I'm rather kicking myself now that I didn't rip the guy's hand off!

[Richie]

Don't get me wrong you can pick up scorpion hulls and turret, with tracks but no pack for about 2k but you would have to re fit the whole machine. J60 packs are a dime a dozen and are fairly cheap...... My next armour will be a scorpion or another of the CVRT family... Or If I stick with ww2 stuff it will be a Stuart . Wife does not know it yet though

[Dominic Owen]

This wasn't just a hull and turret, it was complete with everything including the mud from the last time it was run.

And it was less than £2k

[Richie]

Yeah you best start beating yourself up mate

[Dominic Owen]

WAY ahead of you on that one, chap!!

[sbt]

Here is a link to one which has just been finished,it's a mk2 with new engine rebuild..

<Does a bit of digging>

2nd Battalion, King's Shropshire Light Infantry
185 Infantry Brigade
3rd Infantry Division

Oh, and the Universal Carrier was, and is, the most produced AFV in history, with 113,000 built.

You can buy a scorpion for anything from £17.000 and they are easier to drive... 70mph forward or reverse.... A go kart on tracks !!!!

But not that efficient for 'stomping' other vehicles. In its 'vanilla' fit it has less ground pressure than a human foot.[1]

I have been told they tend to have more Road Accidents than most AFVs as car drivers think:

TRACKS = SLOW

... and underestimate the speed and do things like pull out in front of them at junctions.

Also watch out for any ex-Afghanistan hulls. We have just rebuilt a lot with new Hulls and Turrets because they had been 'beaten to death' zooming cross county whilst carrying loads of applique stuff over many years in theatre and welds and other bits were failing to an extent that no level of patching up would work. The new hulls are thicker and heavier, now there is no Amphibious requirement to meet (as there was when originally built).

I do wonder how much of the original vehicle is left, given that we re-engined them a while ago.

[1] Always amused me when I saw an advert for a 'Ruggidised' Laptop where its 'toughness' had been demonstrated by been driven over by a CVR(T) on soft ground. I suspect most consumer level laptops would survive that.