Is there any Fitters, Ex fitters or Drivers that worked on the TS3 2 stroke engine ? Were they reliable in service ? and were there any major problems with them ? were they easy to service ?..Hopefully someone will remember them 
Trev.
hello trev , i did drive a ts3 many years ago , never worked on one though . as far as i was concerned it was bombproof , simple design with ample power for itās time . i used to love climbing up the cat and fiddle on a dark evening and seeing the huge shower of sparks as it decoked itself , it used to scare the crap out of passing car drivers , iāve had one stop me because he thought it was on fire .cheers , dave
Hi there , this ts3 was based at Brs Depot with many others , In the middle 80s it was bought in to the workshops and restored and the engine only required a set of piston rings , prior to this it was parked up at the top of yard for many years , Didnt she scream well 
hello trev,
a fella that used to service my dads lorries when he first started out was once an engineer at rootes and apparently worked on a design for the gearbox for the two stroke engine as it was prone to being shaken to bits! dont know if it was true and dont know if it was the ts2 or ts3 he was concerned with.
he was a bit of an eccentric and everyone called him ācatweazleā (though not to his face) because he looked like the bloke out of the seventies kids tv programme,and he booked himself into a nuthouse to get away from his ex wife-my old man used to have to get him out of the happy farm out near bedford to work on the lorry on a sunday and book him back in again after !!
. Mike.
I drove one many years ago (1960) I was only a lad and coming over the Brecon Beacons (no motorways) one dark night it decided to de-coke itself. It bloody terrified me, I shut it off and walked a āsafeā distance away from it, I thought it was going to explode. Told old Fred (Chappell) when I got back, he said āya daft bugga, you should have revved the ball ā ā ā ā ā off it, give it a good clean outā. 
Another lesson learned.
I spent many years along side my Dad in TS 3 Commers in the 50ās & 60ās , loved to sound and speed, the ones in the 60ās would leave the Comets & Mercuryās for dead. What a shame Chrysler killed it off, just as they were about to put into production the TS 4 engine, only 3 or 4 survived, one is in New Zealand and you can hear it on you tube, commer.org.nz/Commer_Connect ā¦ Motor.html
Type Rootes TS 4 in to you tube to hear it
Just reading on the web site , it says 8 of the 14 units built were put in to fleets for evaluation, does anyone know which fleets they were?
great engine
Thanks everyone for the replies, Butā¦Is there anyone who has ever had to work on one 
I know of a fitter who apparently changed an engine on the side of the road 
, had it out through the passenger side door and stuffed the replacement back in the same way 
I donāt disbeleive him for one minute, butā¦Is it really possible
Iād also be interested to hear any stories from any fitters who worked on these wonderful engines in the day. Iāve always been fascinated with these engines, and well remember as a youngster wondering why did certain Commer lorries sound so different to all the other makes, except some Fodens of course!
It is a great shame that that blundering Chrysler empire thought fit to finish off the TS3, and the TS4 which was in development and by all accounts made their āValeā series engines of the time look very inferior. The TS4 could have been a very important engineā¦
Yes Ramone, thatās how the engine came out the cab, it was a relatively small size and weight compared to the conventional 6 cylinder engine. The three horizontally opposed cylinders meant it was a compact unit and low which Commer prefered for the QX cab, around 4ft long, 3ft wide and 2ft high. The engine could still be worked on in place but it was the āBlowerā that gave most problems. The coked exhaust ports have already been mentioned, always a problem on 2 Strokes anyway but the method of clearing this was what produced the flames and sparks from the exhaust.
The TS3 has something of a cult following today but at the time it wasnāt regarded as superior, remember it was fitted to the middle range of haulage vehicles and Fodens 2 Stroke was a more powerful machine for their higher weight vehicles, although the Commer did seem to be noisier on the road. I recall CVC mag did a couple of articles on the engine during 2011 if you can get a hold of the copies. An interesting and well designed engine all the same and it didnāt die along with Commer, at least the design, the military developed and used the concept in tracked vehicles, I done one or two āPack Liftsā as we called them when the engines gave problems in our Self Propelled Artillery Guns and replaced them in the field. They were also a Multi-Fuel concept engine able to use other fuels, handy when the Iron Curtain threat was looming large and we might of had to move sharpish with what we could get a hold of! Cheers Franky.
JAKEY:
Hi there , this ts3 was based at Brs Depot with many others , In the middle 80s it was bought in to the workshops and restored and the engine only required a set of piston rings , prior to this it was parked up at the top of yard for many years , Didnt she scream well
Wasnt the exhaust usually under the front bumper?.
Can remember walking home from school up Kingshill when Bradleys screamers only just managed to pass me
Good reply Franky, glad someone on here knows a bit about them 
ā¦Whoās Ramone
Trev.
