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It is just so Super (Sentinel).


JimH

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They either had nothing or a 6 volt dynamo which was enough to just about provide power to side and tail lamps. Headlamps, if fitted, were often acetylene because the 6 volt headlamps weren't much cop. We drive on the road at night a fair bit so we need decent lamps including brake lights. We run a low speed 12 volt alternator tucked away in a box to keep things looking right and a couple of butch batteries. 

 

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  • 4 weeks later...

Just a couple of happy snaps. We needed a photograph of the waggon to accompany the application for the registration so a load of bits got slapped on to make it look more finished. Just thought you might like to see it looking vaguely nearly there.

Windscreens in, lamps sort of on, front wings perched in place and looking somewhere near complete. The body trims are partially missing because I'd taken them all off and was epoxying them back in place at the time. The lamps are Lucas King of the Road shells and bezels with modern sealed beam units grafted in. They don't look quite right but old solenoid dip lamps are pretty much useless on the road and you really need to see what the road is doing in this thing. The side lights which are mounted where they are meant to be beside the windscreens but they have orange LED bulbs in them and act as the indicators. Side lamps are now in the headlamps.

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And from the other side - a pair of Sentinels. Note the number plate now fitted to the front. We just don't know what is going to be painted on it yet. 

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And as things get closer to finished the jobs to do list gets longer. Once this lot is ticked off it should be hey ho for the open road. 

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Getting there...

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7 hours ago, JimH said:

Note the number plate now fitted to the front. We just don't know what is going to be painted on it yet. 

this is genuinely going to be quite exciting for me because the DVLA are almost at the end of their age related series for 1930 and older vehicles

they are currently up to BF9941 and I dont know what will come next!

as the only 2 letter 4 number series left un-issued as far as I am aware is Essex's WC and BF1001-BF4000 has yet to be issued so I wonder what the DVLA will do

thus depending on when the Sentinel gets a suitable mark allocated to it it may be the first of a new series, and answer a long standing question I have had :) 

if they do issue the first half of BF finally it will probably be from BF1001 onwards as BF1 to BF1000 has been held for DVLA auction issue

and checking just now it looks like WC1-1000 has also been reserved for DVLA auction issue, so if they decide to issue that instead it will be from WC1001 onwards

(I do wonder what happens when they do finally run out of age related marks for 1930 and older vehicles!)

 

unless of course your V765 for a genuine period registration mark rather then just an age related mark, in which case nothing I said above is relevant LOL

(but still very exciting to hear your at the registration stage and to see it edging close to completion/the road :) )

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10 hours ago, LightBulbFun said:

this is genuinely going to be quite exciting for me because the DVLA are almost at the end of their age related series for 1930 and older vehicles

they are currently up to BF9941 and I dont know what will come next!

as the only 2 letter 4 number series left un-issued as far as I am aware is Essex's WC and BF1001-BF4000 has yet to be issued so I wonder what the DVLA will do

thus depending on when the Sentinel gets a suitable mark allocated to it it may be the first of a new series, and answer a long standing question I have had :) 

if they do issue the first half of BF finally it will probably be from BF1001 onwards as BF1 to BF1000 has been held for DVLA auction issue

and checking just now it looks like WC1-1000 has also been reserved for DVLA auction issue, so if they decide to issue that instead it will be from WC1001 onwards

(I do wonder what happens when they do finally run out of age related marks for 1930 and older vehicles!)

 

unless of course your V765 for a genuine period registration mark rather then just an age related mark, in which case nothing I said above is relevant LOL

(but still very exciting to hear your at the registration stage and to see it edging close to completion/the road :) )

We had three age related plates issued in the past DS 7206, SV5525 and 163 XUP. I didn't mind DS or XUP but I hated the SV one for some reason. Either BF or WC would be good with me.

However, the initial attempt will be to retrieve the plate that was connected to the engine and transmission unit (GD 9834). We feel that we have put a reasonably plausible argument together (and much better than some of the downright blatant frauds that have gone on recently) so fingers crossed and all that. 

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11 hours ago, JimH said:

We had three age related plates issued in the past DS 7206, SV5525 and 163 XUP. I didn't mind DS or XUP but I hated the SV one for some reason. Either BF or WC would be good with me.

