Does anyone remember the Stalwart from the 70s? Used to catch fire easily

Had one on trial at 29 Field Ambulance for a while, used to make a peculiar noise. Although they were Amphib I think they were eventually converted to land use only.

Colin. Were they a DUKW replacement? Do you know what the engine was?

The Stalwart was one of a family of 6 x 6 vehicles developed to support fast-moving armour in western europe. The others were the Saladin Armoured car and the Saracen whichwas multi-purpose for eg Radio command veh,APC, ambulance, etc. The Stalwart was the open-backed load carrier, well suited for Fuel or ammunition re-supply to the front line troops.
Cross-country performance was excellent, I don't know about a prevalence to catch fire but our VMs used to say they were rotters to repair.
Eventually they were replaced by variants of the 432 I believe.
Many are in service still in 3rd world countries (or not so 3 rd in the case of Qatar where I am) but how they manage for parts I just do not know as Alvis who made them are no more.
I have also seen them at work on major petro-chemical construction sites and power station construction sites I have worked at in Africa and the Far East, sometimes in the rainy season they (and my ancient 1973 LWB diesel ex Dutch Army Land Rover) were the only things that moved on site.

If you actually want to see some in the UK you can go to the Military 2nd hand dealerships, one off the A1 near Grantham on the south bound side and another at "The Rocket Site" between Scunthorpe and Doncaster, I've forgotten its exact location. I also believe the Tank Museum at Bovington may have a Saladin.

The Stalwart (Stolly) first made its presence known some years before the Army took them on charge, about 6 or 7 years earlier I believe. Listed as FV620 series, and as an HMLC (High Mobility Load Carrier) supposedly capable of a 5 ton load there were a number of variants. Could do with a couple of photographs if anyone has any.

The two I had dealings with were the 622 - a General Service Load Carrier, and the 623 fitted with the Atlas Crane. There was also a REME variant, the 624, although I never remember coming across one.

Powered by an 8 cylinder B Series engine and 6x6, I personally liked driving them, and had the opportunity of a short flotation exercise while I was attached to the Artillery. They were prone to clutch problems though if not ised for extended periods.

A Stalwart was responsible for the demolition of my VMB toolbox. On exercise, one developed a transmission fault on a fair slope. As many of us know, the hubs were epicyclic, and if they were to be towed for any distance, the sun wheel was removed from all hubs. A certain NCO (whose name I no longer remember) put me, and another, on the job of removing said sun wheels.

The last sunwheel was proving hard to remove, and said NCO said something along the lines of "give it some welly". Welly was applied, sunwheel came out with a bang, and Stolly moves off of its own accord down the slope - backwards - flattening my toolbox on the way.

No one had realised that with no sunwheels the brakes foot or hand became useless. I was only out of trade training a few months and the change in VMB's also becoming Wheeled A trained was in its infancy.

Needless to say, it caused some banter to pass around for a couple of weeks. The farmer was quite happy, his rotting fence had to be replaced with a nice new one.

Paul.

a couple of people mention the stalwart as being in the 70s, but i have photos of it in the late sixties in bunde and we were not the first to get them in baor 12 regt RCT had them before us on trial.

never remember them going on fire but there were always being towed back to camp the REME lads were fed up with them.


paul 2 photos here if you want me to pm them you let me know.

How about some of these
http://www.terrawind.com/

I had very close relationships with these vehicles,and in the main as load carriers they were reliable.The only trouble was that as fuel replenishment vehicles using 4 1/2 gal jerry cans the noise they made during replenishment at night could be heard for miles around.We did have quite a drama with one,as during a NATO turnout we had one,fully loaded with operational ammo,catch fire on the autobahn!
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Don

good vehicles the only bug bear was waiting for the bellys to drain after swiming,a bit warmer than the rl in winter,dave

Try here
http://www.rangerneil.com

As a Reme bod, I repaired quite a few Stalwarts, especially at 2nd Line Workshops.

Their main expensive weakness, and main down fall was having no differential between each wheel on either side. Of course there was a differential to take up varying drive left against right sides.
Running unladen really was a 'No,no, due to the angle of the drive shafts being at a too acute angle!
Saracens had virtually the same drive train, but had a semi- automatic box and fluid fly wheel and suffered none of the Stali's drive problems....

Fitting new tyres (larger diameter) with part worn tyres (lesser diameter) was a contributory factor to wheel station drive shaft knuckles (knocking) then collapsing.

The Stalwart suffered from being used on the road, where its drive train system could not 'unwind.' Ideally it was designed as an off road vehicle, and worked well when used so!

The other weakness were the clutch plates. The main fault was the inability to select gears due to clutch drag, caused mainly by incorrect adjustment at the flywheel.

Surpringly, I never came across many instances of 'fire.' Possibly when it did happened, was because the air intake pushed leaves from behind the cab under the decks to the radiator where they accumulated with oil mist and rubbish.

The Stali was renowned for its exhaust 'back fire,' sometimes shooting out a 6 foot flame when on overun. I believe this is the point when it was liable, from the tail pipe to ignite things luking in the vicinity.

There was no better placed for a gun crew in winter, than to sit in the radiator fan blow past area. What heaven, on a cold winter night on excercise in Germany. Clothes dried in minutes!

I worked on the Stally during the 80's and 90's.

As a Vehicle Electrician it was a nightmare to work on.

The Vehicle Mechanics had an even worse time with the vehicle.

The issue of catching fire was mainly due to hem being used as a POL carrier and as has been stated before, the backfire which created a huge flame from the exhaust. It was mainly loose cam nets were near the exhaust that caused the fires. I remember a Stally being reduced to scrap on Soltau training area back in 1983.

Good lordy....okay, I am going to reveal a fairly basic ignorance here, I'm afraid, or perhaps a certain naivete. Keep in mind, I was never in the service but a son of a serviceman and so various aspects of military life were and are as much a mystery to me as to your average civilian LOL....

If Stalwart's were so badly designed (and the name of them is then somewhat ironic, wouldn't you say :->), that raises a few questions:

1 -- How on earth, and why on earth, were they ever designed the way they were to begin with? I am no mechanic, but it seems to me some of the issues of the drive shaft are pretty basic stuff that would have been immediately apparent at the design stage or, at the very least, in the prototype.

2 -- Once it was discovered these vehicles simply did not work as they were meant to (and the problems seem pretty dangerous to me), why on earth were they continued to be employed?

3 -- It was mentioned by alan that they were originally designed as off-road vehicles. Okay, one can understand the need for such vehicles, absolutely. How, then, did they come to be used for things other than off-road? Especially when it was realized the drive train system simply did not adapt well to being used on road?

There do appear to be some rather serious design flaw issues in the Stalwart and if they had a tendency to blow up (as per the one reduced to scrap during a Soltau training) it amazes me the things were in use for as long as they were!

Certainly I understand, after a fashion, outdated vehicles continuing to be in use and patch jobs being done over the years on them...we experience that in the Canadian army with our helicopters because the federal government just wouldn't fork out the money needed to upgrade to current models (and not just our helicopters; we have frigates and such in our navy that date from the Korean War era, if not earlier! Total rustbuckets, apparently), but these vehicles -- they're deadly by all accounts.

i find all this talk of stalwarts being no good on road laughable if you have seen in locations the hinterstein thread you will see a photo of one of the stollys.

they had travelled down the autobahn from bunde a round journey of 800miles and would do this journey no problem, they were new to us at the time and maybe after a few years they did not stand up to road use but in the 4 years of use by 33sqn most of our problems came on excercise when we had been using them off road .