What trucks have you driven and wished you hadnt?

[juddian]

Somebody mentioned Seddon 200…thanks a bundle i’d managed to forget all about that dung heap and now i can see the sodden thing, nighmares tonight and of the firm i drove it for about 6 long weeks…transport office wouldn’t talk to me after i put me notice in…childish ponces.

Had a 300 too with the IH engine, 6 wheeler Rolonoff, wouldn’t pull you out of bed, 6 speed box and first far too high so unless you approached a boggy tip flat out in first gear it would just grind to a halt, it would get stuck ina wet puddle too, useless.

I took it in to Northampton Diesels (good lads they were), they took the top off the pump and gave the fuel mixture screw a good health turn, try that mate…

Piggin hell it went like a scalded cat after that, made a decent truck after all, turbo howled, pulled right down to stall revs and gave an encouraging dose of black smoke under power.

Daf 2300, but strangely the 70’s 2500 with ares about face box before it was OK, Leyland Badger artic but it did have the redeeming feature of doing 80mph eventually, Roadtrain boneshaker, edit forgot the hellish Marathon the Lord wept, Night trunk with 180 Gardner A class ERF freezin nuts off, Guy bigJ rolonoff 6 wheeler climbing most hills at 12mph loaded and not much better empty, Renault Manager with 3 turns of play in the steering, Volvo F7, Volvo FL6/7, Volvo 88 (86 a little cracker), Volvo F10, Merc with EPS joke gearbox, Merc 1625/26/28 with any box, 1727 V6 Turbo was good tool though, any Iveco, Daf 75/85, probably more but spat enough on the keyboard to float the thing.

Last but not least any blasted truck with an automanual gearbox whatever poncy name they want to give the thing…Volvos about the least worst i s’pose.

[trev_h]

Juddian:
Last but not least any blasted truck with an automanual gearbox whatever poncy name they want to give the thing…Volvos about the least worst i s’pose.

Lost my Volvo with I shift this week and got this snail pace auto, to think we used to hate our Gardner powered Guys and Seddons as they’d only do 58mph, this heap tops out at 52mph.
Progress eh? reduced to a steering wheel attendant !

[hasrep]

I loved my F88 I was pulling empty aluminium drinks cans for Nacanco and it was like running empty .

joeshell:
Volvo F88,utter crap
Sudden Accident 200 series
Mercedes Axor

[juddian]

Trev_H:

Juddian:
Last but not least any blasted truck with an automanual gearbox whatever poncy name they want to give the thing…Volvos about the least worst i s’pose.

Lost my Volvo with I shift this week and got this snail pace auto, to think we used to hate our Gardner powered Guys and Seddons as they’d only do 58mph, this heap tops out at 52mph.
Progress eh? reduced to a steering wheel attendant !

I sometimes have to drive CF’s with the 460 lump and apart from the cabs which are seconds from the pound shop they aint bad as a drivers truck with the manual box for getting a move on (leave our Scanias standing), the auto’s though are nothing short of dreadful and i’ve often wondered how they ever gained type approval.

Be honest now if any of us old sticks were test drivers at somewhere that tests vehicles for type approval…assuming there is a road test carried out or does the application arrive with a plain brown envelope……within 2 minutes of starting off in one of these heaps we’d abandon the thing as being dangerous and tell 'em to stop taking the P this isn’t candid camera take it away and put a gearbox in it.

Sorry for the slight rant there i’m OK again now, but i sometimes have to drive CF 460’s with that poxy auto too and quite honestly i couldn’t describe them adequately without getting meself banned, there are not enough swear words in the dictionary, however to lessen the frustration somewhat i do select manual override and change gear meself, it doesn’t make a silk ■■■■■ from the pigs back side but it’s definately better than letting the sodden thing make it’s own mind up eventually.

I assume auto MAN’s have the same box as the DAF’s, and about as much use as a chocolate teapot either of 'em, pity about the MAN i’ve driven a 440 manual several times and whilst it will never be a tough as old boots F90 or its predecessors, not bad for a modern motorway machine.

Nice looking truck yours though.

[curnock]

some people are never saticfied !!!

[chris_webb]

Trev_H:

Juddian:
Last but not least any blasted truck with an automanual gearbox whatever poncy name they want to give the thing…Volvos about the least worst i s’pose.

