1975 Atkinson restoration

Twaz too dark for me to take pic of tailshaft
so take no notice of the pic eye pirated of tailshaft
only the measurements may B close to perfect





cya

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Swishy wrote: OilMan

tube only 180 mm
slip joint 200 mm

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Thanks Swishy, so you are saying that yours is a total of 380mm between the universals and mine is looking like 270mm? If so does yours look like it could be any shorter or do I need to try and stretch mine? (sorry hadn't seen your photo when I sent this).

OilMan
Mine measures up @
600 mm center to center of the unis in length
U need a bit of slip in the spline to allow for th@ axle to travel up n down
if U jack the front drive axle upto the overide load stoppers
Th@ B the minimum length of the tailshaft

cya
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Oilman, your tailshaft bloke will probably want some heights and angles too I'd say.
If the shaft is going to sit in there reasonably straight I'm guessing you'll be right.
Seeing you post on the tail lights it looks like you are trying to keep it pretty original? If you are a bit flexible with the wheelbase, the longer it is the better it will ride if you did want to make it a bit longer.

Oilman, I am sitting here with the gospel open on my desk.... it tells me many things but not chassis length, do you have a chassis number is the a model number on any ID plate? and do you have the engine number too?

In the end the gospel may shed little light on your problem, but at least I can check.

Sarge, the chassis number is CFC28530 and engine # 192631. The model would be T3866X

Oilman, reading the good book....

model T3868 (XB) 3/axle ridged 851 C.I.D. (Diesel) 1971 8cyl 72 power units. 26,750Kg GVW, 40600 Kg GCW/GTW Gardner diesel 174763 sample number and FC/20254

model T3866XB (T) 638 C.I.D 3 Axle rigid same as above but 1972 6 cyl 54 p.u. 2320 kg same as above 18370 eng no cfc/23965 chassis.

the XB bracketed or not, seems to denote Gardener diesel. and C and GM denote Cummins and GM, RR = Rolls Royce no code for a Cat motor (3408) I cant explain the (T) .... and there is no apparent coding to explain 2/3/4 axle or 6 or 8 cyl... chassis number prefixes CFC or FC or no prefix, or FCA 1976, 1977 & 1978 then in 1979 H/000 was the prefix for all then in 1980 only one model recorded an F3870 chassis J/00167....
CFC was used sometimes up to 1975... the last example number cfc/26579 yet in 1974 the example was CFC/27912.....

there is no model designation T3866X in the book without some additional letters.... and none of it tells me how long your chassis would be, there is no obvious code which says sleeper or day cab..... there are a few called Transtar.... and several marked twin steer but not all 4 axles are twin steer????

I hope that is of interest even if no help.

Sarge, Yes, I should have said XB as that denoted Gardner. The T=tractor (L was long wheelbase etc). The 38 = 38 tonne gross, the next number (6 in this example) is for 6 wheel and the next number (6 in this example) was for 6 cylinder. So a 6 x 4 with an 8 cylinder Gardner would be T3868XB. Nothing in the number gave, wheelbase, horsepower, sleeper etc.

The truck has 5.83 difs in it, which by my calculations should give 76km/h @ 1850 rpm. The bloke following me home with it, said it sat on about 84km/h but as the rev counter didn't work, I'm not sure if it was over revving a bit. While I have it all apart, I'm looking at fitting faster diffs in it. By my calculations, with 4.11's it should do 100km/h @ 1740 revs which sounds OK to me. It will never gross 38 tonne again, so I can't see that being a problem, and even if it did for some reason, running down a gear in direct shouldn't be a problem. Can any one see any issues (other than changing the speedo calibration) I haven't thought of?

Sounds like a plan to me
Only thing to think about is it takes a bucket load more power to go at 100 than it does at 80 and just maybe make sure you are gunna have enough power to still be drivable, Im sure it will be fine
And the other thing that comes to mind is that caster angle may need to changed as it might get the wanders up a bit, I know the caster angle on a lot of trucks from this era is different to make them easier to maneuver at low speed but once you speed them up they are a hand full to keep straight

Paul