[vishwaschettri]

Originally Posted by USR

@randeep.. I just drove it once that to 2wd.. :( Guess i missed the fun of the DADDY of all 4wd .
People i have a question. I was talking to my dad and he was telling me that SHAKTIMAN truck can be drove with 3 kinds of fuel. Petrol - Disel and normal oil. Is this true. because i dint beleive him.
Any Answers

+1 to this. I too have heard about it from old timers that shaktiman could be driven on any fuel. Namely petrol and kerosene. But never found concrete proof. Can some one throw light on it. One of my uncles said there used to be a knob for different fuel settings which I'm assuming must be some kind of mechanical timing advancer/retarder.


cheers
vishwas

[Brutus]

The tanks were taken there in the 47-48 war. That time the army never had any shaktimans, so they might be any of the bedford, or dodge or whatever trucks. But that news during the 62 war seems very interesting.
The Shaktiman could run on petrol,diesel and Kerosene(it too is a diesel fuel). Reports have been included to engine and cooking oil too. Most of the armies around the world use multi-fuel motors, so its nothing odd. The shaktimann can do that when it had its original 8000something cc motor. Now , or should i say when it was discontinued, it had been using normal Ashok leyland engines for quite some time, which ran on only high speed diesel.

[randeep04]

Originally Posted by USR

@randeep.. I just drove it once that to 2wd.. :( Guess i missed the fun of the DADDY of all 4wd .
People i have a question. I was talking to my dad and he was telling me that SHAKTIMAN truck can be drove with 3 kinds of fuel. Petrol - Disel and normal oil. Is this true. because i dint beleive him.
Any Answers

@USR,

What your dad says is right, infact most of the army vehicles can work using multiple fules. Kerosene being the third fuel. Even the T-90 can be driven using diesel and kerosene but they use diesel.

Cheers !!!!!!!!

[docfreak]

suddenly the tank sems to have caught the fancy after the jeep.

to clear the air, i am not from defence, my dad has spent his life in army , and i tagged with him regardless , so have had the opportunity to drive tanks, fire all kind of weapons, be flown in a army chopper , also fly from chandigarh to leh sitting on the glass underbelly of an il 76, amongst many more such great experiences.

well for tanks at leh: there is (rather was, am not sure of now, as all of you know that the units keep moving) an armoured unit at a place near leh towards the direction of chumatang, (i will crosscheck the location and no from my old photo records ) the tanks were sent there by il76 , flown down , there were some old vijayanta,s as well , bmp1 and bmp 2 as well. there was a huge area for the manouveres and with lots of other relief features as well. will post some pics too .

for the tank license: it was issued by the c.o for the young guys, not in army for the fun of it , its a priced posession with me. it has no validity or any significance other than as an acknoledgement .

any other queries????

the tatra if i am right is now being manufactured by beml, initially they were imported and left hand drive. (driven that too...)

[tsk1979]

There is a pic of NIOC in Indian express print edition. Is it from Hissar OTR?

[GoSlow]

Tanveer - Is it on the Indian Express web site or in the News Paper? Can you scan and upload if it is in the paper ot send a link of the web page?

Cheers
Ankit

[Bailee_Jatt_Boy]

Whoa! seems like you guys had loads of fun!

I happened to notice that in some places the land was plowed(i don't know why some one would plow sand?) Were you guys in someones fields?

After watching Akshay's modified Cj3B 2WD struggle, my mind definitely is changing from getting myself a bling jeep I think this might be a Dabwali product. Does any one know?

[Brutus]

Originally Posted by docfreak

the tatra if i am right is now being manufactured by beml, initially they were imported and left hand drive. (driven that too...)

There are always a few aircooled Tatra v8's and a few Kraz motors, both the petrol and diesel V8's lying around at the Phathankot yards. I even saw a huge Cummins V6(probably 6-7liters) once, but i wonder what it was used in, maybe a generator. there were a few Cater piller V12's too. These engines go for about 50grands and mostly bought by factory's for power production. Interested, anyone?

The most sad part is the the speed at which these guys scrap these things. Once,when i was there looking for stuff, i saw there 2-3 Tatras, and a single Kraz standing at Gandhi kabarddi's yard.There are about 20 different yards there, and if you go looking for small parts, either you should know who would have it or your looking for a needle in a haystack, and doing that would take a better part of the day. I first went to Gandhis yard, where i saw these very intact trucks, and by the time i came back in about 4-5 hours. There was only one intact truck there, the rest all broken up into pieces and there were 20 ppl working with the hammers and chisels on the bolts joining the chassis to the body frame. Within 10 minutes they were finished, the body was then hooked to a truck crane, and pulled off. Within the one hour i was there, the engine, gearbox, chassis,body, axles were all different parts, and soon a truck from some other yard came to get those huge n fat 53" tires of the kraz.

