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Hanging armored plate on vehicles became a popular pastime since cars were built, especially when people wanted to shoot at you. The Kubus was designed on the fly and built in 13 days just in time for the Warsaw Uprising in August 1944. The design was credited to Walerian Bielecki by Wikipedia, and another worker, Jozef Fernik, contributed the name, which was the nickname of his wife recently killed by the Germans. The Poles gathered together all the steel plates they could cobble together and shot at them to gauge their usefulness. The thinner ones seemed to do better at angles, and their best plates came from bank safes. All this was hung on a 1938 Chevrolet truck, license built by the Poles locally, and modified to run on wood gas, as real gas was impossible to get. The resulting vehicle could carry 12, sported a Soviet 30 caliber machine gun and a homemade flamethrower.
The Kubus took part in several attacks on the University of Warsaw. It's combat career lasted just nine days, less than it took to build. The Germans holed up at the University had no heavy or armor piercing weapons, however the Poles were unable to drive them out and finally had to abandon Warsaw entirely. The Kubus was abandoned and unbelievably survived the war, and is on display at the Warsaw Uprising Museum. A replica has also been built.
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Luckily for Ferret Scout Car owners in Cincinnati, there are repair resources available to keep the machines on the road. 2 shops in the Madisonville area with Ferret experience are Eurauto and Brindle's Cincinnati Motor Car. The owners both own Ferrets and other military vehicles, and are enthusiatic collectors. They also collaborate on projects, with the latest being a Ferret engine swap.
Tim Brockman, who runs Eurauto, owns this particular Ferret, which suffers from a locked up motor. The repair for this engine would take a lot of expensive machining, as the motor was seriously damaged. Getting another one from England has gotten prohibitively expensive since 9/11, but luckily he came across a virtually new motor in an ad in Military Vehicles magazine. The guy in Texas had bought this motor sight unseen to repair a Rolls Royce, but soon realized it wasn't the correct motor. It sat around his garage for years till he took out the ad to sell it.
Now with the new motor in hand but no time to install it, he farmed the job out to John Brindle who owns Brindle's Cincinnati Motor Car. Another project in John's lot is a British Scorpian waiting for a new Jaguar motor. British cars are also John's forte, and he owns several rare cars, including a '52 Allard K-2 and a Sunbeam Tiger. Many British cars have gotten a new lease on life going though Cincinnati Motor Car.
The new motor for this Ferret is slightly different, and although there were several motor upgrades through the Ferret's production life, this one seems to be from a Humber Pig, a British armored personnel carrier. The Ferret has a dry sump system for lubrication, whereas this motor has a wet sump. Being just another variation on the same motor, everything will bolt up. As far as getting the engine out, the access is much better than the Mercedes and BMWs usually worked on at the shop. No worries about extra stuff like air conditioning or catalytic converters to get in your way.
In an afternoon the engines are sitting side by side to sum up the differences. One interesting thing about these motors is the small brass cylinder bolted to the thermostat housing. This holds a rolled up parchment with a detailed history of anything the British Army had done to this motor. It's also nice to have the original workshop manuals to get the job done right. When it's done, Cincinnati roadways will host something a little more interesting than it's usual fare of Toyotas and Chevy trucks.