Restoration of Valentine IXDD, T82527. Part2

I was thinking of calling this “Zen and the art of tank restoration” but common sense get the better of me.

I do not know how other people set about restoring vehicles but to me there are three sections: to fix what you have got, to get or make what is missing and to deal with the philosophy. THE WHAT?

Well, I am someone who could not hacksaw a straight line so knowing you are capable of doing it and being happy with what you can do is important. I am not talking of confidence. All the confidence in the world will never make me a mountain climber or teach me to weld come to that. It is a willingness to have a go, then another go then another until you get it right. Practice on new stuff, not old. It costs money to break a new part you have just made but it is better than breaking an irreplaceable original. If you do modifications, do them to the new replacement bit so if an original piece turns up then you can replace the pattern part. Recognise there is no such thing as complete authenticity, I mean how far do you want to go? Wartime fuel in the tank or wartime air in the tyres? A case in point: most of my tank is made from metric sized armour plate and imperial sized mild steel. To all intents and purposes, the only thing I have available now is metric mild steel. Do I use it or do I wait and search for original material? How much do I replace due to rust or damage? You have to make your own choices and compromises. The only thing I have made a point of doing is to record when I have compromised, for future reference.

Up to the point of the turret ring being expected, (see last issue) I had no real plan. Just do whatever I could was the order of the day and I “messed about” in a number of areas. If the work was ever going to be finished, I had to make some decisions. Due to the nature of my tank and the reasons for its survival, I was presented with 3 different restoration situations, all of which had to be dealt with differently.

The basic hull, engine, transmission etc was very good, having spent the whole time since the war under cover. I had to choose whether to retain the rather poor but original paint, hoses, wiring and fanbelts etc. I decided largely to clean and save with maintenance. In particular, the engine was not disturbed.

The second situation was the damaged parts. The turret had been cut up and this along with some other bodywork parts had been left outside for 40 years. The damage had to be made good and repainted but as far as possible, original parts were retained. This even extended to brass bushes and nuts and bolts recovered from absolutely rotted steel components, even though it would have been easier in some cases to make new.

The third situation was the missing parts: bodywork, frames, screen and the external parts of the hydraulic and pneumatic system for the DD equipment. As a unique survivor, there is no other one to copy but there are several under the sea, lost on exercises. Divers tend to collect souvenirs and if they recover bronze parts then they could be used straight away after cleaning. Brass appears sound but in fact the alloy has been affected by seawater and is very brittle. Even rotted steel parts are useful in giving general dimensions. In fact, to determine an original tube size, I used rust alone! As a special request, a diver recovered about a foot length of tubing and did not clean off the barnacle type growth, called concretion. When cut open, the tubing had entirely disappeared but by measuring the empty cast I could determine the outside and inside sizes which perhaps unsurprisingly turned out to be 2 inch bore (nominal) water piping. What was really surprising is that this is now called 60.8 mm o/d mild steel tubing, exact imperial size and readily available, just now measured in millimetres. Identifying the dimensions was difficult but actually making the frames was nearly impossible. I realised that I could not do the corner bends by hand as these need to be to a fixed radius. That was simple, pay money and get a local company to bend them. After that, a friend and I set to with a hydraulic hand bender and over a single weekend made the remainder of the two frames completely although it took several weeks to persuade another friend to help with the critical and difficult job of welding them together. Some parts of the mechanical props were copied from items recovered from the sea but one part out of four is a hypothesis of knowing what each end has to fit into, how long it is and one very poor photograph. Knowing the same designer made this and the steering components, I copied the general arrangement. Many parts were made from plans drawn up by myself by scaling up the parts list and free use was made of money for commercial flame cutting of profiles and blanks. One piece of engineering I had to pay for was to have the frame hinges milled. These were just too big for my converted lathe to handle although that is the only piece of milling or turning that I had to get someone else to do. I do not want to tell you how many parting tools I have broken though! In some ways, the research involved in making pieces has been the most rewarding part of the job, reverse engineering so to speak. You get to recognise the designer’s “style” and say to yourself “now how would Cyril Hutton have dealt with this?” He was Metro Cammel Asst. Works Manager during the war.