However, the initial attempt will be to retrieve the plate that was connected to the engine and transmission unit (GD 9834). We feel that we have put a reasonably plausible argument together (and much better than some of the downright blatant frauds that have gone on recently) so fingers crossed and all that. 

Just out of interest how on earth did you manage to track that info down or did records still exist of what wagons got broken up by who and you worked it out that way?

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11 hours ago, DodgeRover said:

Just out of interest how on earth did you manage to track that info down or did records still exist of what wagons got broken up by who and you worked it out that way?

There were a few people who bought a fair few of these things as scrappers and they just sort of hung around in their yards. In this one's case there were four wrecks bought by a business and just sat around. Three of the four got saved and the fourth - our one - had the engine bought by Mr Keeley as a spare and the rest went in the melting pot. We have one photograph of GD 9834 taken in the 1950s in the yard prior to being broken up still in its Taroads livery (if it can be called that) who was the last commercial user of the waggon. There are also a few people who are able to recall the waggon in the yard with the others. 

After that you are struggling  - waggon numbers only appeared on a pair of brass plates bolted to the cab and maker's marks on parts was virtually unheard of with the exception of the odd pattern ID number which appears on a tiny handful of components. All you can hope for is that at some point in its working life someone bashed some identifying marks on some part they were working on. In the case of Sentinels they had a reasonably extensive regional workshop network (for the time) so the odds of a waggon finding its way into a shed where there were lots of other Sentinels was quite high. The photo (which I can't find at the moment - someone has been sorting folders out) shows GD 9834 sitting on pneumatics which was a conversions most commonly carried out by Sentinel or their agents. The upshot of this is that you are in with a decent chance of finding waggon number stamps on a bit of the engine or transmission. Fortunately we found a pair of waggon number marks in old style stamps on the main bearing housings. 

So, not exactly a watertight case but very much more watertight that some that have gone on recently involving little bits of boilers that were found in woods. Ho hum.

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10 hours ago, motorpunk said:

@JimH - looking good! 
 

My Dad is a (retired) signwriter who can also do gold leaf. If you need a hand on that front I could put you in touch.

Some pics here - https://www.motorpunk.co.uk/articles/traditional-signwriting/

Cheers for that. At he moment we have someone penciled in for next year (we want to test the body on the road for a bit before it gets money spent on paint and letters) to do the signwriting but if that falls though I'll get back to you. 

Apparently this one won't be done in leaf after we got the quote for the acres of leaf that it would have needed. 

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  • 3 weeks later...

A door looking pretty much the same as it did before.

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But wait. Aren't those hinges? Do you mean it actually...

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Yes it actually opens. And closes. And stays exactly where I put it so the fit lines are still spot on. I am very, very pleased with this because I am a woodworking incompetent and the wood for this body wasn't exactly given away so if it went wrong I'd have been in schtuck.

There is a middle hinge still to go in but I wanted to get the second door on to minimise the risk of painful rework if I'd put things in the wrong place. You can't get hinges that look right any more so we made these. 

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The design of the hinge means that they fold back quite close to the body. Close enough to hold them in place with a reasonably stout tie bar - if the wind catches these things they will really hurt someone. They are very, very heavy. 

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While I am here we popped down to Preston(ish) to pick up the headboard that someone made for us. Although it was pretty simple it really needed a bead swaged onto it top and bottom and we didn't fancy stumping up for a swage for just one job. It's made in four pieces. I'm messing about at the moment trying to pull the curve to match the curve on the cab roof. 

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Some had headboards as advertising space but they made a useful place to throw rolled up tarpaulins. The main reason was that they look quite good when you have a big body on the back.

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This is the short section which makes up the rear section. It doesn't hold the same height all the way round but drops down and gives it a bit more shape. You can see the beads that have been swaged on. 

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And finally the boiler is getting stripped down for its annual inspection. The thing hasn't had a fire in it since the last hot inspection and it's being inspected again. *rolls eyes*

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That's it for this time. Not much but I wanted to show if the opening door cos I'm dead proud of it. 

 

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  • 1 month later...

