AEC V8

ERF-NGC-European:
Here are some examples of the sleeper cab option…

Good photos there Robert.
I’m sure I’ve seen a colour photo of that dead Mandator V8 with the high sleeper cab abandoned in Istanbul, it might even be here on TN somewhere.
It sat in company with several other failed lorries which had been robbed for spares, as I recall.
I believe they were all still there into the 1990’s.

I quite liked the air operated wipers; you could adjust the speed to suit the amount of rain or spray on the windscreen. When we moved from Turner’s old Fordham depot to the new one I was rooting about in the workshop stores and found several Trico air wiper motor reconditioning kits. There were also one or two other AEC bits and pieces, including a V8 head gasket set, unused…but sorry ERF, it was snapped up years ago at an AEC Rally.

I was once told that you can’t time those air motors to operate in sync. Is that bs or what?

gingerfold:
I quite liked the air operated wipers; you could adjust the speed to suit the amount of rain or spray on the windscreen. When we moved from Turner’s old Fordham depot to the new one I was rooting about in the workshop stores and found several Trico air wiper motor reconditioning kits. There were also one or two other AEC bits and pieces, including a V8 head gasket set, unused…but sorry ERF, it was snapped up years ago at an AEC Rally.

Don’t know about AEC wipers the only one I drove was electric. I do know about Foden S80 wipers though .Rain, turn on wipers. Wiiiiiiippppppppppeee, eventually reaches return point, then time stands still, driving blind. Then without any warning wipe wipe wipe wipe in 1.3 secs then nice n steady with the odd break for a breather every 1/2 min or so. Then stop, you get the idea, the most stressful part of the job. The fitter " they are all the same! Don’t you think I’ve got nothing better to do? "

coomsey:

gingerfold:
I quite liked the air operated wipers; you could adjust the speed to suit the amount of rain or spray on the windscreen. When we moved from Turner’s old Fordham depot to the new one I was rooting about in the workshop stores and found several Trico air wiper motor reconditioning kits. There were also one or two other AEC bits and pieces, including a V8 head gasket set, unused…but sorry ERF, it was snapped up years ago at an AEC Rally.

Don’t know about AEC wipers the only one I drove was electric. I do know about Foden S80 wipers though .Rain, turn on wipers. Wiiiiiiippppppppppeee, eventually reaches return point, then time stands still, driving blind. Then without any warning wipe wipe wipe wipe in 1.3 secs then nice n steady with the odd break for a breather every 1/2 min or so. Then stop, you get the idea, the most stressful part of the job. The fitter " they are all the same! Don’t you think I’ve got nothing better to do? "

Thankfully the Ergomatic air wiper motor is a completely different design to the one fitted by Foden on the S80 and S90. The Ergo one is actually pretty good, the only thing to watch is that the restrictor is fitted in the air inlet. Without it the wipers go absolutely ballistic!.

Those ice-cream van roof extensions are not on “proper” Ergo sleeper cabs- the rear quarter panels are lash-ups.

[zb]
anorak:
I was once told that you can’t time those air motors to operate in sync. Is that bs or what?

If you’re talking about two air motors coupled directly to wiper arms, then yes, I would say that’s right.
But it’s no different to electric motors in that situation.

[zb]
anorak:
Those ice-cream van roof extensions are not on “proper” Ergo sleeper cabs- the rear quarter panels are lash-ups.

They are ‘proper’ actually!.
They are Sankey full steel sleeper cab shells with the extended fibreglass roof extension.
A rarely specified option back in the day, and I’m not aware of any that survive today.

The sleeper cab conversion manufactured in fibreglass for the Ergomatic cab by JH Jennings, one of which is amongst Robert’s contribution above, really were pop riveted on lash-ups - typical of the JHJ conversions in my opinion.

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.

Richard Evans,Albert Evans’ son ran a sleeper cabbed Mandator on Benelux work int late 70s. It has a Derby reg plate but I could never find out who the original owner was. It finished up at Sheffield depot,after I had left in 1979.

evans45.jpg

evans35.jpg

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.

