Kev that photo could be me, apart from the trailer which was a 9’1" wide spread.
Looks to have a Maudsley diff too, no shiny hubcap like the earlier photo of the car carrying Ergo with an AEC diff.
Leyland did a recall for the splitter box and retrofitted a much larger unit. Prior to that it was common to see these things stopped with the driver tie-wiring the splitter change arm into high range.
My retrofit was a bit of a fail as they didn’t re-assemble the air change valving on the remote linkage properly and it completely jambed the gear stick in peak hour traffic. Brute force fixed that one.
32t would have been an extreme effort for the rumoured 180 horses.
I once did a light load test at around 26t which made a massive improvement to the performance compared to the normal 28-30t.
But we carried bulk product, so light loads weren’t an option.
7-loads a day, 6.5 days a week, the vehicles had to be extremely reliable.
I’ve heard people complain about Leyland’s brakes yet I found them excellent. Power steer was not so great, more armstrong than power.
kevmac47:
This is me in 1972, the Mercury had a great gearbox, unfortunately the gaffa loaded it the same as the Mandators he owned
it struggled a bit at 32T.