[zb]
anorak:
The gehuine Ergo sleeper has a longer window, two depressions around that window and an external spotweld seam between the quarter panel and the back panel. The high roof one has only one depression around the glass, the back panel is all one piece with the quarter panel and the coachbuilder has left his mark with a trim strip between that panel and the fill-in panel behind the wheelarch.
I reckon those cabs were day cabs when they got to the ice cream van factory, and those craftsmen did the whole job of expanding them to their finished size.
Regarding the timing of wipers, two electric motors may be timed together mechanically, simply by putting the ordinary linkage for a single motor between them. What is odd about those air motors? Do they have some sort of wandering synchronisation? I have never stripped one.
My understanding of it (and I’m open to correction, as always) is that the high roof sleeper cab was manufactured entirely by Sankey / GKN. They were built using special side and rear pressings manufactured just for this cab. If you follow the gutter around the roof, you can see there is no overlap joint behind the door, indicating that the gutter was manufactured as one pressing incorporating the extended rear section, the same can be seen on the Sankey low roof sleeper cab.
“So what?” you ask, well the Ergomatic gutter is actually a complex pressing that extends under the roof skin and forms a box section that is part of the cab’s structural integrity. It is not pressed as part of the panels underneath it (screen aperture, door frame, rear panel), although it was supplied attached to these panels for service replacement. To extend the gutter (box section) pressing after manufacture is not impossible, but is difficult, which is why the likes of Jennings completely remove the rear part of it, weakening the cab in the process, and overlap the remainder with their sleeper conversion for this cab.
To the best of my knowledge, Leyland Group didn’t feature any aftermarket cab conversions in their marketing material. The high roof sleeper cab does appear in some brochures, notably the Mandator V8, but I can’t find it actually listed as an option in writing anywhere!. But then the low roof sleeper cab isn’t actually option listed in writing within any AEC marketing brochure that I have either.
I don’t completely follow you on the wiper motors. Why would we link two separate motors together mechanically?. I guess it’s possible (?), and to that end the Ergomatic’s air motors should function in a similar way to the electric motors. If the pressure and volume of air supplied to both motors was identical, they should work together with no problem. The valving in them is mechanically driven (think of the steam engine principle) and doesn’t wander at all.
newmercman:
I never understood why the window in the bunk was smaller in depth than the door window, it made the thing look like a lash up, no matter who built it, same for the finish on the bottom of the sleeper extension, best exhibited in the Beaver publicity shots where the blue paint exaggerates the different line.
It was due to where the top bunk sits inside the cab. The bottom of the top bunk is in line with the bottom of the window. In the high roof cab, the top bunk sits higher, hence the slightly shallower window.
The Beaver in the publicity photo is actually quite interesting, but that photo shows graphically why you should never two-tone an Ergomatic cab with the colours separated just there (only in my opinion, of course!). On all Ergo’s the lower pressed feature line on the door lines up with absolutely nothing on the rear corner, which is why most Leyland publicity photos show a blue band painted around the cab which ends at the rear edge of the door.
Back to the Beaver in the photo, this lorry was part of a Leyland promotional convoy of vehicles that traveled to Bolivia in 1967. I have a very grainy colour photo of it on this trip somewhere, and it’s actually red and white.
ramone:
Another question regarding AEC having second best compared with Leyland , the last grills fitted to AECs were the same as the first upgrade that Leyland did to the ergo in the late `60s , I wonder if they had a few left and needed to get shut ?
I’m not sure the word ‘upgrade’ is the right one to use!.
The later alloy grilles were simply extruded aluminium sections shaped to fit the cab, and were considerably cheaper to manufacture than the earlier chrome grilles. They were the product of a re-styling and cost cutting exercise involving Mr Harris Mann of the Leyland Cars styling department, a man famed for styling the Austin Allegro, Princess and TR7. How the powers that be at Leyland thought he was the right man to update Giovanni Michelotti’s original design I cannot imagine. Just compare it with the re-styling carried out earlier to the Ergomatic cab’s fitted to the Gas Turbine by his predecessor Mr David Bache, formally of Rover Cars and famed for styling the P5, P6, Land Rover S2, Range Rover…