Some EX Kwikasair / Comet 8 wheelers

....hey Billy .. what's that old saying about you can't put brains into statues? : :

You can see the suspension equalising rod very clearly.

greenie,

thanks for the clarification, knew there was something distinctive about the Goth but couldn't remember what it was.

Heres 835 backing into a building site.
...........................................

Heres a bit of useless info (as J Laws would say)

Back when that bottle crowd (or what ever) was running KWs up

to Darwin (or where ever) they were having problems with tail shaft

splines seizing because of corrurgated roads etc. This was wrecking

the rear of the transmissions & not doing other things much good either.

The fix was to fit tailshafts with teflon (or whatever) coated splines,

together with more regular greasing. As Ripley said (believe it or not)..................



835 again
............................Billy............................

...Billy .. to add to that there is also a very plausible reason why the shafts in the Kenny Bottle trucks cried ...ENOUGH...

...they were running the bloody Pommy lorries up to that point, and with their low top speed, and leisurely performance...no one realised the Kenworths were doing three times the miles in the same times as these old things...but the greasing intervals remained the same as the workshop had always known : : :

...these were very early days in fast interstate transport.....the Peterbilts had the same problem of spitting shafts out all over the place...making a hell of a mess of the chassis/running gear at the same time....to me, Billy's tale is not surprising....

PS .. this story was told to me years ago by Wally Williams (fruit fly) of Williams TPT.....he just laughed when he saw the damage to the old Mainline banger around the rear suspension torque rods, crossmembers, air tanks and chassis flanges

Great pics billy, do you remember where they were taken? By the tyre tracks she was workin hard pushing that pig up and into the site.

Grant.

neat truck,,, spose it twas 8/71...jk

Just think .... 290-318hp (depending on whether it had 60 or 65 injectors) pullinng 42? Tonne ..... Hard yakka no matter which way ya look at it

.Yep.. werk..........we would have been stuffed without deep reduction for site work..................





835 in the centre & 844 on the right.

It was some where on the central coast , maybe Bateau Bay, that hill was a whole lot

steeper than it looks.

Note the pallets. We had deliverad a load to Newcastle, picked these up at East Maitland,

then it was back to East Maitland for a another load ,(all on pallets from there) back to Appin.

Then back to the yard & load up for the next day.

6/92 in 835 & 844 (about 330 i think) but was still a big ask for the old girls.

844 ran at 42 1/2 with the load share limit , then your allowance on top of that.

The trouble with delivering bricks is, not many flat sites left, & people like building

on the sides of mountains
....................Billy.......................

Knew there'd be an article on it, just took a while to find...

Jimbo,
A good job digging that story up.

I dont know how Alltrans decided to use that suspension but , they were really good.

rode well, low maintaince & did all they said, Great in off road situations & you could

pull up as hard as you like both loaded & empty with absolutely no axle hop.( not that

those 8 wheeler KWs pulled up all that good in an emergency with out the trailer)

In traffic you was always hoping that the cars in front wernt going to suddenly jump

on the anchors.Because they could be wearing you.

Yeah, John Goth was a pretty smart cookie.

Thanks for that Jimbo ..........Billy.............