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

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 ? :wink:

[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 ? :wink:

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…

An AEC Mercury tractor unit with the high roof sleeper cab…
AEC V8  2.jpg
And an export AEC Mammoth Major Six, photograped at AEC’s Southall Works…

Definitely the wrong wording ERF , but the last of the AECs received this grill whereas Leyland had used it for years , would this coincide with Leylands upgrade to the brown cab and them having surplus old stock ?

I have just got to the end of this thread, after starting from page one several days ago, and have thoroughly enjoyed it even though I have not understood all the technical stuff.

A couple of comments which might amuse. It was mentioned a few pages ago that a fleet owner (was it Evans seeing that sleeper Mandator?) removed all the AEC insignia because ‘I am not sending my wagons all over the place with unpaid advertising’. I worked for Econofreight at the Leicester depot years ago and Tom, the main boss at Thornaby took all the big A and ■■■■■■■ badges off our Atkis. For the same reason. Some crept back, out of sight out of mind, but he was a stickler. When I was given my new Daf I put ribbons on the mirrors to keep them clean. He ordered them off, and when I put them back later, he happened to see me somewhere around the country and rang my manager to say. ‘tell that David to stop making my lorries look like gypsy wagons!’

Back to the Ergos. I was loading in Velindre one evening and the driver I got chatting to had a brand new one. He was chuffed to bits with it but the interior was filthy. He explained that he thought those demister pods under the quarter lights were ashtrays. You can imagine the results the first time he put the blowers on. :laughing:

I only had one Ergo on a regular basis, a 2 pedal Beaver with Bunny Hill Motors, near Loughborough. I liked it well enough but the gearboxes were unreliable, may have been something to do with drivers doing a racing change with them. :unamused:

He was a funny boss too. Let us keep the wagons at home all year, but insisted they were in the yard at Christmas. Perhaps it is a transport manager thing. I was no different when I was TM at Toray Textiles near Nottingham. When the drivers put large red noses on the grills I ordered them all off, ‘if you want red noses put them on your cars’. I wasn’t all that sure why I did it, but probably simply because they didn’t ask first. :confused:

Spardo:
…he thought those demister pods under the quarter lights were ashtrays. You can imagine the results the first time he put the blowers on. :laughing:

:laughing: :laughing: Priceless!!

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.

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

I always though it looked like them homebuilt pigeon boxes you saw on erf and Atkinson

kr79:

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.

Sent from my SM-G950W using Tapatalk

I always though it looked like them homebuilt pigeon boxes you saw on erf and Atkinson

Yes, brought back a memory for me, it was one of those rabbit hutch Atkis that I stepped up to at Econofreight. Promoted to that from a big snub-nosed Foden, the 8LXB stuck out the front, not out the back like other motors. I accepted the Atki though because it was a sleeper, of sorts, and I was younger and more agile then, also it was the only one with power steering. :smiley:

ramone:
Definitely the wrong wording ERF , but the last of the AECs received this grill whereas Leyland had used it for years , would this coincide with Leylands upgrade to the brown cab and them having surplus old stock ?

When the later high datum cabs appeared with the brittle brown plastic trim, headlamps in the bumper etc, many of the cab pressings were changed. In some ways these cabs owed something to the Mandator V8 in that they followed it’s cab design where the drivers seat floor pan tilts up with the cab.

The later cab has a fibreglass grille panel with straight sides. The door aperture pressings for the Ergomatic cab had to be revised to accommodate this panel, which is why all late cabs have a straight vertical pressing between the door hinges, whereas the earler cabs were bowed in to follow the shape of the original steel grille panel. All cab shells produced from this point were updated in this area, including those supplied to AEC, and standing in front of the lorry they are easy to spot.

I think I’m right in saying that Sankey / GKN were supplying the Leyland Group with around 500 cabs per month at the height of Ergomatic lorry production. With that scale of production, do we think there was room for surplus stock of any sort to be hanging about?. We may never know.