You shouldn’t moan about Atki sleeper cabs, Mal! There was a high top conversion available - just see the following photo. You just buy the raw materials (wood, fibreglass etc.), cut to shape and then bolt it onto the roof of the cab. Hey presto, you have an Atki Globetrotter/Topline/Roadhaus/Super Space Cab.
Enjoy
Thats a rock n roll motor KV, I’d love to do a week or two in that running out of felix! 
Mal:
Thats a rock n roll motor KV, I’d love to do a week or two in that running out of felix!
You remember that this is the one with a 320 ■■■■■■■ under the bonnet, don’t you Mal? It goes like an express train and sounds like one too 
Mal was spoilt with a D series Ford, at least you could twist the gearlever out of the way and the one I drove had a ratchet handbrake in the dash panel.
My first truck that I had nights out in was the old KM / TK cab but my first proper sleeper was an F7 with the club of four cab
First time i slept in a lorry was when i went to Rome with a mate in 1986 in an almost 10 year old F10 with single bunk. (NLV 166S)
The engine hump, with the “office” on top of it, was just about level with the seats, so with a coat or two over the office & multifarious trainers, towels etc stuffed in the gaps between it & the seats it was just about level.
Gear lever into reverse…which he always used to forget to do (well you would, wouldn’t you?) so it was as far out the way as pos.
Interesting if said mate required a call of nature during the night!
Couldn’t do it today 'cos the air seat would drop down (in some makes) when you got off it.
No curtains & park under parking area floodlight… much to my complaining until i realised how sensible this was…to a mosquito a cab interior light is chicken feed compared to a 1000 watt floodlight!
One night we were parked somewhere in Italy in a town on some spare ground along with a few other trucks, having had a drop of vino rouge.
About 3 a.m i awoke to someone blasting their air horns prolonged & consistent in the still of the night. Sat up to look out & they stopped abruptly. Laid down again & they started again, moved & they stopped again. 
There was a button for these on the left of the steering column…someone 
had been pushing his foot against it 
killsville:
Mal:
Thats a rock n roll motor KV, I’d love to do a week or two in that running out of felix!You remember that this is the one with a 320 ■■■■■■■ under the bonnet, don’t you Mal? It goes like an express train and sounds like one too
i thought it was KV, what a tool eh!
Wheel Nut:
Mal was spoilt with a D series Ford, at least you could twist the gearlever out of the way and the one I drove had a ratchet handbrake in the dash panel.My first truck that I had nights out in was the old KM / TK cab but my first proper sleeper was an F7 with the club of four cab
Yepp Mal, it had one of them pull and twist handbrakes, and if you flung it into a forward gear it wasnt so bad. Ive woke up staring at the pedals tho 
Brings back happy memories of my youth.Age 21 i had a Guy Big J artic with a Jennings sleeper cab.The old timers called them pigeon lofts.
Did my first European with the Guy, 180 Gardner and a David Brown gearbox, down to Aosta.
I remember being parked up one night and a Foden with the Mickey Mouse cab came alongside.Myself and a German driver got into conversation with the Foden driver who said he had done a couple of Middle East trips with the Foden, which was basic to say the least.The German was amazed.His comment was " no wonder you won the war".
When I was a kid, maybe 8 or 9, I spent a couple of nights out with my dad in a B series daycab - guess where I slept? Thats right on the shelf in front of the windscreen! Somehow my old man made me a bed out of foam… It was one of the early ones with a tan and black interior. Must have been cosy, good job I was’nt a fat kid!
Leslie heres some of the Old girls for you. When I get my scanner working again I will upload a pic of a motor panels Guy with the coffin sleeper that was on continental work like yours.
leslie g heath:
Brings back happy memories of my youth.Age 21 i had a Guy Big J artic with a Jennings sleeper cab.The old timers called them pigeon lofts.
Did my first European with the Guy, 180 Gardner and a David Brown gearbox, down to Aosta.
I remember being parked up one night and a Foden with the Mickey Mouse cab came alongside.Myself and a German driver got into conversation with the Foden driver who said he had done a couple of Middle East trips with the Foden, which was basic to say the least.The German was amazed.His comment was " no wonder you won the war".
love it!
Seeing that pic of the Breg Guy, it reminds me I was up for buying one of them, maybe one of the last, it was a Breg the same, and ex Thomas Ingles fleet, engined with a 180 and I think it had a sleeper pod as well Harrisons had it for sale for the princely sum of about £1850, if memory serves! I often look back and wished i’d have bought it, Tarmac wouldve had kittens
Wheel Nut:
…my first proper sleeper was an F7 with the club of four cab
Ah, the old F7. I learnt to drive in one of those - what a motor.
