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Post by yorktransitman on Apr 10, 2013 21:40:03 GMT 1
in the next few days i will get my memory bank working & try & remember some more details of some of those listed above, PDH 436M, UDH 9M & WDH 309N belonged to the Dudley (West Mids) depot & they became a weekly nightmare as they were really abused by that depot. WFK 322N belonged to the Worcester depot, we didn't maintain that normally as it went to a local garage but it came to us when there was a problem the garage could not fix, the one job i remember was that it went to the garage for some engine work & when they had it back it would occasionally belch oil/smoke out the exhaust, it took us ages to find the fault, we tried everything, eventually we found it, a new rocker shaft had been fitted by the garage & it had not got the end caps in it so we bought another shaft from Ford which did have the end caps fitted & hey presto we had cured the problem!
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Post by yorktransitman on Apr 10, 2013 22:18:26 GMT 1
oh for those who have seen the photo of the 1957 A35 van which was restored last year, it has been in the family since 1960 & here i am standing in front of it around 1961-62 at Rhyl
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Post by mk1andy on Apr 11, 2013 12:26:37 GMT 1
That's a nice little fleet of classics you've got there Nick. Me thinks they need a transit to keep them company though?
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Post by irishtransit on Apr 11, 2013 13:10:17 GMT 1
even though i prefer mk2's i recon a nice mk1 recovery truck to carry them to shows would look great.
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Post by yorktransitman on Apr 11, 2013 19:25:02 GMT 1
Thanks Andy, hey don't tempt me you two, i'd love a MK1 York but i have nowhere to keep it & they are fetching some serious money now, to be honest i did prefer the MK1 myself, you can't beat the original, well the late MK1's were upgraded a little ready for the MK2, from memory cab rear screen larger & also a hanging throttle pedal in place of the 'organ' type pedal mounted on the floor
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Post by yorktransitman on Apr 11, 2013 21:20:03 GMT 1
'The Dudley fleet' PDH 436M was a standard 35 cwt twin wheeler with a roller shutter fitted at the rear in place of rear doors, it had a Bosch injection system & was the only one during the time i was there, everything else had the Simms pump, the engine rattled like a train something had gone but it kept going, i can't remember if it had a side door, it stands a chance it did, the bodywork was generally knocked about as all the Dudley fleet were abused. UDH 9M was a 35 cwt chassis cab with a box body like the one in the photo, it had a triple rear door set up as it was used during the day for merchandising magazines to the various newsagents, at night it was used on the newspaper run to the newsagents, it had a side door only on the nearside, another casualty by the drivers at Dudley, it was involved in a few accidents & the cab eventually ended up a different shade of Orange. WDH 309N, was a 35 cwt chassis cab with box body again & same door set up, didn't get knocked about as much as 'UDH' I think both UDH & WDH both had replacement engines or major engine work Mondays used to be a nightmare to us as we would always get 'that' phone call about one of their fleet broken down. Usually we had to replace rear hub oil seals as they had overloaded them with newspapers more than likely 2 ton plus on them!, the other favorite was being as the depot was on a hill & it was an incline to the loading bay they used to reverse back to the loading bay at speed with a load on & the loading bay used to stop them!, PDH suffered smacked up rear bumpers which moulded themselves around the rear panel!, UDH & WDH were both fitted with rear protruding steps at the rear & they used to be smashed under the rear of the van & we used to tie a chain round them & 9 times out of ten we managed to pull them back to some sort of use until the next weekend! and do it all over again the following week until they were so damaged we had to get new ones made. One memory sticks in my mind of one Monday we had that 'call' of either UDH or WDH with a broken off gearstick (quite common fault) so we took our 420 FG (like one in the other photo) to tow it back to Birmingham only to be told when we got there that PDH's exhaust had gone (front pipe had snapped at the box) so we ended up leaving our tow truck but NOT the keys for it & ended up towing either UDH or WDH with the broken gearlever with PDH with the broken front pipe back to our workshop in Birmingham, i think i drove PDH & my mate was behind, it was noisy & it was a wonder we wasn't stopped, in those days we were allowed to use a chain & the one behind was running to keep the servo up. We eventually had Dudley's fleet transferred to Walsall garage as they had more time to work on them than we did & i remember the last time i saw WDH was when i had to go over Dudley way for something, well it wasn't the case of seeing it i heard it first, Dudley is on a hill & i was on the top & below in the distance below (open land) i heard this almighty screaming, WDH's diff was screaming it's head off as it must have been on it's last legs & they were shortly getting rid of it so didn't bother to sort it out & if Walsall did it would be wrecked again by their drivers!! I hope you enjoyed reading about Dudley's fleet, i hope to start writing about our own Birmingham fleet very soon
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Post by yorktransitman on Apr 11, 2013 22:27:10 GMT 1
one thing i forgot to say was that all the fleet was governed to 50 mph so as not to rev the wotsits off them
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