Kenworth K-100 Grey Ghosts

Jimbo
GuddayM8
according to my KW delivery sheet
Martins K125 #102695,#102696
Early on they had a KW S921 #101035


Martins Overland Freighters
Bells St Preston, Melbourne
Directly opposite the Coburg Cemetry

B4 all the big yanky iron arrived in Oz
they had a WC White with a 6-71 GM (245 plus HP) with the rocker cover stamped GENERAL GRANT probly a transplant out of a WWII General Grant Tank

ButEyeDoSt&2BCorrected

Cya
[ch9787]

right,the remains of the peterbilt in the picture is in melbourne,swishy,greeny you know the peterbilt museum im talking about.fleet owners did have a peterbilt on order,but it never went into service with them.it was a long wheelbase cabover,similar to ted stiles' pete.it eventually got shortened to p/m wheelbase then sold to aurther guillot(highway haulage).in 1967 it dropped a walking beam at bolivia hill(armidale nsw)that was the end of that truck

Sydney - Melbourne on the old Hume highway, grey ghost doing it in 9 hours I do not believe it was possible, to do the 600 odd miles they would to my reckoning have to average about 70 mph thats some average. Early 70's in my MAN with 58 mph diff and always with afull load I think my average was about 30/35 mph. I would leave Sydney during the evening and arrive Melbourne the following evening, thats with a sleep somewhere on the route. I also drove a 1418 cab over Mercedes which would only do 55 mph and wouldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding so no 9 hours in that either.

At the risk of standing corrected, in answer to Mammoths earlier question about the difference tween bud wheels and disk wheels. I think you will find Bud wheels were the wheels where you put the inside dual on first and fastened them with the nuts that became the studs for the outer dual wheel. Some Jap trucks had this system back in the seventies and if I recall some of the earl Fords like the thornycroft had the same system. They were great if ya got a flat on the outside coz ya didnt need to jack it up but if ya had a flat on the inside ya had 20 wheel nuts to undo and redo. Hope that helps but in the words of the immortal Swish .... I do stand to be Krektid

Oldbugger - Yeah, that's right. To keep up a high average speed, you'd need to be up around 90mph most of the time. On the old Hume, I couldn't imagine a very high average speed, because of the amount of time spent at low speeds travelling through towns. Once you drop back to 50-60 kmh, even for a few minutes, it plays havoc with your average speed.

However, on long empty sections or road with nothing to slow you down, you can achieve high average speeds. I can recall a mate telling me in the mid-1980's that Brookes' from Bunbury, were doing Perth-Adelaide (empty) in under 24 hrs, two-up. That's 2700 kms .. .. but the big difference to the Hume, is vast sections of empty flat roads across the big paddock, that enables high average speeds.
Even so, Brookes' must have been doing a lot of travelling around the 125-130kmh level, to average well over 110 kmh.

A lot of the East-Westers also used to have very high gearing, bordering on idiocy. Clevelands were notorious for the Mack-Munchers doing low flying speeds.
I personally followed a single trailer SAR Mack-Muncher in my V8 Sandman ute, between Southern X and Coolgardie in the late 1970's/early 1980's, and clocked him at a pretty constant 135-140 kmh, loaded, and heading East.
Those 450 HP Cat 3408's were absolute powerhouses in that era. Of course, in that period, the law was rarely seen on those stretches of road, unlike today .. and speed limiters were unheard of.
I often wondered how these blokes justified their speeds, because of regular tyre failures, and high tyre wear rates.
The Eyre and Gt Eastern Hwys were always littered with blown truck tyre carcasses in those days, and much of that, was just due to high speeds.

At the risk of standing corrected, in answer to Mammoths earlier question about the difference tween bud wheels and disk wheels. I think you will find Bud wheels were the wheels where you put the inside dual on first and fastened them with the nuts that became the studs for the outer dual wheel. Some Jap trucks had this system back in the seventies and if I recall some of the earl Fords like the thornycroft had the same system. They were great if ya got a flat on the outside coz ya didnt need to jack it up but if ya had a flat on the inside ya had 20 wheel nuts to undo and redo. Hope that helps but in the words of the immortal Swish .... I do stand to be Krektid

Bud is a brand name! the wheel could still be called a disc type wheel, but this usually refers to a steel wheel, bud also made steel aswell as alloy wheels way back when!... but nowadays when we refer to a bud type rim, it means the fitments! "bud" locates on the stud , there's a taper in the rear of the rim and a collet on the stud, this is how the rim locates itself on the hub, also the left hand wheel-nuts are l/h thread and the r/h wheel-nuts r/h thread and the wheelnuts are inset/countersunk into the rim! [that is a bud type rim].............all the new type rims, steel disc or alloy, are know as I.S.O International Organization for Standardization. (Don't ask me why it isn't IOS. Must be French or something.) These are the rims you see made by alccoa, these rims locate on the center of the hub, and the studs holes have around 5mm lager size then stud itself, this allows for expansion , the nut has a large washer fixed to them and they are not set into the rim,but sit flat on top [this is an I.S.O fitments] most new trucks use this system now! bud are old, iso new! the size of the centre has nothing to do with the name, only different type of trucks ,euro or American fittment. the measurement from the centre of the stud to the outside edge of the centre hole is known as the P.C.D," Pitch circle diameter" The P.C.D. of a wheel refers to the diameter of an imaginary circle drawn through the centre of the nut/stud holes in the mounting face of the wheel.

Cheers Adam

Adam - All good info, but just a slight correction. The correct spelling is Budd. Edward G. Budd established his company in Philadelphia in 1912, and the Budd Company went on to produce everything from railway cars to aeroplanes. The company has been owned by the German steelmaker, Thyssen AG (pronounced "Tyson") since 1978.

The history of the company is typical of the famous American industrial names .. a slow start, that turned into a mega-billion dollar operation with worldwide influence, by the 1940's.

Budd Co history .. www.fundinguniverse.com/company-historie...Company-History.html

The ISO name origin is a little more complex. The word is taken from the Greek, ISOS .. meaning "equal".

However, the International Organization for Standardization often has its name altered to International Standards Organisation to match the letters.

The organisation was founded in 1946 to try and develop world-wide standards for many items in common use, and it now has 160 member countries.

(P.S. - The French name for it, is Organisation Internationale de Normalisation! )

Cheers - Ron.

Well i reckon the bloke out on the Nullarbor with the flat tyre, is more concerned that you brought the right wheel with you than how you spelt the blokes name who made it!!


just a thought........i am a truckie after all

Onetrack, -- With regard to gearing, 1972 I remember talking to an owner driver with a Kenworth coe 6 wheeler semi who ran fridge vans to Darwin, he told me that a brainwave he had was to change the drive tyres from 1000's to 1200's he thought it would drop his revs slightly and lift slightly his top speed, he did one run and used way more fuel as the motor was on top revs all the time as it would'nt pull top gear and did I want to buy 8 1200 tyres that he had in his garage