There has been a lot of work being done but most of it is of the mind numbingly dull variety. I'll sort a better update out later but for now here are a couple of photos. Both Sentinels were due their hot test this week so we took the opportunity to at least see if the Super could run under its own steam. 

The inspector was supposed to be here on Tuesday but he forgot about it which meant we had to get them both going again on Wednesday which gave us a chance to sort out a few teething troubles for the next day. Tuesday was all foggy but at least it moved under its own power even if the steam brake valve was messing about and wouldn't stop it. It looks a bit crap without the rear wings and the cock eyed headlamps hardly help the look but at least it has seen daylight now. What it did remind me of is what a delight Supers are to drive.

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Yesterday the sun came out and the brakes worked properly so I felt more confident taking it up a small hill. The bits sticking up from the cab roof are the start of the brackets for the headboard - it was supposed to rain and I didn't want it to get the bare steel wet. I'm pretty pleased with the look of the body. The curve of the roof is right and it looks suitably butch. 

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More later.

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  • 3 weeks later...

It has been cold lately which makes it very difficult to get motivated to freeze your knackers off in the workshop. However, there has been some progress on the body. After a lot of work the rear doors are pretty much finished. I made a massive mistake going for three hinges because since everything is very stout nothing bends so the three hinges have to be absolutely bang in line which the nearside door was but the offside one wasn't and it took a great deal of blood, sweat and rage to get it right again. We seem to be somewhere now. 

The offside door is going to be held shut semi-permanently with brackets just so there is only one door to cause injury and there is no reason to ever have both doors open at the same time. The nearside door glides around with fingertip pressure so I'm quite please with that. 

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The nearside door opens...

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As does the offside one. They both close onto little steel on steel wedges to take the load off the hinges when the doors are shut. 

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And when you close them they line up just dandy

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And the shutlines stay just so too. I've never fitted up something as crude and as heavy as this so I'm a bit chuffed that I don't need to make too many excuses about my workmanship. What you can't make out in the pictures is that the countersunk set screws holding the hinges in are socket head which is no good at all. It either needs the sockets welded up or I need to find some suitable slotted set screws. This isn't so easy when they start to get bigger. 

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And when both are open you get to see the now fully lined interior. This isn't fully screwed into place and there needs to be trims fitted to hide the joins in the boards but that is is somewhere close. The two coffins are the extra water tanks. which are piped to the original tank under the floor. The job over crimble is to make the two boxes to cover these up and make everything look pretty. The light baton isn't staying, it's just so I can see what I am doing. Everything will be painted the same colour as the inside of the cab. We also need to sort out some proper lights in there. 

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I can't quite remember the calculation but I think we have about 380 gallons of water in total. This gives us a fairly easy 70 miles between stops. They also give somewhere to sit when it is raining. 

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This is one of the frames for the storage boxes that are slung under the floor aft of the rear wings and give somewhere handy to keep oil, grease and other nasty things you don't want to put in the back. These weren't standard fitment but many waggons were fitted with them because they were always tight for storage space. They will be clad with steel faced plywood and trimmed to match the body. I haven't decided how they will be accessed. 

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The other job that has taken a while is getting the headboard fitted properly. This was made in four sections because it is pretty big thing to wrestle with. All joints are just bolted butts to keep things simple but they do need to be fitted well to look OK. 

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What took the time was getting the curve right to match the curve of the ash bend. There is a 12 foot radius on this bit so while it looks flat it is only when you hold a straight edge up to it you see the bend properly. Getting this curve right took a while. The last thing to do will be to decide what gets painted on it.

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And the finishedish item from the front. It seems to divide opinion - we think it looks pretty good but disapproval among the apprentices is pretty much universal. Apprentice No6 is very outspoken while Apprentice No4 just makes retching noises when she sees it. No pleasing some folk. 

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If there is one job that is good to do is something that involves a lot of welding and grinding because it generates a bit of heat and keeps you warm. This is one part of the retaining screw assembly for the spare wheel mounting. This is the bracket that fixes to the underside of the chassis rail.

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And this is the retaining screw under construction. The nut needs finished with some lugs to wind it on and it obviously needs a lot of fettling before it looks like a casting. 