How many lorries with only a 6.7litre engine do you know that could be plated at 38 tonnes?
OK Mal! I think you’ve seen this one before, but here it is again.
350 ■■■■■■■■■■ speed Fuller this time. (Faster than Huddy’s Atki - I know I’ve been in it )
You can keep the Guy Big J’s and the Volvos etc. This thing still works for a living and still does the job quicker than an F16 Volvo!
Cracking motor KV, very nice!
Richard Stanier’s Guy Big J4T was run on European work by it’s previous owner, Jim Horn.
It’s got a Gardner 6LXC (201) in it now instead of the 6LXB 180 that it was built with. I stand to be corrected, but I’m almost certain that this is an ex-Ingles vehicle.
In the days before a whiff of anything like a sleeper cab, if anybody got a new motor the first question was never about the engine, the gearbox, how well it pulled or even if it had a heater (that was always a ‘no’ on heavies anyway), but ‘is it a good kipping cab?’
This meant that with a bit of judicious building up of the seats with night-out cases, lumps of wood or foam, could a reasonably level surface be made to sleep across?
For this reason ‘ergos’ were anything but and trucks with low bonnets and long levers were unlikely.
My first night out was in an LD cabbed Albion Reiver. This had the bulk of the engine forward and sloped down at the back, but by shoving the lever out of the way I could get nicely wedged against the back of the cab.
The old Guy Warrior had a cab so deep from front to back that I could sleep that way along the length of the bonnet. Would have made a great sleeper cab if it hadn’t had all that space to the screen in front of the driver. Was a real luxury motor though, with a standard sunvisor and cig lighter - wow! Also had that horrible ratchet handbrake that disappeared right down to floor level, and you stamped your heel on to release. Couldn’t put it in gear till then though.
Guy Big J was ok but cramped. Once settled down for the night outside the cemetary gates at Inverness and a copper opened the door to do me for stopping in the cab. ‘Why don’t you find some digs?’ he said. ‘Because I’ve got a sleeper cab.’ He eyed me perched up near the roof a bit dubiously then, said ‘Oh, yes, ok then’ and disappeared.
Did anyone sleep in the old Scammel Highwayman, with the gate change right where you wanted to be? We did, at Ilkeston Haulage but it wasn’t too bad, the coppers never let you stay for long with whisky on board. Always waking you to shift you on to the next county!
Atkis were pretty good by those standards and then I went to Econofreight and got a ‘rabbit hutch’ Borderer. Thought I’d arrived at last!
First real sleeper was an F89, narrow bunk but very comfy and still my all time favourite.
After that got very blasé with F7’s, FH’s, MAN’s and Magnums.
Doesn’t beat the one I’ve got now though. A 2 metre plastic caravan I tow behind my Saxo (Craig 111 has seen it). Got a double bunk, bog, wash basin, & cooker. Brilliant!
Salut, David.
Ghinzani, thanks for the pictures, really great.Those old Guys just have so much character.As an agency driver now, the last artic i drove was an Actros with a semi auto box, easy peasy but somehow no satisfaction.
Mal, glad you liked the story, even now i find it incredible the thought of driving one of those Fodens to Saudi.Happy days.
Looking at those pictures of “old swedes” in another thread reminded me of the F86 and its shelf - I remember seeing a bloke precariously perched upon one having a nap during the day when I was a kid - did people really balance on them all night? Same sort of thing used to baffle me about TK and KM Bedfords - how did people stay on the shelf? duct tape? velcro? Anyone got any idea?
Oh god I wish I’d never looked at this thread now
Mal you need to calm down you’ll have another chest thunper if you get too excited 
ghinzani:
Looking at those pictures of “old swedes” in another thread reminded me of the F86 and its shelf - I remember seeing a bloke precariously perched upon one having a nap during the day when I was a kid - did people really balance on them all night? Same sort of thing used to baffle me about TK and KM Bedfords - how did people stay on the shelf? duct tape? velcro? Anyone got any idea?
The F86 never had a shelf, just a high engine hump at the back of the cab and 2 big spaces behind the seats. Mind you, many drivers, me included, constructed one and slept there quite happily. Worst thing was that if you fixed up curtains as well the inward curve of the cab towards the roof meant that they didn’t hang down the windows and needed a rail or wire at the bottom also.
Salut, David.