Lost my Volvo with I shift this week and got this snail pace auto, to think we used to hate our Gardner powered Guys and Seddons as they’d only do 58mph, this heap tops out at 52mph.
Progress eh? reduced to a steering wheel attendant !

52 mph Trev,why is that,should be at least 56 surely? I couldn’t cope with that,it would send me round the bloody bend.I’ve never driven a “modern” motor with an auto box but Glass Glover had a Scania 81 box van with an auto box and was used for drawbar work.That was a pain as well.

[rigsby]

crikey , we would have been fettling the pump if the old fodens only did 52 . i couldn’t stay awake at that speed .

[lawrence_dunbar]

rigsby:
crikey , we would have been fettling the pump if the old fodens only did 52 . i couldn’t stay awake at that speed .

Well us old drivers could allways get the best out of our motors, this modern stuff , well some fitters havent got a clue, unless its plugged into the diagnostic gear, A Gardner was the simplest one to touch up a bit, plus the Perkins P 6. & the 635.4 Turbo, or Natural Aspirated ones. The good old days, Regards Larry

[windrush]

The P reg Foden 3000 that I had new in 1996 was set at 52 mph, it ruined a decent truck as it only revved at 2000 and being high geared struggled to reverse up steep slopes laden. When I got the ex Smiths D reg 6 wheeler with no limiter it was great, apart from the fact that when you were doing 58 the tacho showed 70 as it was calibrated wrongly, however when that was sold I got a F reg Foden (ex Topley Pike via Stuart Johnsons scrapyard) and THAT bugger was cut down to 52 as well! Mackworth trucks near Derby insisted that 52 was the correct setting, so that was that.

Pete.

[trev_h]

Our’s are set at 52mph from new to please the greenies I think! In reality its a nightmare. I’ve done Carlisle trunks this week, sat on cruise control there’s no changing gear, no braking, no driver input, just sat there for 4hrs at a time. Its hard to stay awake at that snail pace, all you can do is dream of the old days with a fuller box and a ■■■■■■■ motor, don’t get me wrong the comfort is what we dreamt of in the old days but my driving skills of old are of no use now, I’d love to see some of our younger drivers rope and sheet a forty footer, that would be fun !
Now I have to attend the DPC course to prove I know my job after 38yrs on the road, can’t believe the changes in that time.

[parkroyal2100]

Trev_H:
Our’s are set at 52mph from new to please the greenies I think! In reality its a nightmare. I’ve done Carlisle trunks this week, sat on cruise control there’s no changing gear, no braking, no driver input, just sat there for 4hrs at a time. Its hard to stay awake at that snail pace, all you can do is dream of the old days with a fuller box and a ■■■■■■■ motor, don’t get me wrong the comfort is what we dreamt of in the old days but my driving skills of old are of no use now, I’d love to see some of our younger drivers rope and sheet a forty footer, that would be fun !
Now I have to attend the DPC course to prove I know my job after 38yrs on the road, can’t believe the changes in that time.

Trev, forgive me but restricting truck speeds to 80km/h (52mph) is stuff all to do with greenies - despite having driven wagons for 15+ years I am what some might call a greenie who advocates for the conservation of what little of the natural world we have left, if only so that our kids can see what we all took for granted in our youth.

That said, I think (and my opinion is worth exactly what you paid for it- i.e nothing) the 52mph limit is nothing more than a farce. It’s a scheme some bunch of [zb] shiny-arsed bureaucrats in EuroBelGermanFrance dreamed up as a way of appearing like they were doing something to address road safety, while at the same time completely ignoring the bleedingly obvious fact that most accidents involving trucks are a direct result of woeful driving on the part of other road users (usually cars), which itself is a direct result of [zb] poor driving standards, which itself is a product of a useless driving test. But as far as the clowns who dream this BS up and who police it are concerned, it’s much easier (and much less politically damaging) to pick on that small proportion of the population who are wagon drivers and restrain them than it is to give the general motoring public the kick up the arris it so desperately needs. In short this is about more and more power to the regulators via the easiest route they can find.

Give any one of these [zb]s a modern wagon to drive and they woulnd’t know where to start, let alone something like (say) an ERF with a 180 Gardner or a DAF 2800 with a Fuller box. And if you asked them what a sheet was the first place they’d look would be the bedroom.

