Old Trucking Reminicences

Purple-haze

Western Thunderer
Ah,Jordan,remember it well. Just after Christmas 1968,Guy 8 wheeler up Tog hill on the A420 to Chippenham,narrow road with a sharp left hander right at the start.Squeeze the wagon round the bend in bottom gear,press the gas pedal to the floor,and stick a lump of 3x2 under the bulkhead (no fancy dashboard) and sit back and fl************ freeze:shit: Happy daze.

regards

Rog
 

Eastsidepilot

Western Thunderer
Must admit I had it easy with Mercs and then Scania, I got off lightly with breakdowns in my driving career, the worst being the air assisted clutch linkage snapping whilst hauling up a gradient before Firenza, with a semi synchronised gear box, and no clutch, driving all up of 44 tons 'aint funny :eek:, managed to drop the trailer at the agents depot and crawl round to the Scania dealer for parts.
Apart from that it was always trailer tyres going awol :rolleyes:
Col.
 
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Giles

Western Thunderer
I had a Leyland Marathon with a Chinese box, broke a spring centre-pin, so the back axle drove itself forward on one side. Crabbing at a strange angle with 20 tonnes of bricks on the back past a Police car did have me worried....

I had an old Bedford coach as a mobile home for some years (a 45 seat Duple Viscount with a Ford engine). That had no power steering, and a crash box on the first two gears. I learnt to steer 'on the roll' very quickly! I often used to drive round North Wales visiting the railways towing a 14' dinghy behind that thing.... it was brilliant!
 

Osgood

Western Thunderer
Chinese box?
Modern drivers who don't go up and down the box look away now -
Though if you must be lazy you can skip 2 and 5...
You should try a Scammell gate-change! :cool:
Neutral is anywhere along the green line, but if you leave it idling in neutral without the stick between 1 and 2, the gearbox internal oil pump doesn't run and the box seizes up. :eek:

Scammell Gearbox Gate.jpg
 

Peter Cross

Western Thunderer
Our little old Bedford TK's you never used first unless pointing up hill. If it did more than two wheel revolutions before picking up second, you disappeared in a cloud of black smoke..
We had 4 for coal delivery and light haulage. Spent many a late night trying to get them out to work the next morning. How used we have got having vehicles that you never touch between services.
 

Eastsidepilot

Western Thunderer
My favourite gear box to use was the 12 speed twin splitter fitted to the Iveco's, proper crash box, if you got the rev's right with the road speed you could change gear with out using the clutch :D....not I might add on a steep down hill gradient when fully freighted .

Col.
 

parky

Western Thunderer
I used to like the Daf 4 speed with range change and split to give you 16 to play with. Providing you had the 430 it would keep up with most of the opposition

Yes Chinese 6 was way back the maybe a cut and shut with a spare axle like some of the clever people on Startseite - Das Wettringer Modellbauforum that make 4 and 5 axle heavy tractors
 

parky

Western Thunderer
To save other threads from our reminiscences we can all join in here

To start this new one off, how did people get on with the Merc EPS boxes when they first came out ?
 

Dog Star

Western Thunderer
In the period of (say) 1955 to 1960, how far would a driver have travelled in one day? I ask because I lived in High Wycombe at that time and the A40 (trunk between London and South Wales via Gloucester) passed through the town centre. There were a number of places adjacent to the road where trucks could be found parked overnight, mostly parked facing the road and invariably in the vicinity of a roadside cafe (pre Littel Chef days). I have thought that these were drivers working between South Wales and London who were resting overnight before making the journey into the London area.

For what it is worth, my recollection is that most of the vehicles were 8x4 flat beds or open sides.

regards,
Graham
 

Dog Star

Western Thunderer
My favourite gearbox type of choice was the 4-over-4, range & split. With that, a diff-lock & a switch to dump the air out of the tag axle, there weren't many winter road conditions I feared getting stuck in.
For those of us who only progressed to the main / hi-lo / overdrive of a Land Rover (four reverse gears...) Jordan (@Jordan) please explain "4-over-4, range & split" and "a switch to dump the air out of the tag axle".

regards, Graham
 

oldravendale

Western Thunderer
In 1960 a friend and I decided, on a whim, to go hitch hiking for a weekend. We took a bus to the A40 at Yeading after school on a Friday and stood by the side of the road with our thumbs out. We had no destination in mind, so it was where ever the first vehicle to stop was going. As it happened it was a 4-axle flat bed and he was on his way to South Wales from London. So we went to Crickhowell with him. I reckon we were at the A40 by 5pm, and we arrived at Crickhowell at about 10.30.

