FERRET MODIFICATIONSHOW FERRETS HAVE BEEN MODIFIED |
| Many unofficial and unofficial modifications have been done to Ferrets to cure its shortcomings. We have managed to track down quite a few of them and they will be listed below. If you have any pictures then please let us have a copy. |
| AUSTRALIAN BRAKE LINE MOD [Courtesy of Alex McPherson] | ||||
| With the Ferrets driving in the Aussie scrub, it became a common problem that when reversing Ferrets, the rear brake lines were often broken off at the hull fitting by small trees and rocks. The answer was to simply weld a short piece of angle iron next to the fitting as pictured. This had a down side though, making it more difficult to remove the brake line and access suspension pins. | ||||
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| HEATING | ||||
| The cold was always a problem on the Ferret and some
pretty ingenous solutions were found but the most common was to take an
ammunition box, prefered size being a 105/120mm projectile one. The lid
was removed and the box secured upside down over one side of the engine
vents. Next a fairly wide and long length of rubber hose was obtained
and hole made in the ammunition box to suit the size of the hose. The
hose was then inserted in the hole, fed across the engine decks and in
through one of the flaps on the rear of the fighting compartment. End
result was when you were moving you got an invigorating blast of hot air
and provided the driver used his windscreen, closed his side flaps etc
then the vehicle warmed up nicely.
An alternative was to make a number of holes in the bottom and then secure the bottom on to the vents and add the tubing. With the opening lid you could then put the compo inside for a while and it would heat the contents of the tins up quite well [also handy for drying kit]. |
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| WEATHER PROTECTION | ||||
| The crews imagination ran wild when trying to
weatherproof a Mark 1 Ferret and anything from a simple widscreen to all
manner of perspex contraptions were erected over the open top in an
endeavor to limit the amount of weather beating down on the commander.
This ingenuity was only limited by the amount of makralon/perspex and
angle iron that the crew could scrounge.
Mark 2 Ferret crews didn't need to build any strange erections on the vehicle due to the turret and a very common solution during bad weather was to reverse the turret and close the top hatch. In the space where the turret reap flap usually folded up a shaped piece of makralon/perspex was inserted to provide a windscreen of sorts. Really switched on crews even installed a windscreen wiper mechanism of some description. |
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| STOWAGE BINS | ||||
Stowage was another problem, particularly as the
years went by and more equipment was added to a vehicle. In addition to
the normal vehicle equipment and ammunition you could usually add any,
or indeed all, of the following:
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| FUEL CAN CARRIERS | ||||
| Experienced Ferret crews always carried extra fuel and while the vehicle had a stowage position for a fuel can on the LHS rear mudguard and a water can on top of the same mudguard this was usually deemed insufficient and a crew-designed rack was usually added to the vehicle rear. Really elaborate ones also had a number plate and light but as you were never really stopped for having your number plate concealed by cans a lot of crews never really bothered. | ||||
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