Early Plastic Cab Atkinsons

...g'day Sarge .. forget about Kenworth and their engineers.....Atkinson Trucks in Australia were the first to coin the phrase ''Applications Engineering''.....

...literally speaking, Atkinson led the way with the inordinate horsepower requirements of the big hauliers that led to the first KT450 Cummins (Atkinson 3800 Series) that were ever fitted to an On Highway truck in Australia...

...Atkinsons realised a potential problem with this, because highway trucking types loved the thought of a great big banger having this much HP... : : :

...quite a few early orders for these KT's in the Atkinsons were cancelled at the behest of Atkinsons management, as they could almost envisage the potential problem whereby they were to be used in an interstate linehaul operation....MAINLY FROM THE COWBOY FRATERNITY! : : :

Tective
M80
Jist wot R U on

U bin smoke n the drapes again

LOL
Wot year U claim the above

LOL
cya

...dunno what year precisely Swishy...1979-80?...it's all well documented ol' mate ...

...these KT 450's never found their way into the 4870 series Atkinsons.... by that stage there was a great big Detroit 475 two stroke doing the work....

Front axle weights, at least as far the East Coast was concerned, would have been the main factor limiting the use of KT450's in cab-overs, followed closely by cooling capacity. With Kenworth at the time cab-overs were limited to 1200 square inch radiators whereas the W AR and SAR could fit in 1400 square inch radiators. Don't know about Atkinson radiator sizes.

As far as the blokes that wanted power to go fast there had been the 12V71 then the 8V92T.

...and that's about the guts of it Jimbo .. people just saw a KT in a cabover ...not realising that that was all that Atkinsons offered...no conventional style truck offered by them in other words...

....Swishy can scream from a mountain top about Kenworth this and Kenworth that .....Atkinson were a very responsible heavy truck manufacturer.....

Hi all. This should make Swishy happy . A KW with an Atki cab, which I found on the interweb ?

Cheers
RS

...just looking back at last nights posts, and it dawned on me that i'm pretty sure the first fair dinkum 475 HP Detroits were originally fitted in Australia only in the 4870 Atkinsons ...about 1981-ish?

...the SE9 Road Commanders were having strife with cooling and the Kennys were in the same boat....and as a result they were only tuned at that time to 435 HP...

...ol' mate neighbour of mine drove one of these early Atkinson Detroit 475's for Brown and Mitchell at that time (1982-83) doing the Rothman's ciggys out of Sydney...bugger all weight and heaps of mumbo! ....she barely needed a gearchange...

....i done a few trips with him and drove her on a couple of occasions....what a cool unit :-* :-*

Mighta felt like bugger all weight with 475 horses but a jumbo pan hand stacked to the roof, a 6V92TT and no wind deflector was a bit different story! (1978-80)

...hey Jim .. can't remember what he carted out of Melbourne, but there seemed to be bugger all difference in performance up to there or back .....