Congratulations, it took how many years? If memory serves me correctly, Gingerfold explained it to you in detail. Quite some time later, you again demonstrated your absolute lack of knowledge on the subject and Robert went to great lengths to explain it again, then yet later again you insisted that it was a splitter box, I went into a long to and frow with you, where you again insisted it was a 10 speed that the lower five could be split. I grew up on these things, you have never seen one, yet you still insist you know more about them than me.
That is three blokes who know how to use this particular gearbox, who were generous with their time, trying to educate you, i think there were more, but I cannot recall who they were now.
Talk about a slow learner, grade 3 must have been the hardest five years of your life.
As for you would have had it sorted before you got out of the yard, pfft, you wouldn’t have found a gear.
I was a happy driver if I had a 290/350 Cummins and a 9 speed Fuller. Downshift onto the governor and they’d go anywhere.
Happy days.
So are you saying hopefully not that Carryfast got it wrong.The AROnline he posted points out that AEC didn’t want to put the V8 out but were told they had to by BL.Would that be two admissions in quick succession or could it be that he doesn’t understand what he’s googled?
You so often say ‘Why didn’t they do this that and the other in the first place?’ It’s called EVOLUTION, CF. As follows:
Fuller makes a 4-sp box, then a 6-sp one.
Two-speed axles start to appear.
Fuller fits a splitter, which a generation of drivers have to adapt to.
Fuller adds a range-change. Drivers learn to juggle both. At this stage all the plumbing is still a bit crude and much experimentation with air-operated switches versus electrically operated ones takes place. Likewise senders (direct to ‘box or via clutch servo etc). Again, drivers adapt.
Fuller discovers a brilliant way of using torque breaking for operating gear-changes and streamlines it’s later 13-sp boxes.
On the strength of that success, and given that drivers are now much better clued up with using multiple geared lorries, Fuller comes up with the ultimate constant-mesh ‘box called the Twin-splitter – a masterpiece of engineering design by any standard, regardless of whether or not you actually liked it. That had all three setting in one movement – ie 3 at each corner.
Which is a good example of how drivers all have their personal choices. For me the Fuller 9. Many preferred the later F12 three-position gear lever: I didn’t. Many hated the Twin-splitter: I didn’t. We’re all different, you see - there’s no right or wrong.
I’m 100% with you there!
Same here, but l preferred a 13.
Am i ok liking 9 & 13 speed Fullers but not the Twin Splitter. Is that allowed in Leatherhead?
Not so much right or wrong Ro just logical.If there’s three different gear trains and operations to control then having one 3 way switch like the twin split and the Foden seems more logical than two separate switches.
But personal choice I preferred the Foden in that regard to the Fuller 13 speed.
I preferred using the ZF 12 speed splitter to both and seemed to me to be the best way to layout that amount of gears rather than having a range change and/or splitter controlled by two separate switches, or a 3 way switch.
The 9 speed range change for me seemed simplistic and primitive with not enough gears when fitted in both the Foden and the DAF 2800 ATI and the 6v71 TM before that.
It was a particularly mismatched transmission with the Rolls engine in the Foden which was like driving a different truck after the change from the 12 speed Foden box to 9 speed Fuller.
While in the DAF it just meant more gearshifting but with less gears and with it lost my preference of preselection of the 6 split gears.The 2800 ATI with the 12 speed ZF would have been ideal for me.
You’ve selectively missed the bit that it also says that ‘AEC’ designed it from the outset to power ‘heavier’ trucks at ‘motorway’ speeds.Let’s make a super short stroke V8 rather than a longer stroke 760 that was the choice that AEC"S designers made not Stokes.
‘He’ was lumbered with ‘their’ resulting choices after the fact.
So you are now cherry picking parts of the article .AEC were forced to put it into production after another Leyland project went bang .These are facts from people who actually worked on the engine not from someone with an overworked google finger.So what you are saying is the engineers were liars and wrong and you who had nothing to do with the project is right.Pschyo Therapy could work give it a try
Or better still a Taser gun ! 
Machine gun
That’s quite interesting. It might have been a Foden thing. One of the best matches I had was a Fuller nine and Rolls Royce 265 in a B-series ERF. Foden’s installation of the Fuller nine utilised a cable shift, which I didn’t like at all. Many Foden drivers had no problem with them but I found it irritating.
The rest of your discussion centres, rightly, on choosing the optimum place to have your range-change. And yes, that will vary considerably depending on whether it’s five-over-five, four-over-four or six-over-six. With the six, it’s harder to avoid ending up with your range-change in the middle of a busy part of your sequencing (ie you don’t want to be ranging down on a hairpin bend if you can help it). In this regard, the five over five works well (think Scania 142 or Fuller 15). BUT, it’s much nicer to use with LHD, as you are pulling the lever into the dogleg position (1st / 6th) rather than pushing it into position, which feels awkward in comparison. I discovered this driving both RHD and LHD 142s.
I had Foden with a 320 Gardner and a 9 speed Fuller and i found it very precise.I was told to “grease those cables” by an older driver i knew
Yes indeed! And he might have added, ‘Replace them before they fray, as they then get very sticky!’
He worked for H Baker at Bradford and they had a number of Fodens.Rolls 290s Gardner 320/350s then went on to Cats. His motor was mint .Sadly he’s no longer here
To add if I’ve got it right the 500 fixed head wonder also had its origins in the AEC design studio bubble ?
.Considered so good that the group went for broke in thinking that the thing could outdo the DB 601 in terms of specific output and boost levels so let’s try to make an 8 litre motor do the job of a 12 litre.It’ll be fine if/when it blows up at least it won’t be a head gasket failure that does it.
You were obviously cherry picking not me.AEC truck division’s designers designed it, to unsurprisingly, put in a …truck.
Not Stokes nor anyone else.All they needed to do was to destroy the drawings and knock the thing on the head at that point then how would Stokes have even known the thing existed let alone be a viable production proposition.
The way that the AEC fan boys talk you’d think that it was a Leyland design foisted on AEC to sabotage and destroy the firm.
The truth is limited capacity formula race car thinking, along the lines of Cosworth DFV, applied to heavy truck diesel engine design with all too predictable results.
Horrified themselves by their own thinking indeed after the fact and took out the firm with it.
No wonder Bewick preferred to buy Gardner.
How many of those have you actually driven?