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Some of you might recognise the threaded part. The thing is that the thread needs to be square so it looks right but it also needs to be a bit on the "loose" side so the nut doesn't bind up on the thread even if it is a bit on the dry side (read "painted"). While discussing how to get this right someone looked down at the scaffold next to us and said, "we'll just get a new screw leg". The lugged nut had the lugs cut off and then machined so it could be pressed into the bigger body you see in the photo above. 

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And that is pretty much that. Hopefully the oil fired heater will be operational in the next week or so then things might get a bit warmer in the big shed. 

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Just come across this topic, bravo Jim! 

Big steam fan here (former miniature owner), looking forward to see this beauty on the road :D 

In terms of the boiler, I didn't realise they had such a crazy tube arrangement! Is it, in a way back to front? As from the look of it the fire is in the middle of a water jacket, and the tubes of water pass through it - compared to normally where the tubes carry hot gas through a horizontal boiler full of water?

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It is your standard (apart from the oddball tube pattern) water tube boiler. These are not so common in road steam engines which are mostly firetube loco boilers but most waggons used water tube boilers. Yorkshire were a noteable exception which used a weirdo split firetube arrangement. I haven't thought about it properly but I'd guess in numbers the water tube boiler is more common in industry. 

The Yorkshire boiler was odd...

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0652.jpg 

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On 9/21/2022 at 10:11 AM, JimH said:

We had three age related plates issued in the past DS 7206, SV5525 and 163 XUP. I didn't mind DS or XUP but I hated the SV one for some reason. Either BF or WC would be good with me.

However, the initial attempt will be to retrieve the plate that was connected to the engine and transmission unit (GD 9834). We feel that we have put a reasonably plausible argument together (and much better than some of the downright blatant frauds that have gone on recently) so fingers crossed and all that. 

 Eye-opening skills and problem solving as always - it's an imposing looking beast now the body is in place and it looks almost ready for the queen's Charlie's highway. 

Have you got anywhere with reinstating the original registration? Fingers crossed.

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On 12/22/2022 at 1:20 PM, JimH said:

It is your standard (apart from the oddball tube pattern) water tube boiler. These are not so common in road steam engines which are mostly firetube loco boilers but most waggons used water tube boilers. Yorkshire were a noteable exception which used a weirdo split firetube arrangement. I haven't thought about it properly but I'd guess in numbers the water tube boiler is more common in industry. 

The Yorkshire boiler was odd...

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That is a bit weird. The only thing I’ve seen similar was one of R. F. Fairlie’s early ideas for a double-ended boiler that had also had a central exhaust, swiftly abandoned for smokeboxes either end, and after a bit of trial and error putting a water space half way across the firebox to split it in two and stop the twin exhausts ripping the fire to pieces. I can see why it might have looked a good idea for a road waggon, but the vertical boiler is a better solution.

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Of the undertypes they all, with the exception of Yorkshire, went for a vertical water tube arrangement. Each tried to do something different with regards to firing and washing out but most of these solutions were a bit, well, crap. I can’t quite remember if it were Garret, Atkinson or Clayton who solved the problem of firing by poking a chute through the cab floor that you just kept hoping there was the right amount in there. There were monstrous access panels that let you remove them to clean the tubes which you wouldn’t have a hope in hell of bouncing the design through modern standards and as many superheater designs as there were waggon types.

Foden went a bit doolally and pushed the vertical boiler on its side and gave it a mackled up combustion space but that caused more problems than it solved. 

The design used by Sentinel was a pretty dull but it did seem to work well and went from the beginning to the end without serious revision with the possible exception of the silly spiral pattern tube nest of the Super but that was only an aberation.

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  • 1 month later...

It's been a while since the last update and in that time very little photogenic has happened. Plenty of work on wiring, storage boxes, water tanks and rear door locks but much of it is too dull for words let alone photos. However, to tide you over here is a picture of a V5. 

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Not the original one I'm afraid but I can live with that.

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26 minutes ago, Asimo said:

Amused by fuel = steam.  Which would explain the 0g / km.

