newmercman:
The Italians used to have a lot of Transcons & TMs, I spoke to an O/D who had a Transcon, running M/E from Verona, he bought it after getting fed up with seeing the Brits keep passing his old Fiat in the mountains. IIRC the TMs were known as ‘the griffin’ most of them had the V8 detroit in, they sounded lovely in a tunnel, there was a dealership on the Milan Tangenziale IIRC. Had a go of one once, a bloke by the name of Jock Hastie(see PIE posts) had one in EVS colours, a wide cabbed left ■■■■■■ with a 400hp V8, that thing could fly & the diesel wasn’t too bad as long as you revved the nuts off it, there was a pull out knob on the dash with a skull & crossbones on it, I think that they would run backwards every now & again & this stopped it self destructing. From what I recall it had a pretty decent cab, but the seats were cream tartan check, how anbody could think that cream tartan was a practical colour for a lorry interior is beyond me!! When it was retired it was converted to a wrecker & it used to park in a yard on the north side of the Woolwich Ferry.
Your right about that knob on the dash, i moved one of jess b woodcocks TM,s once and to stop the engine i pulled the knob on the dash thinking it was the stop but was then told by the driver that the cab had to now be tilted and the knob reset.He told me if you backed onto a bank or against something the engine would run backwards like you said an this knob was to prevent this.They had the V6 detroits and the V8 versions i think all the V engines had GMC blowers on them.