Sorry - I can't tell you what the truck was, but I remember the driver was absolutely exhausted when he dropped us off. That was the days before any legislation about the number of hours at a stretch, and before any sign of the motorway, of course. Friend and I learned some new and interesting Anglo Saxon that evening......

We camped alongside the river and got a lift to Symonds Yat the following day where the straps on friend's sleeping bag broke and it fell over the cliff edge, so we went cliff climbing to get it back. No accommodation booked so we stayed, with permission, in a farmers field. Trouble was he'd only just ploughed it and it was probably the most uncomfortable nights non-sleep I've ever had.

The corollary was when we tried to get a lift back to London on the Sunday. No-one would stop for these two scruffy herberts and in retrospect neither would I have! So we scratched together our remaining money and stopped a Black & White coach on its way to London, who dropped us back at Yeading. I've no idea what the fare should have been, and he certainly stopped at unauthorised places for us, but he took our money and got us home in time for school on Monday.

So, Graham, you are correct in surmising that at least some of the vehicles at High Wycombe were likely to be on their way to South Wales. Thank you for stirring a deep memory. Happy days!

I just wonder how many parents would even consider letting their 14-year old son do the same thing today.

Brian
 

Osgood

Western Thunderer
Graham - imagine a 4 speed box with a range change - effectively same as a Landrover 4 speed with high/low.

So you can go up through the Low box, then change range on-the-move by hitting a button / lever as you change from 4 back to 1 (which is now 5) and go through the second set of 4 (4 over 4 - except that on the Landrover 4L is about 2 1/2H so more like 4 trying to climb up on to 4 :))).

Then imagine on top of this the ability to automatically 'split' each gear using a simple button/lever - in other words get two speeds out of each gear stick setting with the ratio of the split gear 1/2 way between the two gears. If the ratio of the Fairy overdrive was different it might have been able to act as a splitter for each gear (ratio 1/2 way between two gears- as it is, from memory the ratios are all over the shop.

Here's a typical shift pattern with a single splitter button/lever - 4 speed box with range change (4 over 4) which with the addition of a split gives 16 forward gears total (18 includes the 2 x reverse gears):
Range Change with splitter.jpeg

So when, say, accelerating in 7L (which is gear stick in 3 high range position and split in Low), while the power is on you flip the split lever from L to H - nothing will happen until you momentarily ease off the power and the drive goes 'slack', at which point it automatically splits or changes up/ into 7H.
Power back on - then at some stage when slowing down (with truck pushing the engine) you may flip splitter lever back from H to L - again nothing will happen until you blip throttle when it will change from 7H to 7L.
At some point flip split lever from L to H - then when you use clutch and change gearstick from 7 to 6 (2 high range) it will automatically revert to H and you will have gone from 7L to 6H.
And so on - 6H split 6L split & gear stick shift 5H split 5L split + range change + gear stick change 4H split 4L split gear stick shift 3H split 3L.

Not surprising they're mostly automatic now.......but all the fun and skill has gone.

The Twin Splitter is usually a 4 speed box without high/low ranges, but with 2 splits in each gear lever position, giving 3 gears in each gear lever position, giving 12 gears.
As Col says, once on the roll you don't need to use the clutch even when using gear lever to change gear if you get the engine revs right, but if you don't know or forget about the clutch brake, it gets extremely embarrassing until you work out that there must be a clutch brake (once had a demo Foden 8 wheel tipper for a day - it was fine after the first 10 minutes :oops:).

Then there are those people who just like to show off in old American trucks with a 4 speed main box and 3 speed auxiliary or 2 x auxiliary boxes - have a look on Youtube for some unbelievable cogging tunes, but it will seriously interfere with progress on Scrufts Junction.

T
 
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Osgood

Western Thunderer
Here's a neat way to combine the themes of railways, 3 speed auxiliary gearboxes and Australia :) (and maybe help spend a bit of John Birch's money at the same time....):

Following the exploits of a pioneer family of road transport in the bush, from early days in the '20s with a postal contract using Bitsa trucks (bitsa this and bitsa that) through the immediate post war development of the 'road train' and a little bit of everything else thrown in. A fascinating saga of triumph over adversity in the Australian bush.

A Son of the Red Centre 1.jpg
A Son of the Red Centre 2.jpg
A Son of the Red Centre 3.jpg
 
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