Hi Richard
Are you talking about the sidewall of the engine bay on the LHS of the driver?
That was almost the first thing we removed after the engine covers came off, the problem was that the engine was touching the lip on the partition between the engine bay and radiators and the rear wall of the engine bay at the same time. twisting the engine sideways or tilting it only seemed to make it worse so we had to lower it mm by mm.
We did some work on a Fox (Scorpion Turret) but not a lot. The biggest problem of that was the regulator box getting it to work, at least the regulator box in the Vixen (same as the Fox). We even swapped the box from the Fox to the Vixen and then both stopped working!
Have you ever worked on a Vixen? I believe this one is the only operational one in the World, AFAIK even the one at Bovington isn't working.
Diana,
We also used to take out the front bulkhead, that way it made it easier to access the drive shaft, again, not a lot of extra work, but makes like a lot easier.
Re. The Vixen, I sent a lot of info for the Fox regulator panel to Col quite a few years ago after he spoke to me about the problems. The Vixen was not pursued and development cancelled early on, I worked on Fox from when it entered service around 1976 right through to its demob around early 90's, plus a few in private hands in later years. Only one good thing about them was driving them, but working on them was often trying, power steering unit for instance. Don't volunteer for that particular task!!!
Richard