Alvis Stalwart MkII of 1967 vintage.

Myself (Ralph Hosier) and one Mr Rannen Rudra purchased this as a runner in 1992, we spent far too long out in the cold restoring it. We also spent far too much on trialling it (£500 in fuel for a weekend including getting it to the site).

I will add bits to this site as time goes by. Enjoy.

This picture was taken when it was in fine fettle, at Manby. You can just make out the 'kills' list in blue.

The Stolly has a Rolls Royce B81 streight eight petrol engine which produces about 220 bhp on a good day, setting up the twin breaker ignition points is crittical if you are to avoid the flame thrower effect from the exhaust.

The standard exhaust has the entertaining habbit of storing fuel! It is vital to allow the engine to run at idle for a few minuits after a fast run before switching off, if you switch off immediately after a run (such as would seem reasonable behaviour if you pull ito a fuel station off a main road for instance) there is a few secconds delay followed by a very large bang as the exhaust explodes.

Our Stolly returned about 2mpg arround town, which is expencive on four star. Off road it was much much worse. The 100 gallon fuel tank was never full!

The cast iron engine is rigidly bolted directly to the steel hull, there are no rubber mounts to break on this thing. If the engine is running badly (water in fuel is the top cause due to condensation in the huge empty fuel tank) it shakes violently side to side, I dread to think what was bending in order for that to happen. When running correctly the engine is almost silent at idle (untill the air compressor kicks in!) and no vibration is felt in the cab. Amazing.

A Stally doing what Stallys do. Here seen at the AWDC hevy vehicle trials in Manby.

The Manby mud run. Going in is easy.	Getting out needs help.	Sometimes lots of help, this one got me a round of applause!

And now for one of my hobbies, I don't like caravans.

before	after

It handels very well indeed on road and off. Its on road performance is better than many 7.5 tonners and it corners flat when empty. Well, it does when the tyres are new, once the front ones wear (which they do quite rapidly compared to the rear ones) the on road handeling goes to pot and it is like stearing a boat.

Being a boat is the Stollys other trick, it takes over six foot of water to float it so most wet obsticles ( such as rivvers) you will simply drive through. Ours did not have the swim gear fitted, most Stolly had this removed as part of a political agreement between east and west to reduce amphibious capability, and also because its quite dangerous in the water if driven badly (ie. by a squaddy).