Sorry Lemon, I had been reading the other thread on the AEC engine Ramone had posted and mixed the names. Yeah, I donāt suppose there are many still working that had anything to do with the Commer, a mate at work and myself were trying to explain the engine to some of the younger lads and the CVC article came up a week or so later and we were able to show them with the help of the pics how it worked. I looked through my old copies of the mag earlier and the articles are in the May and June 2011 issues, doesnāt seem like more than a year since we had the conversation about it at work!
hi,
the ts3 engine was a wonderful bit of kit,it thrived on revs. and was very reliable,it did need to run on shell rotella oil ,otherwise the exhaust ports would soon carbon up, but to decoke them it was just the case of removing the exhaust manifold, turning the engine until the pistons cleared the ports, then with a long screw driver and hammer just chip out the carbon from the ports, job done,it has been45 years since i worked on them, but if memory serves me correctly they used to run at around 6psi supercharger pressure, and if the guage showed around 9psi you knew it was time for a decoke.the bushes in the rocker arms used to wear and this made then knock really loud ,but they still ran ok. after very high mileages the supercharger bearings worn allowing the supercharger vanes to touch ,this caused the charger drive shaft to shear,(it was called a quill shaft and was designed to shear so that more serious damaged didnt happen)the shaft was a pig to remove as then you had to get an electric welder and try and get the welding rod to attach to the broked shaft then carefully pull it out .i think the only time you had to take the engine out was when it needed new liners, and yes, it did come through the n/s door with the aid of a forklift truck,happy days lol cheers diesel
hi, just remembered, that when i was working on ts3 engines , we found that the starter motor looked the same as the one that was fitted to the perkins 6.354 engine also fitted in the commers , but it turned in the opposite way ,so when the new fitter who was working on the perkins engine commmer went to dinner ,i swopped the starter over to a ts3 one, of coarse it wouldnt start, he spent two days trying to figure it out, had all the timing gears to bits ,new pump etc , then at night when he wernt there i swopped it back lol next morning it started straight a
away lol to this day he didnt know what had happened lol .what a wag i was lol
cheers diesel
Just the type of story I was looking for Dan Great one about the Starter motor Iām thinking of taking one on as a restoration project, can you still get Shell Rotella these days With all the different types there is now there must be something else that you could use in a TS3? The one Iāve got my eye on has only done 64,000 from newā¦just about run in Eh
Hi Diesel Dan, I had exactly the same only the other way round ,we ran 354 Perkins, and Bmc s same sort of starter ,ihad a 5/7 F JK with fuel trouble bleading it on the starter and priming it burnt the starter out we used our last spare one up my DAD said he would go to his mates and borrow one ,he came back ifitted it ,you gessed two days plenty of fuel up could not tow it no air ,iwas sitting on the wheel scratcing my head,looking at the starter noticed the arrow facing the other way ,said to Dad were did u get that starter phoned him up o it was my Commer TS3 ,did i swear ? put another starter on fired up strait away ,u live and learn ,Yours barry
diesel dan:
hi, just remembered, that when i was working on ts3 engines , we found that the starter motor looked the same as the one that was fitted to the perkins 6.354 engine also fitted in the commers , but it turned in the opposite way ,so when the new fitter who was working on the perkins engine commmer went to dinner ,i swopped the starter over to a ts3 one, of coarse it wouldnt start, he spent two days trying to figure it out, had all the timing gears to bits ,new pump etc , then at night when he wernt there i swopped it back lol next morning it started straight a
away lol to this day he didnt know what had happened lol .what a wag i was lol
cheers diesel
Dan, not wishing to cast any doubt on your story mate, but i seem to recall that these engines would actually run backwards, IE when turning in the wrong direction.
I was at work one day, many years ago i might add, at Quest Motors in Braintree Essex, we used to look after quite a few Commers which had the 2strokes fitted. On one occasion another fitter drove one into the workshop, up to his workbench, just as he was about to stop the engine Len the foreman asked him to do a different truck first. So he pushed the stop cable back in before the engine had actually stopped turning, he caught it on the rebound from a compression and it started running the wrong way. He did not notice the strange sound they used to make as it was sucking air in through the exhaust and blowing it out via the big oil-bath aircleaner. He floored the clutch, engaged reverse gear and let the clutch out. That was the end of his bench and most of the wall it was up against, it was all laying in the stores along with a number of spare parts shelves which were buried underneath all the rubble !!
That cause a bit of fuss with the insurance company, but all was sorted in the end.
As for the engines, they were great and most all drivers loved them. As others have said they went well for the engines of the day and could be very āfireworkā like in the dark !! You would never be as black as when you had to work on one of these engines, they seemed to produce copious amounts of carbon. Plus, when they did go wrong it was often in spectacular fashion as they would often just explode, with no warning, into many many parts, some of which would even come flying through the side covers or crankcase and would litter the road. When we had to go and recover one we would always take a bucket or two of sand to cover the puddles of oil on the roadway with, plus then collect the parts of the engine.
Regards Steve.