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it always amused me that because obviously coal is the fuel in this case! steam is just what moves it along! but thats exactly why its "wrong" because on the back end DVLA system it like how the old buff logbooks would correctly state "propelled by" it" does correctly say "propulsion" on the back end, but the front end just decodes that to "fuel type" instead which is as above wrong for steam is not the fuel, coal is! 

but hey ho! its the same way for a diesel vehicle the V5 will state for fuel type heavy oil rather then diesel (because rightfully so, not every vehicle that runs on heavy oil, necessarily works on the diesel principle! say if you had a jet engined car! or an old Tractor!)

gotta love a system which has existed for near on 50 years and has its roots going back to 1904, that the modern maintainers have no clue on the history of why things are the way they are and keep messing it up as a result!

 

 

aslo woo! glad to see the Sentinel has a mark and V5 :) bonus points for being an Essex one :mrgreen:

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On 2/24/2023 at 1:31 PM, JimH said:

It's been a while since the last update and in that time very little photogenic has happened. Plenty of work on wiring, storage boxes, water tanks and rear door locks but much of it is too dull for words let alone photos. However, to tide you over here is a picture of a V5. 

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Not the original one I'm afraid but I can live with that.

Fantastic news. Almost ready for McDonald's drive-thru? 

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As discussed 0g CO2/kg = LOL!

Assuming coal is 100% carbon, which it nearly is, using the wonders of molar calculations , we find that 1 kg of coal will generate approx 3666g CO2

According to this article - https://archive.commercialmotor.com/article/6th-january-1950/41/the-sentinel a Sentinel consumed 7.43lb of coal per mile, or 3.38kg per 1.61km.

Which gives us a coal consumption of 2.1kg/km, which would give us a CO2 emission figure of 7696g CO2/km!!!

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You can knock it down a bit because coal is about 80%ish carbon. The CO2 will be down a bit because combustion is far from perfect and there is a bit of CO and other odds and sods thrown out the top. None of them good 'n' healthy 'n' full of Ns. 

The Commercial Motor test results of 15 miles to the cwt are a bit on the low side. The waggon will have been loaded but they should have been able to do better than that. I suspect a less than qualified driver/stoker combo is to blame. Running light (well as light as you can with that much water on your back) our last super would do about 20 miles to the cwt and the S can do between 25 and 28 miles per cwt. Period road tests gave the S as high as 32miles/cwt but they weren't trying to keep up a bit better with modern traffic. 

However, all those numbers are only achievable with a good waggon. Once the bores and rings have worn and, far more likely, the valve seats are cratered then coal consumption goes through the roof. Many of the dogs dragging themselves along the road these days are not even getting into double figures. 

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1 hour ago, martc said:

As discussed 0gCO2/kg = LOL!

Assuming coal is 100% carbon, which it nearly is, using the wonders of molar calculations , we find that 1 kg of coal will generate approx 3666g CO2

According to this article - https://archive.commercialmotor.com/article/6th-january-1950/41/the-sentinel a Sentinel consumed 7.43lb of coal per mile, or 3.38kg per 1.61km.

Which gives us a coal consumption of 2.1kg/km, which would give us a CO2 emission figure of 7696g CO2/km!!!

So basically* ULEZ exempt. Bloody shame @JimHcannot get that beast down to London for a serious smoke around Country Hall.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Forgot to post this last month. Not much by way of updates so far this year for a number of reasons. To start with here is the spare wheel carrier getting close to being finished. 

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This is the sort of thing that brings it home just how much work has been done over the last six years. For years one of the jobs on the list was "Make spare wheel carrier" which is pretty quick to say and it was given very little head space until it was needed. The first thing you need to start thinking about is what design to use. Since these things were built on solids originally the pneumatics and by extension the spare wheel arrangement was the responsibility of the factory, the regional service depots and the workshops of the people who operated them. Sentinel's drawing archive lists at least 8 different designs (searching the archive is no mean feat because all you have is the most scant description and about 10,000 drawings) which range from plausible to a draughie's flight of fancy. One is for a flat bed which involves a slot-in davit with a block and tackle to haul the wheel onto the back where it was clamped behind the cab. Aye right. 

So you work up a design and then start building it. Wheel frame, wheel frame pivot block, draw bolt, draw bolt pivot frame, nut, spacer for the nut and  draw bolt protection tube. They are just the big bits. The wheel frame alone has eight separate components. The nut has four.  

