[attachment=2]TT%20RED2.jpg[/attachment]
Battered but not beaten.
With the border now closed between Queensland and New South Wales I can’t even think about dropping in to look at the Thames. Is it yours? What’s the intentions? And what is the bogie drive setup?
Does anyone know of a supplier of the orange coloured “Ford Shield” type indicator light lens covers? Ford in Australia fitted orange shield blinkers at the rear to the Thames and a a separate red lens for the stop/tail lights. The F Series Ford trucks at the same time only had the red stop/tail lights and a round orange blinker light similar to the ones found on the front guards of the Thames. The later D Model had more squared off combination stop/tail/indicator lights in a more modern shield type shape.
I’ve been looking at some American sites that offer all manner of red tail light lenses and lights, including LED’s, chrome, stainless, painted etc. but no orange lenses. They didn’t introduce compulsory orange indicator lights until much later, and not on the F Series truck.
Maybe there’s someone in the UK who still makes or supplies them?
For any help I’d be very thankful.
Tunnels:
Does anyone know of a supplier of the orange coloured “Ford Shield” type indicator light lens covers? Ford in Australia fitted orange shield blinkers at the rear to the Thames and a a separate red lens for the stop/tail lights. The F Series Ford trucks at the same time only had the red stop/tail lights and a round orange blinker light similar to the ones found on the front guards of the Thames. The later D Model had more squared off combination stop/tail/indicator lights in a more modern shield type shape.
I’ve been looking at some American sites that offer all manner of red tail light lenses and lights, including LED’s, chrome, stainless, painted etc. but no orange lenses. They didn’t introduce compulsory orange indicator lights until much later, and not on the F Series truck.
Maybe there’s someone in the UK who still makes or supplies them?
For any help I’d be very thankful.
There is an advert on ebay at the moment selling some Trader lenses. I dont think they are the ones you want but they may
be able to get them or point you in the right direction.
tyneside:
Not sure if we have had a snowplough on here yet Tyneside
Have identified that it was 1963, at High Moorsley, (Hetton le Hole), but who is the owner or operator
This one is in French.
I noticed in the sparkling Ford Thames brochures that a selling point was that you could swap engines in 3 hours. Didn’t you thing that the marketing team might have considered that prospective new owners didn’t want to know that? They wanted to be reassured that the engine would last for years without putting a spanner anywhere near it.
Looks like one of their IH four wheel tippers behind too, my Father drove one of these for Owen Pugh nice comfortable little motors, the same engine went into the Sed Aki 200 series. Franky.
A Ford Thames Trader in Mathew Street, Liverpool in the 1960s’
The people on the left are in a queue for entry to The Cavern Club.
Click picture for full image.
Picture from Bootle History Forum.
Just watching an episode of the British TV series “Paul Merton’s Secret Stations” on TV here in Oz. In Series 1, Episode 3 he gets off at Lapford Railway Station in Devon and visits the old Ambosia Milk Factory, apparently well known for their Rice Cream?
Anyway in showing himself around the old factory, that’s now used by a furniture removalist, he shows some old photos of the loading dock with 3 Thames, 2 loaded with milk churns the other with cardboard packaging.
I grabbed my camera just in time to take this screen shot. Some of you may remember this organisation and their fleet.
This week I found a Thames 75 in a scrap metal yard in Griffith, New South Wales, about 600klm (350 miles) from home. I had driven down for the day to inspect it but it was too far gone for resto, which I was hoping for, but good for parts so I bought it and spent the next 3 hours pulling parts of it that I might be able to use on mine. I then drove the 600 klms home. A long day but very fruitful. I’m returning this week to spend a couple of days getting as much as I can off it before I have to hand it back over to the scrap metal merchant.
For about $700 (350 pound) just the injectors and injector pump, generator, exhauster, speedo and dash etc makes the purchase a good buy. This week, gear box, diff centre, and couple of wheels, steering box and starter motor etc etc will make it an absolute bargain.
