nice modern fleet line up Dennis , did you ever get any work from the test stations ■■ ie a vehicle with gv9 from the test station needing repair quickly ?
JAKEY:
nice modern fleet line up Dennis , did you ever get any work from the test stations ■■ ie a vehicle with gv9 from the test station needing repair quickly ?
It was a"pain in the arse" at times,being next door to the MOT station “JAKEY” which I quickly nipped in the bud and put a sign up at our gates,“We do not lend tools,sell spares or do repairs”,we did always help our “friends” out if they had the odd failure the likes of M.Woodhouse ,D & M Cargill and Sam Ostle & Sons to mention three but any others were just a nuisence with a capital “N”.I’ll give you a for instance,this ■■■■■■■■ from up Appleby way one day came rushing over to our workshop having got a fail for a bulb out,and Doh! he hadn’t any with him,so I gets him a bulb and he says How much? so I says just put a £ in the tea and sugar box for the fitters.Well you should have heard the “complaining”,this ■■■■ wines “but I can buy one of those bulbs for 20/30p” or whatever! So I says,“well ■■■■ off back to Appleby and get one then” about a 50 odd mile round trip.This sort of thing happened regularly,like can I borrow some tools to rectify a fail,they didn’t want to pay anything and we sure wern’t a charity for their benefit,and some of these aresholes would sooner stab us in the back normally.So I think a lot of the times the MOT testers told them not to bother as he will just ■■■■ you off 
Mind you,if I’d given our fitters a free hand they would have been everybodys friend then it would have cost me a fortune 
The sign did work wonders though, Cheers Dennis.
ruddy Dennis your a hard man 
,but I can under stand where your coming from . 
atkiman:
hi dennis they had a bad rep so you must have nursed it and maintained it ok jamie
Hiya Jamie,I did drive the D1000 nice and steady like but I still worked hard ! It is common knowledge that you had these “low flyers” sailing past you and disappearing into the distance and when you pulled onto the cafe they were only walking across the car park! 
I never drove the D1000 out of the green band on the rev counter,and I always changed the engine oil every 2 weeks and filter every other time,In my opinion regular engine oil changing was the cheapest maintainence also with the ■■■■■■■ you had to keep the injectors properly torqued on a regular basis.I applied the same kind of procedure to the two Perkins V8’s in our Mastiff tractor units later and they also gave us trouble free service.Cheers Dennis.
Mid 80’s shot here,a mixed bag basking in the sunlight,who parked that BMC/Leyland in the line up ? Cheers Bewick.
Nice shot of the 401 Dennis, I always liked sitting that bit higher up. Did you not fancy giving the 8LXCT 300 or the 6LXDT 290 a go?
gardner180:
Nice shot of the 401 Dennis, I always liked sitting that bit higher up. Did you not fancy giving the 8LXCT 300 or the 6LXDT 290 a go?
Hiya “gardner 180”,buying these two Sed/Atks were the last foray I had into buying British built motors in 1984 and then only because “the price was right” 
They had the 8LXC engine,Fuller 9509 box and Rockwell axle.I just wasn’t interested in aquiring any Tur bo’d Gardners as I believed the manufacturer had had their day and were out of their depth with regards to any further development.I believe that my assumption proved to be,unfortunately correct.But I will say that all the many Gardners we ran over previous years in various makes of motors gave excellent service so I would never hear a wrong word about them in their pre non turbo’d form.
Hey up Dennis it’s strange how different operators and hauliers run lorries what give them sterling service but to others they weren’t up to scratch I like reading about your time in road haulage and the varied amount of different lorries you operated your lorries always looked smart and very well turned out whenever I saw them out and about on my travels I’ve wrote on quite a few topics on these forums where I can give my own experiences of the lorries I’ve driven and the lorries our firm operated I would just like to add the Gardner Turbo lorries we ran ie ERF and Seddon Atkinson gave us brilliant service most of them we ran for up to 10 years some as long as 14 years they did tremendous mileage without any major problems other than the new injectors and the odd head gasket we never touched them other than that mind you going back to what you wrote earlier about your D1000 and your regular oil changes we used to the same so that’s why we probably had such good service from them. The lorries dropped to bits before the engines gave up all the best Gary
Just slightly off topic, but it’s interesting to learn from various contributors that regular and frequent oil changes always contributed to engine longevity in years gone by. I’ve always been a great believer in changing engine oil at regular intervals and even now I’m not convinced about these long interval oil changes recommended for synthetic modern oil. As one brilliant engineer told me years ago, “it’s much cheaper to fit oil than metal”.
Bewick:
gardner180:
Nice shot of the 401 Dennis, I always liked sitting that bit higher up. Did you not fancy giving the 8LXCT 300 or the 6LXDT 290 a go?Hiya “gardner 180”,buying these two Sed/Atks were the last foray I had into buying British built motors in 1984 and then only because “the price was right”
I have to say that from a drivers point of view I liked the Sed-Atki 400/401s.We had them on Air Products, yes the ride could be a bit bouncy at times but they were a good solid reliable fleet wagon, & I thought they were a very smart looking wagon too. Ours had ■■■■■■■ engines, some had the range change box others had the Twin-Splitter (my favourite gearbox of all time ). It’s all a matter of individual taste, you will get 1 driver will say the Scania Topline is a great motor, someone else will say its a bag of spanners! You will get 1 Company that will run nothing but Volvo’s, & another Company that tried a Volvo Demonstrator once, it was a Friday afternoon production job that kept going wrong, so they will say Volvo’s are a pile of doggy-doo & they’d never have another 1 in their yard! If we all liked the same thing then there would probably be only 1 type of wagon on the market to buy & someone would start ■■■■■■■■ about lack of choice!