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This whole thing has soaked up weeks of work. Just to make the bloody thing that holds the spare wheel in place. 

Enough whining. This is another job that has been on the list for ages. Despite being very big there is very little room for storing stuff on these things. You have plenty of space for load but pretty much all other available space is taken up with coal. The upshot is that there was no room for oil, tools, spares or your lunch so the ones that were driven longer distances (there were a few) grew boxes in this space. One DG6 flatbed I found grew an extra pair of water tanks which I thought was quite cool. 

These are the boxes so far. Angle iron frame, clad in plywood and then sheet steel epoxied over the ply so the construction matched the body. 

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The corners will have poplar trims to match the trims on the body so hopefully it should look all about the same. Haven't quite worked out the door arrangement yet. 

Next are the boxes to hide the water tanks. The nearside one also hides the main battery while the offside one has the modern greasing system in it for the front axle. Again, the edges will all be trimmed in poplar to make everything look neat and tidy. I loath working with plywood.

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Baffles for the water tanks ready to go in.

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And the lids for the tanks ready to go on. Exciting, huh?

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Sadly as it becomes more complete there are diminishingly few things lying around to photograph. The other job that is ongoing at the moment is wiring the thing up but there is nothing very exciting to look at there. So here are some other things that are lying around. 

This thing is orsum. You go into the big shed freezing your knackers off, turn this on and half an hour later everything is toasty. At the moment it costs about £2.00 per hour to run but it is a small price to pay when considering improved productivity. The flexible duct was for testing to see how it would heat the other workshops and it is would be worth running some permanent ducting. It can also be poked into the Super's body for extra super warmth. 

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This was purchased from the farmer next door. We had a 3CX before but it was a bit big for most of what we wanted to do. There is a bucket on order for it and the old man has gone down to Darlington today to pick up a set of pallet forks for it. Should be handy to have around. Note insignia in background.

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And now this month's one. Here is the rear doors with the bolts that I made for them. They are not there yet but getting close. The offside door will never open so is bolted shut on the inside top and bottom. The bolts drop in and then swing over onto pins held in place with wedges. This will let me put a padlock through the wedge to lock it closed. I need to find some suitably old looking chain to stop the wedges from getting lost. 

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And standing back a bit we see the bolts in all their glory. The bit of steel sheet on the roof is me trying to work out what the rain guard should look like (and so far failing).

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Ooooh, what is that peeking out the bottom corner? The signwriter called in to discuss the job (it is non-trivial) and while he was here painted the number plates. They look pretty damn fine to me. 

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He also did the 20 plate to tell the local constabulary that having pneumatic tyres means we can do another 8mph. 

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New plate on the front, too. Done right these hand painted plates look the mutt's. 

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This isn't meant to be there but the original mirrors on these things are shockingly bad so we do not want to be on the road without a rear facing camera. On the S4 there was a handy glove box on the dashboard that the screen can be hidden in. However, on the Supers there is no dashboard, let alone a glove box so I welded up a sort of a dashboard that bolts in place.

The other thing that is a pain in the very literal neck is that the pressure gauge is on the nearside so you have to keep turning your head every few seconds to see how things are going. I always said with the next Super I wanted a second gauge that the driver could see in front of them. I made the dashboard a wee bit bigger to fit such a gauge in. The final benefit is that it gives you a little shelf to sit your fruit tea on.  The big open space next to the gauge is where the screen mounts.

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The wing looks odd because it is just resting on the wheel out of harm's way. The thing behind the wing is the offside store box which I have been making. These look a bit odd in wood and steel colour but will be painted black when they are done so they should not be too noticeable. It will be somewhere handy to keep oil and grease and spares. 

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Again look odd from the rear because they are not black. What I will also use the box for is to mount the small yet modern LED lights for tail, brakes and indicators. Hopefully they won't be too obvious when they are not lit up. I know modern lights look shite but they are pretty small and it really is a good idea to have decent lights if you are on the road at night. 

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Finally, the loader is having its arm rebuilt. It was last owned by a farmer so maintenance was a wee bit sketchy. No shortage of pins and bushes to remanufacture. We said it didn't need done because we don't use it much but it was too buggered to ignore. 

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