Thursday, 26 February 2009
reporting snow in Canada
spell winter has suddenly returned to Vancouver Island.
Monday, 23 February 2009
Wadham-Stringer Austin Gipsy Ambulance FCG 74D

For quite a few years now, we have seen an old Gipsy Ambulance dumped
in a field, near to a steam rally we attend, as we have a Fire
Appliance, we ( my daughter, son & son in law) thought it might be
nice to have this, making up a fleet of emergency vehicles, also with
me being a retired ambulanceman a good project, we have tried to
purchase this vehicle before, but not having much success, until it
came up on eBay a few months ago, I had to pay a lot more than its
true worth considering its condition.
Well now I have it home, and have done some research it has turned out
that it is the Proto-type of the Wadham Stringer Ambulance's built on
an Austin Gipsy, what a rare vehicle indeed! "Also now cheap at the
price," The Ambulance body has not suffered too much from the UK wet
weather, but the Austin Gipsy front end has really taken a beating.
The Austin Gipsy owners Club (UK) Mike Gilbert's has even managed to
send me a copy of the original drawings for our Ambulance, what a
scoop,
I have had members of Hampshire Ambulance Service contact me as this
is where it First worked, giving me all sorts of information, and I
have spoken to one of the original body builders.
So I'm more determined to get this restored and back on the road.
Though after a weekend of finding how bad the metal work is I don't
think it will be ready for a year or so. Though if I can find a good
front end, I might do a swap, bringing forward our re-build.
The wings on our Ambulance have been modified – well in truth they
have been made by the Body builders as they are more like a Landrover
style having square sharp edge to them and no vents, but this is
correct from some of the information people have told me, they still
have the Gipsy front curve!
I know I'm mad but I think a nice "Police" Gipsy could be the next
project? Then we would have a true emergency Fleet. I will keep an
eye open just in case one turns up. But this one must be completed
first.
Alan Dunderdale
All for the Love of an Old Gipsy

For my sins I have fallen in love with an "Old Gipsy" she is wonderful
so sweet and easy to get along with ----- also being an
Ex Cornwall Austin Gipsy LWB Fire Appliance very easy to keep clean
and garage, after running and cleaning steam engines for years……..
"Pip" as she is affectionately known is the forth member of our team
she joins three Austin champs, all ten years older than her, a A35 Van
- our love is "Austin vehicles"
Saturday, 21 February 2009
A Weblog For Austin Gipsies?
This weblog is an idea that grew from discussions between me and Glenn Kemp, the owner of the Austin Gipsy website and the moderator of the newsgroup. Glenn is in Canada and I live in the Netherlands. So we are connected by the internet too. I own a modified 1961 Gipsy and am the moderator for the Dutch Austin Morris Riley Wolseley Register newsgroup and Website, so you can call me a bit of an internet-blog-hog, so I expect I'll be writing too. So here is the first post.
I hope there will be many more and that we can work together to enjoy another worldwide Gipsy feast
Kind regards,
Christiaan Linford
Dutch Gipsy(Special) 1961

There was one picture in the ad so I knew I could expect a yellow contraption that wouldn't look much like a Gipsy, but I thought it would be basically sound. So when we arrived and the garage door opened, this is what we saw: Yes it was yellow, but it had red flames, the underside of the car was still covered in dried mud and the wheels were too wide, so the car sported Jeep wheelarches. The car wouldn't start and pushing it back into the garage one of the wheels wouldn't steer in the right direction. Yes there was something with the steering. Looking the car over I decided it was a project. An interesting project for the price of a good running Jeep. So I decided I wouldn't buy it and continue running the Jeep. I don't know what made me decide to buy it later, but I did. Probably it was that Austin-thing most people don't understand...
But there was indeed some play there and most of the twelve uj's were not well either.
It turned out the steering arm had broken off one of the studs. Luckily one of the members of the great Austin Gipsy newsgroup told me(from Canada) there was a parts car for sale closeby.
So that car was carted home and I had quite a pile of spare parts.

It turned out that my car ended up with most of the suspension an steering parts from that car. New brakes were purchased all round and most of the Uj's were changed too. The bearings proved to be interesting too as I found they were set up without spacers or shims on three of the four wheels. Miraculously the bearings were well on inspection even though I've had trouble keeping the wheels on ever since. Yes that's something to be solved on the long run.
Meanwhile the flames and yellow paintjob put me off, so I decided to change that to "Cumulus grey", threw out the wheels and plastic fender flares. That made things much better and I decided to continue. Getting the car tested for use on the road didn't present so many problems, but running the car afterwards showed interesting enough. there are not many Gipsies here, so we decided to exhibit the car at one of the classic car shows. This was in the winter so the trip ton the exhibition was the first time I really took the car on the motorway in cold weather. The cold weather does something tonthe LPG, so below 10c it will not run over 70kmph for longer stretches. I know it has something to do with water in the evaporator, so that will be another long term issue.
The first offroad-test run showed the engine is very strong and the gearbox has all the right ratios, though articulation and turning radius are not the best for offroading in tight places.
Not having a roof was another problem, but in the magazine of the Gipsy-register I found another Gipsy in Belgium. The persistent problems with the wheels almost made me switch to the chassis of the Belgian Gipsy as that was a leaf-sprung version, but I'm happy to say the Belgian Gipsy went to another enthousiast who welded the holes and registered the car!
I have the roof on my Gipsy, so it looks even more as a Gipsy should. It's a pity that doors do not fit the modified apertures....
I realise this was not a restoration as quite a few members of the register do, but it certailny was an interesting experience. If you like to read more of my old-car adventures, you are welcome to check my old car weblog and I hope you'll add your own Gipsy-adventures soon!