/rant

[jarvy]

I have driven lots of trucks, but there aren’t any I wished I hadn’t as I learnt something from all of them.
If pushed I would have to say the worst was an old MAN, 230hp on a good day, column change with 12 gears. Home made (not by me) double drive with 2 speed axles. So 24 gears some times but usually only a few that worked. No heater so iced up on the inside when driving in winter. I blew the engine but they rebuilt it. It took a driver driving off road into a load of trees whilst asleep to kill it!

[ramone]

Trev_H:
Our’s are set at 52mph from new to please the greenies I think! In reality its a nightmare. I’ve done Carlisle trunks this week, sat on cruise control there’s no changing gear, no braking, no driver input, just sat there for 4hrs at a time. Its hard to stay awake at that snail pace, all you can do is dream of the old days with a fuller box and a ■■■■■■■ motor, don’t get me wrong the comfort is what we dreamt of in the old days but my driving skills of old are of no use now, I’d love to see some of our younger drivers rope and sheet a forty footer, that would be fun !
Now I have to attend the DPC course to prove I know my job after 38yrs on the road, can’t believe the changes in that time.

I think the 52 mph limit is for fuel efficiency,at my last job we set 1 motor at 52mph as a trial and it did make a difference but no driver wanted it i overheard 1 driver saying he wasnt driving in top gear on the motorways ,they weren`t going to save any money from him.(what he didnt know is it was on the telematics tracker so they new exactly what he was doing)The limiters should be set at 62mph and specced with appropriate gearing .We had some new Scania 400s with semi auto boxes with overdrive and they were running at 1100 rpm at 56mph which was great for our very light work but would be useless at top weight

[chazzer]

An A series ERF with a 150 Gardener which had just been rebuilt by the boss in 1971, I was driving a Bedford (the one with the TK style cab but with power steering and the twin bumpers over the grille, can’t remember the model) and he asked me to take it tractor only down a country road to see what I thought of it so that he could replace the Bedford. Braking into the first corner the seat adjuster comes away seat slides forward pinning me against the non power steering wheel, managed to get through corner and eventually returned to yard. He asked what I thought of it, I replied that if he gave me that I was leaving… started on an F88 with a new company the following week.

[muckaway]

windrush:
When I got the ex Smiths D reg 6 wheeler with no limiter it was great, apart from the fact that when you were doing 58 the tacho showed 70 as it was calibrated wrongly,
Pete.

That was probably Dad; making himself look busier than he actually was After Dad had come off that and went onto 8wheelers, he had that D reg as a spare not long before it was sold…great fun passing just about everything on the M4 going down to Sodbury.
Someone mentioned Daf CF autos; Yes, crap. Just watch one on a landfill in comparisson to a manual box Foden.

[gardner_120]

1967 Bedford TK cattle truck, parked on a slope about 3 feet in front of another wagon - quiet Sunday afternoon at my uncle’s firm - I was 13 and decided to start her up thinking she was in neutral (all wagons were unlocked with keys in back then in 1977) - was actually in reverse and shot back - I stamped on the brake with both feet and she stalled about a quarter of an inch from the wagon behind.

I climbed down looking like a ghost and tiptoed off to find a toilet

Doesn’t really count as driven I suppose …

[juddian]

chazzer:
An A series ERF with a 150 Gardener which had just been rebuilt by the boss in 1971, I was driving a Bedford (the one with the TK style cab but with power steering and the twin bumpers over the grille, can’t remember the model)

Probably a KM.

Incidentally i’m sure somewhere in the depths of what passes for my memory i’ve heard KM tractor units, rare enough anyway, emitting the unmistakeable and enjoyable sounds of two stroke as fitted to TM models.

Is this me losing the plot even worse than i thought or were there some KMs with two stroke TM engines about?

[windrush]

Not ‘losing the plot’ at all! There were many about, a longer wheelbase to accomodate the engine (which was still mostly out in the fresh air ) and a deeper lower front bumper distinguished them from the normal KM unit.

Pete.

[juddian]

windrush:
Not ‘losing the plot’ at all! There were many about, a longer wheelbase to accomodate the engine (which was still mostly out in the fresh air ) and a deeper lower front bumper distinguished them from the normal KM unit.

Pete.

Ah thanks for that Pete, you do sometimes wonder if your remember correctly half the stuff that pops into your head when something triggers a memory.

[5thwheel]

Just to be different from a similar thread!!!

Take it easy,

Rgds,

David