gingerfold:
Just slightly off topic, but it’s interesting to learn from various contributors that regular and frequent oil changes always contributed to engine longevity in years gone by. I’ve always been a great believer in changing engine oil at regular intervals and even now I’m not convinced about these long interval oil changes recommended for synthetic modern oil. As one brilliant engineer told me years ago, “it’s much cheaper to fit oil than metal”.
still slightly off the topic our fleet engineer always insisted on buying top grade oil and for some unknown reason he always insisted never filling the engine oil up to the full mark it was always keep it just under the max mind you if you cut him half he’d have Gardner written through him so that’s probably why our engines lasted so long
gazsa401:
gingerfold:
Just slightly off topic, but it’s interesting to learn from various contributors that regular and frequent oil changes always contributed to engine longevity in years gone by. I’ve always been a great believer in changing engine oil at regular intervals and even now I’m not convinced about these long interval oil changes recommended for synthetic modern oil. As one brilliant engineer told me years ago, “it’s much cheaper to fit oil than metal”.still slightly off the topic our fleet engineer always insisted on buying top grade oil and for some unknown reason he always insisted never filling the engine oil up to the full mark it was always keep it just under the max mind you if you cut him half he’d have Gardner written through him so that’s probably why our engines lasted so long
Wasn’t it nice tho’ when you had proper lorry men like that who had been trained & learnt their craft/skills properly & new their jobs that well, & were actually interested & cared
The first Mastiff tractor unit I bought in Dec '69 was from Barton Townley in Lancaster and after a few months in operation we got a recall to have the sump oil pick-up pipe checked on the Perkins V8,apparently the pipes had dropped off on a few engines.I returned the motor my-self and the fitter that dropped the sump off then called out to the other fitters to “come down here” and have a look at this I was stood close by so I went down the pit as well to see what all the fuss was about 
It transpired that of all the engines they had had back in for checking ours was the cleanest by far,you could have eaten your dinner out of the sump,they were well impressed I put the cleanliness of the engine down to the fortnightly oil changes which I justified because of the small sump capacity of the both the ■■■■■■■ and Perkins V8’s of about 3 gallon as opposed to,say, the Gardner of 5gallon plus.Happy days,Bewick.
mickd1958:
0
The Atky is loaded with waste paper by the looks of it,of which we carried many,many, tons of over the years both directly for the Mills we hauled for and also for a number of waste paper merchants we worked for as well.
Now if I’d been replacing my D1000 with another motor well I could’nt have done any better than this Scania,note there is no sleeper cab,I was a “digs” man myself,well I spent 12 to 15 hours in the cab so I sure wasn’t going to kip across a board in the cab But this motor would have done me proud I’m sure.cheers Bewick.
Well Dennis i would have had SDJ403F,
The ex Suttons Atkinson 4w rigid.What a well turned out motor in its day.
I am sure most of your drivers were very proud to drive a Bewick lorry.
Regards
F Troop.
f troop:
Well Dennis i would have had SDJ403F,
The ex Suttons Atkinson 4w rigid.What a well turned out motor in its day.
I am sure most of your drivers were very proud to drive a Bewick lorry.Regards
F Troop.
You are quite right “f troop” the Atky would have come in a close second though,but I would have been looking to up-date a bit and I think the Scania would have been a slightly better proposition eh! another benefit the Scania had was a wood/ali flat as opposed to the Atky’s all alloy flat.Cheers Dennis.
gingerfold:
Just slightly off topic, but it’s interesting to learn from various contributors that regular and frequent oil changes always contributed to engine longevity in years gone by. I’ve always been a great believer in changing engine oil at regular intervals and even now I’m not convinced about these long interval oil changes recommended for synthetic modern oil. As one brilliant engineer told me years ago, “it’s much cheaper to fit oil than metal”.
That is a common misconception, oil is oil, it never deteriorates, but gets clogged with contaminants, so it makes no difference to drain intervals whether it’s mineral oil or synthetic, the contaminants remain the same 
My firm change oil at 12,000 mile intervals and average 1.2 million miles before rebuilds, it’s all down to keeping fresh oil in the sump
newmercman:
gingerfold:
Just slightly off topic, but it’s interesting to learn from various contributors that regular and frequent oil changes always contributed to engine longevity in years gone by. I’ve always been a great believer in changing engine oil at regular intervals and even now I’m not convinced about these long interval oil changes recommended for synthetic modern oil. As one brilliant engineer told me years ago, “it’s much cheaper to fit oil than metal”.That is a common misconception, oil is oil, it never deteriorates, but gets clogged with contaminants, so it makes no difference to drain intervals whether it’s mineral oil or synthetic, the contaminants remain the same
My firm change oil at 12,000 mile intervals and average 1.2 million miles before rebuilds, it’s all down to keeping fresh oil in the sump
I fully agree with you about the fact that oil dosen’t actually deteriate,but it gradually gets full of crap over time/mlieage,so what better way than to change it regularly? I did,for a period in the mid 70’s fit some of our motors with secondary micro filters to remove even the smallest particules and thereby,in theory,prolong the need for oil changing but apparently once the oil had passed thro’this secondary filtration it was no longer strictly speaking “oil” so I eventually kicked these secondary filters into touch ! Cheers Bewick.