rover

AUSTRALIAN LIGHT

ARMOURED CAR

"ROVER"

Rover pics here. You can find out more about the "Rover " in general here!

My major long-term restoration project is an Armoured Car Light (Aust) better known as a Rover. I acquired the remains of Rover Mark 2 #77641 on Easter Monday 1997. Since then I have done little to it apart from some cutting away of a home made cab and some preservation of the mechanical components. The Rover is missing it's armoured hull but I have located a suitable hull here in Western Australia which I can obtain through some swapping of some of my other military vehicle "junk".

So what I currently have left is chassis and all the running gear until I can get the hull. The chassis and running gear is the same as that of the Canadian Military Pattern Ford F60L on which the Rover is based.

15 January 1998. After a little wheeling and dealing I have finally acquired a hull for the Rover from the Army Museum at Nungarin in Western Australia. In exchange for this hull I traded another Rover chassis and bumper, a pre-war John Deere Model D tractor and a Grant tank front end complete with final drives, drive sprockets, differential and transmission. I have also promised them a set of Rover front and rear axles.

This museum had four Rover hulls which had been recovered from salt lakes near the town. The hulls had been dumped there in the late 1940s after they had been sold at auction by the Army. They had been bought by farmers and had the hulls removed and the chassis and running gear were used for trucks. Three of the hulls recovered were the long wheelbase Mark I Rovers. Since 77641 is a Mark II Rover I acquired the only Mark II hull.

This hull has had quite a bit of the original armour plating cut away, although this is not too difficult to replace. Unfortunately this hull must have been siting right in the salt lake since it is very severely corroded around the bottom of the hull. This will required major surgery to repair.

A bit of trivia here. Although this hull is very rusty and no paint remains on it, in certain light a number 77554 is visible on the right side of the engine cover. According to Mike Cecil's excellent Australian Military Equipment Profiles Vol 3, this was numerically the last of the longer Mark I Rovers, however, this one is definitely a Mark II. Perhaps the engine cover had been swapped over at some time but I really don't think.

2 May 1998. With winter approaching here in WA, I have got off my backside and started doing a bit to the Rover so that I can work on it indoors when it gets too cold and wet. I now have 77641 stripped down to a rolling chassis. Next I have to do a few repairs to the chassis where a farmer has welded mounts to it for a truck body. As soon as I have done this job, I will mount the hull from Nungarin onto the chassis and start the hard work of replacing the missing and corroded sections of plate.

I have also started stripping down the gearbox and transfer case. I found water in these and have already thoroughly flushed them out with diesel fuel but now I need to open them up and see if there is any corrosion inside. I am already expecting to have to completely replace all the bearings in them. I shall also start stripping the engine soon.

PLEASE BOOKMARK THIS PAGE AND RETURN OFTEN.

And now here are some Rover pics for you to enjoy. I scanned these pics from the November 1978 issue of the excellent magazine, AFV News. The original article that accompanied these pics was written by Paul Handel. My thanks to George Bradford of AFV News for allowing me to use these pics. Click on the thumbnail for a larger one.

EXTERIOR VIEWS.

---