Here’s a story to make you chuckle, I’m a straight man, I was parked up in Le Mans Routiers when an old banger of a car pulled up to the cab.
A deaf man who I couldn’t understand was mumbling on about something sexual then pulls out a condom.
I politely declined his offer of a sausage sandwich.
The Gendarmerie then arrive, so I voiced my concerns for being propositioned by the local rent boy.
They could not contain their laughter with tears appearing of hearing of this comedy gold that must have made their day, they obviously knew about this character.
I never returned again to this Routiers.
There was Stella, a young nurse who walked around the Cabbage Patch at Saint-André-de-Cubzac who was a real looker with long black curly hair, we would talk for hours in the cab.
Not as an A-frame, international, straight line, clean hands, and no paperwork driver, but as a political spokesman.
Once pointed in the right direction he will argue that black is white.
lol, you omitted engine braking capabilities, hub to hub runs by unloading the trailer by hand ball where as Star Down Under 10,600 miles away down under unloaded feral pigs for donkey’s years by hand.
It ain’t me who thinks that 9’6’’ + 3’4’’ ,from the drive axle centre line to the front bumper is ‘identical’ to 9’6’’ + 4’6’’ .You need to go to spec savers.
To think I’m getting all this stick and aggro for agreeing with you that the impossible unicorn didn’t exist.
It’s the distance between the radiator and the drive axle that matters.
In the case of the A series it’s a 9’6’’ wheelbase, but with a ‘set forward’ chassis on the wheelbase, meaning a longer front overhang.
IE they didn’t move the steer axle back, they moved the chassis forwards on both axles.
Which obviously also moves the radiator further forward away from the drive axle.
Moving the drive axle further back would do the same thing and that would, obviously by default, increase the wheelbase, as in the case of the 240 Atki.
Obviously a twin steer could increase the required distance between the radiator and drive axle in a similar way so as to make room for the extra steer axle.
No need to remove it to fit a 240 Gardner if so.
But this boils down to the credibility of a 9’ 6’’ wheelbase, 240 Gardner powered, 9 speed Fuller, 4x2 Big J.
In which case the evidence of the 240 Atki and the 240 A series suggests it would need either a 10’ 8’’ wheelbase by moving the drive axle back 1’ 2’‘, or a 4’ 6’’ front overhang in addition to the 9’ 6’’ wheelbase.
GUY sales on phone to SoM ( and Bewick ).We’ve had to delay your order for umpteen 240 BigJ’s.We only seem to have enough space for the engine without the gearbox or the gearbox without the engine.
We’re working on it we just need to find out how ERF can fit it in their 9’6’’ wheelbase, Cummins 220 and Gardner 180, A series chassis.
52 years later.
I must be short of something to do today. After spending far too much time using various AI bots (Gemini and ChatGPT), I cannot find any reference at all to an ERF A series being built, regardless of elngine, gearbox, axle or cab on a wheelbase other than 10ft 2in. They definitely exhibited a steel cab A series 8LXB at the 1972 CV show on a 10ft 2in wheelbase. Atkinson on the other hand did stretch the Borderer from its normal 9ft 5in, (not 6) to 10ft 8in.
I’ve also gleamed that the length of an 8LXB and 9509A excluding fan and radiator is around 108 inches or 9 feet.
Buzzer
