GUY Big J 8LXB Tractor Unit

In the 80’s we used to trunk up a Guinness tanker every night from Runcorn to Glasgow. We did a changeover at Tebay. But that was BRS for you.

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A little bit of foam inside the tacho stopping the needle from going up worked as well. If you got stopped and showed your tacho disc then it would show a lower maximum speed than you were doing so plod would probably never catch on.

Obviously a good forensic check of the disc would show that the mileage and speed did not match up but it would fool most so called experts at a glance.

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DAF 2300 ATI rigid prime mover J858 NCP was the first truck I ever drove with a limiter retro fitted in the early 1990’s the other one, J857 NCP, wasn’t fitted with one at that time.
I never forgot it because I defected it for an engine running problem.

Bristol depot at the time meant a drive through non motorway and town conditions after leaving the M4 and M32.
North Kilworth and Dewsbury and Luton similar.
Feltham-Luton-Dewsbury-Luton-Feltham was with a limiter fitted and a gutless Merc 2534 and still doable within 9 hours driving time so long as not caught in evening traffic outward or morning return.

I actually did Feltham Charnock Richard and sometimes Killington Lake return without a speed limiter fitted one way and with a speed limiter fitted the other.
Also seems to remember a rumour that removing fuse 19 on the DAF ‘might’ ‘help’ in that regard.No idea if it was true or not.But obviously impossible without breaking the wax seal put over it by the workshop for some reason.

You seem to have missed almost 200 Kms x 4 with a break in between.Then you could go home.750 Km from memory.
Feltham Charnock Richard or Dewsbury return over 600 Kms.
You’re saying almost 1,200 Kms in a shift let alone in ‘one hit’.
Easy assuming that you want us to believe that you can drive for 10 hours at an average speed of around 120 kmh, let alone without a break.

We had absolutely no double manned runs based at Feltham.

It took more than 10 hours. I would have one quick pee break on the road, not even leaving the bitumen, from the top step. That truck gave up at 113kph.


Every Saturday morning I was in Normanton with the first drop of at least seven, of which I fully participated without complaint of human forklift or broken back. It was then onto Karumba for another three or four drops, again without complaint. That’s what makes me a successful driver and you a failed steering wheel attendant.
In the dry season I backloaded ferral pigs, again every one handled by me, although I must admit that almost broke my back.

Almost loaded.
I did this every week for two and a half years, except for Christmas and Bathurst weeks.

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The little tricks of the trade would go unnoticed by an officer straight out of police training college, perhaps the more experienced officers were more clued up to what the tricks were.

That’s definitely a VOR.

Astonishing photos SDU.

Not in the early days of tacho’s though. And I’m not talking about trying to pass off doing 70mph as 55mph :grinning_face: :grinning_face:

We had a guy that used to hire a 16t box van from us on a regular basis to do trips to Poland, very hush hush government stuff (he did work during the Falklands crisis taking ammunition from Bishopton down to be loaded on to the ships but that story is for another day). Anyway he got caught speeding on one of his return journey’s and the points would have put him over the limit so he would have lost his licence.

I did him a letter for the court explaining that the tacho was faulty (it wasn’t) and had been recording the wrong speed - he got off with it. In those days you could blame everything on new fangled technology :grinning_face:

My pre speed limiter White would cruise a that speed. My favoured speed was 115~120kph. I could make a decent mile, that speed was in the most economical band and it required enough concentration to keep the drive interesting instead of boring. The higher speed keeps me alert, preventing my mind from wandering, alas, no safety awards. :rofl:

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Good story Dennis.

Some unscrupulous Portuguese owner drivers were using coach differential’s on their lorry to make it go faster or some kind of fiddle going on.

So 530 miles in a shift on English roads Feltham to Killington Lake i googled it.We had about 24 night trunks from Bradford and the longest were Southampton and Rochester.They used 3 drivers to complete the two runs it was that tight.Gross weight was around 21 tons.

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One of the fastest ones I ever drove turned out to be a DAF 2800 ATI, that had been wrongly fitted with a 3300 spec motor by the factory.All else was the standard 9 speed Fuller and relatively high 2800 ATI gearing.
It only came to light after a a warning to our management from the law that they’d seen it being driven at unbelievable speed on the M1 by its regular driver.
Both me and him knew it wasn’t unbelievable it could easily do the over 300 kms run between Feltham and Dewsbury in well under 3 hours but at the time we didn’t know why it was so quick.
Until the fleet engineer investigated the claim by the law, and involved the Lease firm and DAF agents.
At least he didn’t get nicked for it.

That’s steam not smoke its a heretic Land Rover they are trying to exorcise it not fix it.

To be fair that Scottish run wouldn’t have got done at all , even changing over at Killington Lake, if the prime mover’s load of paper was all handballed not tail lifted and pallet trucked on collection and delivery 5 days per week and it would have been the Scotch driver and day driver at our end moaning about their broken backs trying, not me.
The trailer load would have been moot because it’s going nowhere either.
So you’re allowed to drive for more than 10 hours in a shift and because you’re happy handballing pigs the whole European transport industry should get rid of forklifts and pallets for handballing everything.

Could probaly knock some miles off that Strood Middlewich using M11 and A14.Not as far as Feltham to Charnock Richard either way.