harry_gill:
hiya,
it was mid to late 80s when punching the Rolls Eagle about.
thanks harry long retired.
That’s what I’d have guessed Harry.I was driving the Foden gritters with them in during the early 1980’s when I was a new driver I’d only had my class 2 licence for a couple of years and sometimes I reckon that I was driving better wagons then than some of the artics which I drove 10 years later.But in general I reckon that it’s the big engined DAF’s which I’ll always remember most as being the fastest road wagons which I drove and one of those was a 1978/9 2800 which was the first artic I ever drove after getting my class 1 and it was 7 years old at that point.It could still pull at 70mph +.If only I could have had a 3300.
Hi don’t get to excited about having a 33/3600 DAF after a 2800 I had a 2800(B250CCA) just to fast I never had it flat out. I had a 3300 for 10 years it was 4 years old when it was passed to me, it came from a depot in Crigglestone, They closed that depot down after a driver had been caught speeding on the m1 North bound at Toddington doing 85 mph (it was 4 am) the police checked his tech’os and the chap had been doing this speed for months on end so they closed the transport down. Not to say I was told my DAF( B601KGU)would not go over 60 mph at any time.The 3600 just cruised uphill but did they like diesel.
The white one in this picture is mine now that dose 60mph. The Green one was 12 years old when i took this photo.
John
Nice wagons 3300 John.Your experience with the 2800 seems just like mine because that old beast always seemed to me to have plenty left at the type of speeds I was happy to run it at.They also changed the gearbox options I think on the ATI’s as we had some after our earlier ones.If I remember rightly where my old 1970’s one had a brilliant 12 speed constant mesh ZF splitter they went for 9 speed fullers on the 2800 ATI and 13 speed fullers with the usual range change and splitter arrangement on the 3300 and 3600? but there might also have been a 16 speed synchro ZF ecosplit option? all very fast wagons though.
Hi Carryfast both trucks in photos have 16 speed zf gear box’s. The very fast 2800 (B250CCA) did have a 9 speed fuller, I thought maybe it had been converted and the ratio’s did’nt suit. I could go from Homes chapel to Exeter (15.6) high trailer 20tons on at 60ish mph and not use top gear only down hill.It was’ent realy any good. The truck was 4 years old and imaculately clean but that was not a space cab and did’nt have a roof spoiler. So i think the wind resistance did’nt help??
John.
3300John:
Hi Carryfast both trucks in photos have 16 speed zf gear box’s. The very fast 2800 (B250CCA) did have a 9 speed fuller, I thought maybe it had been converted and the ratio’s did’nt suit. I could go from Homes chapel to Exeter (15.6) high trailer 20tons on at 60ish mph and not use top gear only down hill.It was’ent realy any good. The truck was 4 years old and imaculately clean but that was not a space cab and did’nt have a roof spoiler. So i think the wind resistance did’nt help??
John.
They certainly seem to have had a lot of different specs for all those different models 3300 John.I thought that they did some 16 speed ecosplit ones but I’ve never had any experience of those only that early 2800 with that 12 speed constant mesh ZF splitter and the later 2800 ATI’s which on our firm had 9 speed fullers.I reckon that the 9 speed was’nt suited to that wagon either so I can’t understand why they wanted to go for so few gears on it.But the old 12 speed which I used was pulling around 12ft 6 high box trailers no spoiler but plenty of weight and it could pull really well in top and I used to just drop it into the low split from 12th to 11th to climb most hills and sometimes a full gear down to 10th.But I can also remember the BRS 3300’s and I think they were running at 38 tonnes to Bristol for Coca Cola and I think that those had the 13 speed fullers like some other 3300’s I’m guessing? and I was sometimes doing 2 return runs per night from London there within my driving time so I was’nt hanging around but they used to come by me like I was standing still.But doing a regular 2 return runs from London to Leicester needed a good rate of knots too.But I reckon with that high trailer and with just a 9 speed box your 2800 must have been running with just about the worse combination of gearing and wind resistance so it just shows how fast that wagon was.
I’am not trying to go off the thread but some of us old drivers hav’nt seen one of these for a while. You see this innocent looking bit of kit used to go down the outsde lane of the M1 like a rocket some people clamed 90plus MPH. Unfortunatley one crashed nr Watford in the early 70s and some people was fateley
injured. At this time Double Deckers was banned from motorways. Thats where the one deck and a half type coach appeared over the years d/ds have sneaked back but not like Standelwick. What i’am saying it did’nt matter how fast you could go you never kept up with these.
John.
Wheel Nut:
At the opposite end of this post, I do remember that the 40 mph speed limits on roads like the A74 and A90 were rigidly enforced, in fact all speed limits in Scotland were enforced
I have only been done for speeding twice and both times were on the A76 near Dumfries when I wore a younger mans clothes.