Once i even saw a Rolls-royce meteor V12, but whos going to pay the petrol bills of a motor that can guzzle up 2 liters of Gasoline right over starting (The meteor is the same as the 27l V12 Merlin used in the spitfire but without the supercharger, and modified to produce a little more low end torque so can be used in tanks. I think half the Centurians in India had these, before the world over they started useing diesel fuel to cut the risk of the tank catching fire after being hit. Taking about this, i wonder why the pakistanis were useing petrol pattons in the 65 war, although most had been fitted with diesel motors by the 71 war. I'am sure half the tanks went down just coz of this. The same goes for the centurian petrol motors, and we lost an awful lot of them in the 65war, where 4 squadrons of these were destroyed by a single pakistani squadron, or something like that. Quite sadly, Indian military history never bothered to cover the Centurian, therefore there is very little info available for it as against the Vickers, the Shermans, or the T-55 Main battle tanks of the Indian army inventory used in the war. I know there were others like the PT-76 and the AMX-13, and ofcourse they can be taken anywhere, maybe even to Siachen , but these are all light tanks therefore nothing to be compaired with the MBT's). Last note: if you want to see what it looks like,come over to chandigarh and i'll show you the best airplane engines ever, the 33l RR Griffon, and the even better and famous 27l RR Merlin-66(i think the 66 was the most powerful of all the Merlin versions, 2-stage supercharges, methenol-water injection, and even at that time,in the WW2 era, this motor could make over 2500Hp at 2200rpm. Later on these same motors were modified and used in Speed-boat racing, at a time before they started using helicopter turbines, and these modified RR Merlins, or its American copy, could easily make 4500Hp. Even now they're sometimes used for trator pulling contests).

You get everything there, even shells. I once got a misfired 'n rusted up 0.78 caliber AA(anti-aircraft) tracer shot. I opened up and seperated the cartridge case(unlike normal fine granulated gunpowder used in normal shots, here it was packed with capsules of gunpower). I removed the tracer power from the bullet, and took it for drilling to ppl who would have a drill bench( I have a beck$pecker drill but not mounted on a bench, so it was going to slip). needless to say, everybody thought it was a shell and therefore nobody was ready to drill through what they though would go "boom" the moment the drill presses through it. I had a hard time telling them its just a empty bullet projectile, and not a shell, but to no avail. Finally i found out that my friend has a drillbench in his factory, and i managed to drill through it(no points for guessing why the factory worker would'nt drill. Infact when i was drilling, he was standing a good 20 meters away from me, behind a lathe machine, with both his ears covered by his fingers and his eyes shut). Now i have a nice Keychain made out of it. Have the cartridge case lying around, so anybody who likes to smell the cardboard shell of the 12 guage shotgun just after firing a desi Indian ordinance can take it from me.

[docfreak]

hey brutus, you seem to know a lot of engines, a very fine read indeed, thanks for sharing it .
where in chandigarh do ou get all such things? i am looking for some powerful search lights to mount on my jeep . also for some other surplus stuff.

[desertfox]

I would like to have that cartridge shell for my collection, and yes I simply love the smell of Indian Ordinance paper shells after firing them, its a bit intoxicating, but you got to work hard cleaning the gun after firing these desi shells. These are the last few years to enjoy them as IOF is changing KF Special too to plastic shells with Hindi printing on them.

[Brutus]

Docfreak, you get nothing in Chandigarh, and i have to go all the way to Phatankot to get them, its been a long time since i've been there now. But if you want to, we can plan a trip to phatankot anyday you want to.

Desertfox, the cartrigde is all your. If you or anybody you know is here in Chandigarh, let me know and i'll hand it over. I used to fire there Shotgun rounds when i had an old russian shotgun, and those were the times when the LG hunting shot too was easily available. Now i've upgraded to a Browning B425 field gun(29" barrel- Choked), and theres no way i'am going to use a Desi cartridge in an expensive weapon. I'am not a huge fan of rifles but i freak out on shotguns. Lol, theres a relative of mine who still has a century old muzzleloader, and its over 7 feet tall.

[Tusker4x4]

Originally Posted by tsk1979

There is a pic of NIOC in Indian express print edition. Is it from Hissar OTR?

Hi Tanveer,

The pics are old one when NIOCwas formed. Tht pic in the line is infront of the behrampur track old entrance. You would see Laxman, RBS, Pushkin, Tani, Sudeep, Mandeep, Vaibhav, UBS Sir and others in the shot.

The submerged Jeep is Sudeep's GPW. Pushkin, Mandeep & Sudeep are on it. Thats is the behrampur lake in monsoons (where we had our bbq in the last night OTR)

regds

Amit

[Ym-enjn]

Here's the copy of that article. NIOC rocks..

Indian Express article.pdf

[abhijeet]

Originally Posted by randeep04

A few pics of my Tucson at our Havili

Hi Randeep,

Fancy bumping into you here!

Cheers!
Abhijeet

[desertfox]

Ah good to see you here Abhijeet. What's up with the IFG forum these days, I just cant log in ?