V10 MTU

G'day Onetrack, You are right with your assumption. The Army Major I spoke to said if it was up to them it would be no problem. They realize that the asbestos is inside the engine and therefore no problem unless the engine is dismantled. The problem stems with the Government and some pen pusher that probably doesn't know s@#t from clay. But as I said earlier, I haven't given up and have gone higher up the food chain. I don't think I will do any good but it might rattle a few cages.

Ray - The asbestos thing is just a smokescreen .. something to put down on a Dept form. Geez, 40% of the buildings in Australia, including houses, contain up to probably 50% asbestos in their construction. Asbestos is everywhere. I rent a factory unit that is just a steel frame shed totally covered by asbestos .. and I haven't contracted asbestosis or mesothelioma yet. My factory unit is in a group of 12, all built out of exactly the same materials.

The only time danger arises with asbestos, is when it's cut with power tools or is powdered by the likes of clutching or braking operations. THEN, it most certainly IS dangerous. The amount of asbestos in the MTU engines wouldn't be any more than what's in any other engine of that era. It's just pure BS, the Defence Dept has made a decision they don't want the engines to survive, and that's it.

It's the same as the Lend-Lease deal during WW2. Big industrialists in America convinced the US Govt that ALL Lend-Lease equipment HAD to be totally destroyed, to prevent a massive disruption to their profits after WW2 by the re-appearance of large amounts of war surplus.

Lend-Lease destruction was carried out on a willy-nilly, ad-hoc basis, and in the end, a % of it wasn't destroyed at all. However, there were some glaring examples, such as the Catalinas scuttled, and a heap of other, near-new, valuable aeroplanes chopped up for scrap.

After WW1, 22,000 British aeroplanes were chopped up for scrap, large numbers with less than 10hrs flying time, and most were sold for

Our taxes at work, surely those engines could be put to good use. As you say majority of vehicle brakes, clutches and gaskets contain asbestos, just treat it with common sense.

common sense has nothing to do with asbestos.

I know of sevral steam museums closed by the local councils or govt bodies who own the land as the engines contain asbestos lagging. Apparantly having it sealed between the boilers or cylinders and cladding wasn't good enough. They then stop people from working on them as they are unsafe, the preventative maintenance isn't done(mainly painting) or repairs to shed roofs cleaning of gutters etc, so the water gets in, the cladding rusts through then the asbestos is visible. Then the pen pushers say "see we told you so"

If the maintenance and paint had been done the cladding would not have rusted through and the asbestos never exposed. I know the stuff can be dangerous but if treated with respect then you are fine.

Some people are out to make their squillions out of it. About 8 years ago we had a timber-framed, corrugated-iron roofed garage pulled down. The walls were asbestos sheeting. The quotes varied widely as some just treated the sheeting as asbestos while others want to treat all the timber and roof as contaminated in case asbestos had blown onto it.

Don't worry about losing storage space it came down to make room for a 4 car garage for the XP and stationary motors, single carport for the modern car and years later a truck port (after I bought my Inter)

The Missus used to own a property down Mandurah way about 12-13 years ago, and she subdivided it. As part of the deal, we had to demolish an old car garage clad with asbestos sheeting. The quotes to demolish it, by "professional asbestos removers", were astronomical.

We bought a couple of good masks with filters designed for stopping asbestos fibres, bought gloves and disposable overalls, and a heap of heavy black plastic sheeting .. and set to the demolishing, ourselves.

It took us less than a day to wet down the asbestos sheeting, unscrew it, pull it off, lay it on the car trailer, wrap it with black plastic as per council instructions, and deliver to the tip, and unload it by tilting the trailer and sliding it off. All up cost to us, less than a days labour and about $120 in materials.
The "professional removers" would have been making more money than the average drug dealer, for doing exactly the same as we did.

