First one that comes to mind is emptying your air tanks of grey sludge and getting more on your boots than on the floor.
Then after running on the motorway at speed and coming into the services was to let your engine tick over a couple of minutes to cool the turbo down, then I got a F88 and the guy from Volvo said it was just as important to warm up the engine first thing in the morning, no problem start work fire up the engine set hand throttle so it ran faster (he did say how many revs but I’ve forgot it was 32 years ago) and have a brew with out feeling you were skiving. I don’t know if you should still do it, but I can’t remember the last time I did it.
During the 60s after finshing his shift at the end of the day during the winter months my dad used to always push in the cold start button so he didn’t have to start messing about lifting the bonnet of crawling underneath to do it the following morning(he had a D308 Dodge tipper at the time with the perkins 6.354 engine) he eventually got a length of wood with which he could just reach between the wing and front wheel and push the button on the fuel pump.
Their was a similar procedure with Ford D Series regarding the cold start.
I drove a dodge for a short time and the cold start didn’t work and needed a squirt every morning it didn’t matter if it was a hot or cold day. I can’t remember what the aerosol was called now. but trucks like that were called diesel junkies.
The later Volvo had an orange switch with an idiot button that you could use to warm the engine up faster, it partly operated the butterfly in the exhaust.
I remember the excess fuel button John, iirc you pressed the accelerator down and the button would then stay in.
I seem to remember the old Fordson Major with a Simms injector pump was very similar.
Old Routines.
Saturday Morning, 9/16’’ ring spanner, small hammer, grease gun and a laying down board, much easier if you had a grease bucket and a monkey boy
Or, um, let’s just say I would have, if the boss hadn’t banned it
What else we could have done to get them going I don’t know though, new liners and rings maybe but that was a garage job, even in those days
Quickly taking your overalls off and stuffing them up the exhaust when some old banger decides to run backwards.[tea room legend ]
quickly removing overalls and stuffing them into theair inlet anyway you can, when a 2 stroke Commer venturi pipe from the supercharger is off and it just revs and REVS AND REVS [another tea room legend told to you by old hands just before you work on your first 2 stroke]
lighting a diesel rag on a stick and holding in the inlet manifold to make it go.
Adding lots of luvly petrol to the diesel in the winter when you are a long long way from home !
I remember back in that really bad winter of 1963 my father had a little Leyland FG tipper (the one with the theepenny bit cab) and pushing the excess fuel button on the grille on the front of the cab seemed to make no difference and it wouldn’t start.The only way we could get it going in the mornings was to remove the engine cover between the seats, take off the air filter cover and pour an egg cup full of petrol into the hole in the centre of the filter as you cranked over the engine. It used to make an awful noise when it started, but at least you could get it going. Easy start didn’t work, it would try to go, but just wouldn’t catch, and after a short time it felt like it was seizing up.
kickstart:
I remember back in that really bad winter of 1963 my father had a little Leyland FG tipper (the one with the theepenny bit cab) and pushing the excess fuel button on the grille on the front of the cab seemed to make no difference and it wouldn’t start.The only way we could get it going in the mornings was to remove the engine cover between the seats, take off the air filter cover and pour an egg cup full of petrol into the hole in the centre of the filter as you cranked over the engine. It used to make an awful noise when it started, but at least you could get it going. Easy start didn’t work, it would try to go, but just wouldn’t catch, and after a short time it felt like it was seizing up.
Too much easy start, the technical term nowadays is borewashing and it still breaks engines
Most companies banned easy start & ether because; “they get addicted to it”
■■■■■■■■, it is a lump of metal
What it will do is dissolve or remove the carbon seal that has formed around the rings, valves, guides and gaskets and you suddenly have no compression and no protective oil film on the lower bores.
While the drivers were busy holding lit rolled up newspaper into the air intake and making little fires under the fuel tank, my routine, with my mate, was to crank the huge genny over that supplied the light and power before anyone could have a cuppa. One of us cranked away like mad and the other pushed the decompression lever over to start it, we were gutted if the bloody thing never went first time, once that was done one of us made the said tea and the other got the parrafin heaters going, remember those highly dangerous pieces of equipment that looked like a V1 rocket on end, the flames coming out the top almost touching the roof! Lovely. Franky.
Wheel Nut:
[Most companies banned easy start & ether because; “they get addicted to it”
■■■■■■■■, it is a lump of metal
What it will do is dissolve or remove the carbon seal that has formed around the rings, valves, guides and gaskets and you suddenly have no compression and no protective oil film on the lower bores.