Dumfrieshire Police were always hard on the Lorries in the 60s & 70s especially the Irish Lads, was only ever caught and fined for having no Log Sheet all the time i was on the Road and that was outside Gretna Ihad run out Log Sheets and had written it on a piece of Paper but still got done. Bennie
I have all my Fathers licence’s since he passed away last year, he was very proud of his clean HGV licence’s but I noticed in one of the red car licence’s he was done £10 for speeding in Hebburn, South Tyneside in Feb 1975, more than likely in a 30 limit around there. Like a lot of drivers he would have been annoyed at getting done but more than likely forgot about the times when he would have had the book thrown at him on other occasions if caught. He drove a Thames Trader four wheeler in the Sixties and this was a flyer and he said it was the fastest wagon he ever had. He was loaded for Edinburgh and parked outside the house early one morning when his mate who lived further down the street passed on his way to the yard. Later in the afternoon his pal passed again and the Trader was still parked up but empty, he thought there must have been some change to Dads trip so stopped and knocked to enquire. “I thought you were off to Edinburgh this morning Ernie” his mate asked when Dad opened the door, “Aye I’ve been and run back empty” came the reply. What followed was the loudest “WHAAAAT” Dad ever heard. He was very dissapointed when another driver blew the engine up while he was on holiday, it was never the same after that, 507 FUP what a machine. Frankydobo.
Chris Webb:
I seem to remember drivers were getting fined £1 for every mph they were exceeding on the A74,back in the 70s.Anybody confirm this?[/quot
Chris we was doing a job from Longcliffe to Alloa Glass in 73/74 I think it was a train job but some repairs was been done. we was running S39 Fodens and the word was instant ban first offence. From iron bridge to just nr Atlas cranes Lesmagow was 40MPH and everyone seemed to stay at that speed.
50MPH didnt come till about 1985 IICR.I remember the coppers had a 2800 DAF unit with no marks. A policemans hat just appeared out of the passanger window and flagged you down.They stopped me on my first trip and questioned me as I was new to the area and where was i going it was 5.45 on Monday morning just past Gretna.
john
My pride and Joy for many years with a bit of history. Originally a long wheel base 6x2 tractor fitted with a 220 ■■■■■■■ and a David Brown box.
The story goes that when the Super tanker the Torrey Canyon perched itself on the rocks, Pickfords tank haulage started running the oil dispersal detergent they used down to Cornwall from the North.The journey took too long so they fitted highspeed diffs into 6 Atki tractors to speed the job up. Not sure how true the story was, but converted to a wrecker in the early 70s she always felt fast once you wound her up, I never trusted the speedo, but it went round the clock and back up to 20mph again(honest).
Around the early to mid 80s we had a Day cabbed Scania 113 running from Seaforth docks back to Kellogs Trafford Park, when new it was a bit slow and we realised it was fitted with a low speed Gearbox by mistake, Scania fitted a coach diff to bring the speed back up (the cheaper option) The Scania was fitted with a calibrated Tacho so we knew the top speed of around 80mph was somewhere near correct. As this was one of the first calibrated vehicles we ran (and a flyer) I decided to check the speed of the atki against the Scania. An opportunity soon came up when I was on nights, a trip to the Liverpool docks to collect another battered IrishTexaco truck
Once both trucks were wound up the Atki crept past the Scania, I reckon she topped out at about 85/90 ish… Never trusted the wheels and tyres and she took a lot of stopping
I had a bedford TM for a summer in the 80s 89 I think with ■■■■■■■ engine it would easy do 85 fully freighted but lessons have to be learned I was coming round the 25 surrey section and found out there was a huge hold up some miles ahead so turned off and decided to go through london to our yard in silver town when I came off and slowed for roundabout I started to pull away and the wagon was all over the place so pulled over and turned out the u bolts holding the back axle had sheared imagine if I had carried on the motorway and had to stop suddenly I could have been all over the road, turns out when the wagon was fixed the fitter said that the u bolts on the TM were thinner than was normal I did like that old girl though, I see people talking on here of when the m1 opened my dad drove for a firm called westminister transport then they were based near kings cross north london mainly old O type bedfords his boss told all the drivers that they could not use the m1 because of the cost of recovery if they broke down and if they did use it and broke down they would have to pay for recovery themselves although that was a laugh as the money they were earning just about paid the rent, another time dad told me of that firm if he had to ring the firm for a return load the boss would hesitate and dad would have a finger on the button ready to cut off the call and as soon as the boss said not sure or words to that effect he hit the button and made his way back home, I did a couple of years on the buses for london transport the leyland double deckers were governed which was ok in london but they also did some private hire and a driver there told me he drove a load of blokes on a beano to margate one saturday and all the way at 45 mph they asking him if he could go faster very embarrasing oh happy days do not drive for a living anymore would not want to now with all the restrictions the last job I had I worked for a guy in poplar east london and we emptied the bottle banks in most of north london and home counties with volvo f7s which were seconhand from cleanaways who he had bought the job from the volvos were pretty knackered and going up the hill to the harlow turn off on the m11 they really struggled there was a weighbridge at the turn off and we often got pulled in their as we looked overweight I loved that job though as there was no hanging around at warehouses and the like for 4 or 5 hrs or worse I just went out and once full of glass went to a glass bottle factory in harlow to tip the glass and of again mind you it was a bit of a dodgy firm but good earner, great web site keep it going
My old pal Dave Richardson used to drive an S24 Foden 8 legger for Flowers Transport at York, the motor KDN428E had a Leyland 680 power plus engine and was a cancelled or from a Malton livestock haulier hence the 680. This motor could do 75mph fully loaded as opposed to 45mph like the other Gardner engine Fodens in the fleet. Daves party trick was to get cab level with another Foden as he was overtaking them and attract their attention, then he would flick the the dash mounted 12 speed lever into overdrive and then pull away from them and leave them standing, what a motor!
regards doublereduction.