Crickey, did not think you had this kind of bloody mindedness in Australia! In Israel the rule since the 1950s has been you simply cannot register IDF surplus on the road. When vehicles are pensioned off, they're sold via tender and either broken up for scrap or re-sold abroad. Recently the IDF got shot of its DM800 tank transporter tractive units and these went to Africa, with very few left in the country as static displays or with scrappies (I posted some pics in another thread). Very frustrating. Same happened with all the M2 half-tracks some years back. In fact, I'm aware of one of ours finding its way downunder (complete with 6V53 and PAS)!

The main argument behind the rule is that the gov't would lose on tax as well as have loads of non-emission compliant vehicles on the road (same emission standards as in Europe nowadays).

You just cannot believe the stuff that got scrapped/sold overseas, it causes me to tear my hair out.

http://www.carsforum.co.il/vb/attachment.php?attachmentid=199051&stc=1&thumb=1&d=1273169331

There's a one owner from new DM800, on its way to Africa, where no doubt the locals will kill the V8 in no time :'(

Bigger pic here: www.carsforum.co.il/vb/showthread.php?p=2536691&postcount=3330

As for some terrorist attacking your Parliament or the public, believe me you don't need a Leopard to cause serious damage - last year, this Palestinian went on a rampage with a Cat bucketloader in downtown Jerusalem, mowing down a bus and causing mayhem in general. In all fairness to the Gov't, I can imagine it would not be easy to stop a rampaging tank in the middle of a city - by the time the Army could react it could cause untold damage (the only way to stop it would be with AT missile (shot from the ground or the air), a shot by another tank or climbing on to it, opening the driver's hatch and neutralising him). In Israel, where the security services have (unfortunately) far more experience than the Aussi ones in such matters, it took quite a bit before they managed to shoot the driver (and then they botched it by not making sure he was disabled, so he caused additional damage...).

But yes, trying to talk sense to a Gov't official is never an easy task

Cheers,

T

What a waist of some good engines, these things would sit nicely behind a gen-set or a heap of other things.

Yes government bureaucratic-al dumb arses !! :

Why am I not surprised >



A

Why are people so bloody selfish?They will turf stuff out rather than let you buy it I had a mate who had a heap of cat and perkins engine parts that he inherited and kept insisting they were no good to me.I told him i could get him some coin for them but he still threw them out anyway.

Reminds me of the time i found a pair of 210 Cummins manifolds lying in the dirt at a well known wreckers in Thomastown They were rusting away but i was told i could have them for the bargain price of $400 dollars!!!They were promptly returned to where i found them.

Time for another update. Today I received a letter from the Honourable Greg Combet, Minister for Defence Disposals telling me what I already knew, that I couldn't have an engine due to the asbestos in it. Not being overjoyed at that response, I then sent him a copy of an email from MTU Germany, that I received while waiting for an answer from the powers that be, that states the only asbestos in those engines is in the exhaust. Interesting to see what they say now!

What a load of b%$$#*%!! So? .. based on this premise .. this means that the Govt must now be planning to make you (and around 10,000,000 other Aussies) move out of your home, because your fences are made of asbestos, large portions of your house wall cladding are made of asbestos, and you also have corrugated asbestos roof cladding.
This is the reality of what we live with every day. 40% of our housing and buildings contain asbestos.
I rent a big factory unit, 18M x 12M, and it's entirely asbestos clad, roof and walls, with just a skeleton steel frame. I'm surrounded by 11 other factories, all built exactly the same. My garage at home is the same materials.
I think I'll sue someone for putting me at risk .. or better still, I'll ask Greg Combet to pick up the tab for removing me from all this dangerous asbestos, and send him the bill, for building me, all-new, super-safe buildings ..
I can't even begin to think about the amount of asbestos in my 15-25 yr old brakes and clutch, and exhaust gaskets, in my old one-tonner .. and that's all coming off, and dissipating in the air I breathe, every day ... oooooh, I feel faint, I can feel a massive dose of asbestosis coming on, and it's all the Govts fault .... where's my lawyers phone number?? ....