What can happen on a well worn engine, is that due to the explosive nature of ‘easystart’ (formerly ‘Aerostart’) the top & even second compression rings can break, (we’ve all heard them knock their ‘borrocks’ off when starting) leaving the engine with very little compression & therefore unable to start from cold without the use of Easystart.
Hence earning the “addicted to easystart” tag. (which efectively they are once the rings are broken)
I,ve still got a can of Bradex Easystart in my garage.Must be from the early sixties.What a sad old sob.Should I put it up on ebay.Whats it worth? Regards Charlie
Zetorpilot:
Dashman - the motor running backwards is not a legend, I had it happen once!
many, many years ago ,i was van boy on a Parrott nosed Dodge, with a Polly 634,it started up backwards on my second day,and frit me to death, the noise and smoke were alarming to a young lad like me! after a few days i got used to it,as sometimes it did it 2or 3 times a day!!..chris
Speaking of Easystart the Mack tractor i drove had a small metal cup stuck on the air cleaner pipe up behind the cab, in winter you popped a soft jelly type capsule in it that contained ether, a spike in the cup punctured the capsule and you jumped back in the cab and hit the starter. This system had a name but i cannot remember it
One bad thing about haveing these capsules in a hot climate was they would blow up like a balloon and burst
The routine i had allways started with check the oil and water, allways did that before startup without fail.
When I worked on the loading bay at Banbury Buildings, we had a 45 gal drum for a brazier, so just for a laugh we tossed a new can of easy start in to liven the day up, did it go with a bang. happy days.
Wheel Nut:
As I mentioned tractors and the thread turned to Aerostart, how did that come about?
This strange device was fitted to Massey Ferguson Tractors
and
Rolls Royce Merlin equipped Spitfires and Hurricanes
The Ki-gas pump was also an aftermarket fitment for many Perkins powered motors and some Fords. The liquid you charged the resevoir up with smelt like ether and was usually filled by the workshops. The driver gave it a pump and it fired a measured amount into the inlet manifold.
I guess it was a way of controlling how much ether was injected in the engine, that and not trusting the driver with a can of aerostart
Those things which looked like a V-rocket were called “Salamanders” IIRC. Lethal-looking contraptions which could be made to glow cherry red by an experienced user. Rainbows of Southwell had one in their workshop years ago, probably be banned by elf’n’safety now!
I also remember some items of plant which needed assistance in cold weather from a device which looked for all the world like a used Tampax! Presumably it was impregnated (sorry!) with some kind of chemical which ignited under compression; all I can remember is that the “wad” was put into a seperate chamber, you then had to crank like hell and then drop the decompressor and hope for the best.
Best “routine” I remember, not strictly lorry-related, was on the old Meadows 27KV generators we used in the Army. Normally these were started by compressed air, but if for any reason we’d had to do repairs there was an alternative starting handle attached, which had a mechanism not unlike the escapement of a clock. Procedure went something like this…
Go to NAAFI canteen, find four gunners; these must either be new recruits or ones you haven’t used for two weeks, which is their maximum memory span.
Tell gunners they’re going to be fitters for a day; gauge reaction to news and select only those who dribble from both sides of mouth at the same time. This indicates that they are balanced characters.
Take gunners to R.E.M.E. workshops, introduce them to generator, teach them how to turn starting handle… with decompressor lifted, naturally.
Once steady cranking speed has been established, flick lever on decompressor and walk swiftly to opposite end of workshop. Due to escapement mechanism you have as long as it takes the gunners to turn the crank six times, usually enough to be well out of range of flying debris/gunners/berets etc.
If generator fires up, reward gunners with mug of tea and biscuit. If it doesn’t, carry on walking to workshop office, ring Medical Centre and arrange for ambulance to take broken gunners to hospital to have wrists/fingers/noses/teeth repaired.
Kicking the tyres with your boot seem’s to have gone out of fashion .Always give your tyres a kick to make sure they were hard was a regular practice. Putting a sack or cardboard over half the grill in winter especially if it didn’t have a heater was another practice,to help get some heat off the engine into the cab.
Dave the Renegade:
Kicking the tyres with your boot seem’s to have gone out of fashion .Always give your tyres a kick to make sure they were hard was a regular practice. Putting a sack or cardboard over half the grill in winter especially if it didn’t have a heater was another practice,to help get some heat off the engine into the cab.
Ah yes, the old calibrated boot technique, an experienced operator can tell withing ten PSI how much air is in his tyres