Tunnels:
Just watching an episode of the British TV series “Paul Merton’s Secret Stations” on TV here in Oz. In Series 1, Episode 3 he gets off at Lapford Railway Station in Devon and visits the old Ambosia Milk Factory, apparently well known for their Rice Cream?
Anyway in showing himself around the old factory, that’s now used by a furniture removalist, he shows some old photos of the loading dock with 3 Thames, 2 loaded with milk churns the other with cardboard packaging.
I grabbed my camera just in time to take this screen shot. Some of you may remember this organisation and their fleet.
This week I found a Thames 75 in a scrap metal yard in Griffith, New South Wales, about 600klm (350 miles) from home. I had driven down for the day to inspect it but it was too far gone for resto, which I was hoping for, but good for parts so I bought it and spent the next 3 hours pulling parts of it that I might be able to use on mine. I then drove the 600 klms home. A long day but very fruitful. I’m returning this week to spend a couple of days getting as much as I can off it before I have to hand it back over to the scrap metal merchant.
For about $700 (350 pound) just the injectors and injector pump, generator, exhauster, speedo and dash etc makes the purchase a good buy. This week, gear box, diff centre, and couple of wheels, steering box and starter motor etc etc will make it an absolute bargain.
Tunnels…what made it so bad ? Seen s lot worse that have been renovated…can you get some more pics of it as you take pieces off…?.
No problem. I’ll be back at it this week. Floor is full of rust, it has been poked in the nose by a post. Someone had been at it prior to me with various parts removed including radiator, injector lines (leaving injector pump nozzles exposed) brake controls and light switches, etc. No glass in the back windows has allowed rain in to harm the panels. Photos attached are a couple I took when I arrived, before I started to take parts off it. 6D Trader owners compete with Fordson tractor restorers for parts, and for trucks 60 years old parts are getting harder to find.
As the photos show shes been out in a paddock for some time. Where it’s located now is snake country, a scrap metal yard of acres of steel and cars and old farm machinery. Just to add to the fun of lying under it is that the Scotch thistles grow well and the bindi’s are huge.
Tunnels.
Tunnels:
No problem. I’ll be back at it this week. Floor is full of rust, it has been poked in the nose by a post. Someone had been at it prior to me with various parts removed including radiator, injector lines (leaving injector pump nozzles exposed) brake controls and light switches, etc. No glass in the back windows has allowed rain in to harm the panels. Photos attached are a couple I took when I arrived, before I started to take parts off it. 6D Trader owners compete with Fordson tractor restorers for parts, and for trucks 60 years old parts are getting harder to find.
As the photos show shes been out in a paddock for some time. Where it’s located now is snake country, a scrap metal yard of acres of steel and cars and old farm machinery. Just to add to the fun of lying under it is that the Scotch thistles grow well and the bindi’s are huge.
Tunnels.
Thanks for the update and pics, she is in a sorry state for sure, but all the parts you’re salvaging will do someone proud…use to work on them as an apprentice, two of us could change an engine in under 3 hours, on the side of the road…its still one if my favourite British lorries…look forward to more photos…not the snakes though, they give me the creeps… 
I wonder what year the Trader was built or imported from the UK as I see it has the Eaton 2 speed button on the G/stick and the next question would be which box might it have had the 4 or 5 speed ? If it had the 5 speed and Eaton axle it would have easy outperformed the standard 4 speed box Oh! and did it have power steering or is that a “wish” too far ! As for the Trader being a doner of plentiful spares well I recall a similar situation where I parked up a Scania 81 in “the graveyard” at the bottom of the depot and it proceeded to be an almost inexhaustible source of spares for the other 7 or 8 81’s on the fleet and many of the spares were not very old some only a few months. The reason I retired this V reg unit was it always seemed to have continuous problems but it did come up trumps in the end and provided us with £000’s of 81 spares. It finally had to be given the “last rites” with the gas axe !!! Cheers Bewick.
Fond memories of the Thames trader. One of my earliest recollections would be getting my fingers caught in the door gap, The old man tried to sooth the pain by rubbing a dock leaf on my hand. Where has the time gone as this would have been over 50 years ago Try finding a dock leaf nowadays. It hurt like ■■■■ btw