I am getting ahead of myself. While awaiting the turret ring, I decided on a plan of attack. This was to build the turret basket first, then fit the turret to the ring. Then complete the exterior bodywork, then the DD equipment. Before fitting the screen, take the whole thing apart for needle gunning/sandblasting and then painting. Re-assemble, final painting and fit the screen. Good plan, pity I could not stick to it!

As time went on and 2004 approached, I realised that I would have to look for shortcuts. Perhaps only remove the turret and engine, and then paint inside in situ. Do I really need the turret stowage? Do I need to disturb the engine at all etc?

It has been said that restorations take twice as long and are twice as expensive as you think Ha Ha again. Try 100 times of each!

The work itself was fairly easy, technically but of course very heavy. It is a major undertaking to remove rusted bolts and the turret has more than 70 inside and about 50 outside up to 7/8 inch in diameter. All were rusted in with the heads rusted away and in most cases both the metal and the bolt are made of armour that is almost as hard as a drill or a tap. Say half a day on each on average? Anyway, all bolts out by the time the turret ring appears from New Zealand.

Ring was fitted to hull and the turret basket fabricated. The only original parts are the centre casting and cover, recovered from Sennybridge range. The basket itself was a complete fabrication, built with details from the fragmentary remains recovered in 1984 and scaled up plans from the parts list. The curved sides were rolled in a Probation Service workshop one weekend by offender labour. (I earn my living as a Probation Officer). Good to see them doing something useful! Next, try my turret sides on the ring, of course they do not fit. English tanks were built “in situ” and boltholes were individually marked out and drilled. Result is that even parts from consecutive vehicles off the line have boltholes in slightly different places so do not fit. Some hole slotting and the use of knecked bolts etc and I managed to fit all but about 4 of the turret ring to turret bolts. Dismantle again and shotblast, reassemble. Then the turret roof. I had to compromise due to the damage and retained and repaired the front half and three doors. The rest I made from mild steel.

When the turret had been welded, I decided to leave the welds showing. Why? Well this turret (not just the correct type but it is actually original to this hull remember) was complete for 4 years then apart for 53. The cuts are a genuine part of this vehicle's history so I have “retained” them.

The missing engine cover is partly made from original pieces recovered from under the sea with the large slab being flame profile cut. This is actually two layers of 15mm steel, cut with the nozzle at an angle and to two slightly different sizes. Result is a 30mm slab with almost all of the milling already done. Originals were riveted; replacement is welded and bolted for of ease of construction.

Missing radiator door came from a range wreck. This was from a Mk I, which had armour sides 17mm thicker than the Mk IX. This entailed reshaping the (armour) hinges to make allowances for the thinner sides. Three half inch countersunk rivets could not be replaced so these are now bolts and nuts. The labour involved in closing rivets seems to go up in a geometric series: 1/4 is easy, 5/16 is hard, 3/8 needs a large hammer, 7/16 a sledgehammer and I could not effectively do a half inch one with anything I had, hence the bolts. Rivets of that size do not seem to be made anymore either. Some 5/8 rivets in the turret roof were also replaced with screws for the same reason.

Welding the trackguards was a major problem due to the thinness and length involved, it was just asking for major distortion. The reinforcing bulges are lengths of tubing, slit lengthways and the rounded end forged and then welded on over slots pre-cut in the trackguards. A tedious job but it has come out ok, I think, particularly as I had to teach myself to do this welding with no prior instruction.

The pneumatic system is a major problem as there is not the slightest possibility of obtaining the correct mazac castings. To have some blanks sand cast with all of the attendant machining was going to cost £1000 plus and would still not be correct. I thought I had secured a supply of American bronze ones, recovered by a French diver but when I went all the way to Normandy he changed his mind and refused to sell. As a result I have ended up fabricating them from mild steel with plumbing fittings. They look similar to the originals and they work but in any case cannot be seen. More importantly, they should enable me to demonstrate the machine but can be readily replaced at any time in the future if either English Mazac or American bronze originals ever appear or more accurate copies are made.

