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Absolute horse shit™ The official thread of Railton Heavy Industries Limited and it's subsidiaries.


Heidel_Kakao

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1 hour ago, JeeExEll said:

Couple of relevant short vids.

No sound in first one.

 

How much did these cost when new in, say, 1965 or 1970?  Possibly classified info?

Inflation multiplier is approx 22, 20, and 16 for 1962, 1965, and 1970.

Screenshot_20210518-023147_Chrome.thumb.jpg.7d2343b190d105af533245a116c619af.jpg

£60,000 in 1971 apparently. Quite a saving by waiting 50 years.

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Where did you find '£60,000 in 1971' ? 

(I meant purchase price to buy a new one at the time).

I don't think they would have been the best part of a million pounds each to buy (around £870k current adjusted value).  Perhaps there has been an error or maybe a typo.  Happy to be proved wrong.

To put things into perspective, in 1970 a new Rolls Royce Silver Shadow was around £9250, (adjusted approx £145,000).

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12 hours ago, JeeExEll said:

Where did you find '£60,000 in 1971' ? 

(I meant purchase price to buy a new one at the time).

I don't think they would have been the best part of a million pounds (current adjusted value) each to buy.  Perhaps there has been an error or maybe a typo.  Happy to be proved wrong.

To put things into perspective, in 1970 a new Rolls Royce Silver Shadow was around £9250, (adjusted approx £145,000).

Sounds about right to me. A Humvee is the best part of $200,000, a full-fat tank is like $4m. A stalwart would be somewhere between those two extremes of military vehicles, so I's say about a million dollars would be pretty much bang on. War is expensive, and a lot of people get rich building these things. That is, after all, why we have wars in the first place

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On 26/06/2021 at 02:22, 808 Estate said:

Looks like they didnt do much extra designing for the Salamander fire engine version.

2343.jpg

 

Project Camion was based on an early Salamander.

On 26/06/2021 at 16:10, dean36014 said:

So did the airport fire tenders run a different driveline? Just wondering how they got round the wind up issues on airfields.

Good question, Wikipedia says they are six wheel drive... maybe they just ran onto the grass occasionally to relieve wind up.

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Just a quicky on how much they cost new.  You will never find out the truth, we know what overall budgets for example the MoD has, but you wont get any meaningful detail.  On one hand they would say its a security issue, on the other, they never tell the truth anyway.  That's why you get the great expose every few years of the Army for example being allegedly conned into paying £2000 for a spanner.  Garbage like that hides all the hidden projects, the failures and the over-runs. 

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3 minutes ago, colino said:

Just a quicky on how much they cost new.  You will never find out the truth, we know what overall budgets for example the MoD has, but you wont get any meaningful detail.  On one hand they would say its a security issue, on the other, they never tell the truth anyway.  That's why you get the great expose every few years of the Army for example being allegedly conned into paying £2000 for a spanner.  Garbage like that hides all the hidden projects, the failures and the over-runs. 

True enough, let's just settle on not cheap for the original price.

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Sometimes it's for a different reason:

Officials said last week that the U.S. Air Force paid about $10,000 each to replace toilet seat covers on the C-5 Galaxy, a Vietnam-era military cargo plane that is still in service, at least three times and as recently as last year.

The Air Force says with the Lockheed’s C-5 production line no longer active, there is no company with a fully staffed assembly line ready to produce exactly what it needs. That means the government has to hire a manufacturer to make a mold of the original toilet seat cover, redesign two-dimensional drawings to make sure the cover fits, manufacture a mould for the part, and then produce it — effectively reverse-engineering the toilet cover and building it from scratch.

 

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1 hour ago, chadders said:

Sometimes it's for a different reason:

Officials said last week that the U.S. Air Force paid about $10,000 each to replace toilet seat covers on the C-5 Galaxy, a Vietnam-era military cargo plane that is still in service, at least three times and as recently as last year.

The Air Force says with the Lockheed’s C-5 production line no longer active, there is no company with a fully staffed assembly line ready to produce exactly what it needs. That means the government has to hire a manufacturer to make a mold of the original toilet seat cover, redesign two-dimensional drawings to make sure the cover fits, manufacture a mould for the part, and then produce it — effectively reverse-engineering the toilet cover and building it from scratch.

 

Sounds like they hadn't got anything to go on! 

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https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Militaria-Vehicles-Alvis-Stalwart-/265207847871?_trksid=p2349624.m46890.l49286

It's only sporting to give you all a heads up. Very rare Swedish varient with FOCO side mounted crane.

I have arranged to view it and normally that ends with a purchase. People of the list, this is your chance, if you all club together you can escape the ban! Have your own Stolly, more useful than an Invacar, faster than a milk float, less economical than pretty much anything else, what is there not to like?

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4 hours ago, chadders said:

Sometimes it's for a different reason:

Officials said last week that the U.S. Air Force paid about $10,000 each to replace toilet seat covers on the C-5 Galaxy, a Vietnam-era military cargo plane that is still in service, at least three times and as recently as last year.

The Air Force says with the Lockheed’s C-5 production line no longer active, there is no company with a fully staffed assembly line ready to produce exactly what it needs. That means the government has to hire a manufacturer to make a mold of the original toilet seat cover, redesign two-dimensional drawings to make sure the cover fits, manufacture a mould for the part, and then produce it — effectively reverse-engineering the toilet cover and building it from scratch.

 

The Galaxy has been an overpriced disaster from the start and this kind of corruption has been a feature throughout the aircraft's life.

https://truthout.org/articles/weapons-that-will-never-die-we-need-to-stop-the-expensive-reincarnations-part-ii/

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I once heard a similar story to the Lockheed Galaxy toilet seat about Mercedes Benz Classic and their parts support. M-B are very hot on classic support (in Germany anyway) and claim to be able to source anything for any M-Bmade (cars anyway, and this was in the 1990s). A European restoration firm was rebuilding a 300SL for a client, and needed two chrome trim strips for the car. Can’t remember precisely what they were, but they were quite thin strips of metal, and one on each side of the car. They were also ‘handed’ in some way, e.g. each side was specific and not interchangeable.

One side they still had in stock, was the equivalent of about £20-30.  The other side, well none in stock, ‘but we will get it made, and you pay the associated costs’ says M-B.  

This turned to be a LOT (circa £1k or so) for a small strip of metal, due to fabricating something from scratch from Mercedes paperwork/drawings from 1955!

The restoration firm/customer paid up, as, well,  where would they ever find another? 

Bear in mind this was for a car that already had a very significant value pre-restoration and it needed to be right, so using one off a 220 saloon or whatever and ‘making’ it fit wasn’t an option. 

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Merc's classic support really is that good (and cheap). My dad is something of a skinflint, yet he always used to visit the M-B dealer for parts when he had his 190E in the mid-2000s, something he never did with any other car he'd owned. 

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48 minutes ago, Ghosty said:

Merc's classic support really is that good (and cheap). My dad is something of a skinflint, yet he always used to visit the M-B dealer for parts when he had his 190E in the mid-2000s, something he never did with any other car he'd owned. 

It's good to hear some companies take their heritage seriously. You could argue it's in their best interest too as classic Mercedes are rolling advertising for the brand.

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