The canvas is the part that most people assume was the most difficult but in fact it was one of the easiest. My son and I made the prototype (to get shape and size) from a lorry sheet in an afternoon by fitting it to the frames, rather than trying to cut and shape it on the floor. We draped it on, cut to fit; temporarily “stitched” it together with Copydex glue and then took it off to use it as the pattern for the proper one. Quite easy really and it gave us some great photos for publicity purposes. More about this later however.

Quite a bit of the work done over the years by myself was in fact unfinished and a sole destroying part of the last period has been spent in finishing parts I thought were already finished or indeed scrapping poorly made items and starting again.

In between this, there was a host of small parts to be made, aerial brackets, controls, radio tray fittings etc.

The first 5 years and the last year the restoration has been under cover with the intervening years being worked under a canvas sheet. The conditions were not good, even though it was under a roof and the floor was frequently a quagmire. This necessitated wellingtons and the certain knowledge that any spanner or small part dropped was a “goner”. The time spent in 2003 building a lean to building to work in has transformed the job, which could not have been done without it.

Simultaneously with finishing the restoration, I was organising its first public appearance, to commemorate a pre D-Day exercise that went wrong due to the weather. This is Exercise Smash, not the better known Operation Tiger when German E boats attacked an American rehearsal. I had originally pictured myself and tank on the beach and a brass plate on the wall but as things went on it became more and more complicated, involving several ex service associations, the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Army, (both regulars and TA), and the Royal Airforce. A number of other organisations were involved, particularly the Tank Museum and the organisers of Beltring. At one point, 3 landing craft were involved, later reduced to 2.

By the autumn of 2003, I was clearly not going to be anything like finished but an appeal at the Birmingham MVT meeting drew several volunteers who performed sterling work in truly appalling conditions. It would be invidious to name them but I must mention Don who almost single-handedly scraped and painted the whole of the inside, sometimes with ear defenders on as someone else was needle gunning the outside. Ken took away many parts and brought back beautifully welded assemblies. Andy came straight from a nightshift to help and for most of one of the days he was there he lay in the mud under the tank and needle gunned the inside of the suspension! Gaz spend hours re-tapping out holes to ease bolt replacements, Dave was a whiz on the angle grinder and Colin was a jack of all trades. Any visitors were set to work including Phil and Greg, even my sons next door neighbours were roped in. Dag helped me with the frames and Bob the master welder welded those frames and the turret although he was unable to assist with the track guards. That job fell to me. 4 weeks before the first appearance, as much fabrication as was going to get done was done and the last parts were removed. Quite frankly, in its partially stripped condition, the tank looked so appalling that I was genuinely worried it would not be complete enough to appear, let alone be finished. There then followed a frenzied period of work to clean, paint and reassemble. On the Sunday of the last weekend I worked until 3.45 am and restarted at 6.30. The canvas was still not fitted, the air system was not tested and the propeller drive was not assembled as the Royal Engineers called for it, exactly to the minute as arranged.

We followed it down to Bovington with a car full of tools and unfitted parts and work continued late into each evening. The landing craft was loading on 2 April so the evening of 1 April was our last chance to try to get the pneumatics to work and to fit the canvas. This had to be the prototype canvas as the correct one had not been completed but as it was the correct shape, no problems were envisaged. As we drove it into the workshop it laid a trail of oil and inspection showed a broken main oil pipe that links the sump to the oil cooler. Instead of sorting out the pneumatics, we spend until the early hours making and fitting a new pipe, which entailed removal of the tanks belly plates.

Did I make it? Well, almost I suppose is the answer. I had such high hopes of it being absolutely finished and perfect. In truth it looked the part and it performed faultlessly over the weekend and drew many positive comments. However, it had an inoperative, prototype screen and a propeller drive that was held out of engagement by string as the lock required some attention with an angle grinder to fit the parts together. Neither the pneumatic nor hydraulic systems are 100% and the turret lacks a lot of internal fittings and ammo storage. The (working) 19 radio set is fitted but not wired in. The engine compartment is just steam cleaned, not painted.

The tank is now at Bovington and will stay there for a few months. It then does a series of appearances at shows before coming back to the Midlands in the early autumn. Then it is back to work on it to complete it. I have been congratulated for doing a restoration lasting 20 years. Unfortunately the job was a 21 year one!

John Pearson 11/04/04

Part 1