Gardner ENGINES

Some would say the finest oil engine ever, economic , light, ultra reliable. Were they? Were the products as good as the image? Why did they loose their captive market? Did their inability to satisfy demand lead to the demise of the UK assemblers, ERF, Atkinson, Guy? What were they like to “live with”, every day ? Over to you Gentlemen…

A well built engine , tough as old boots were gardners , but the drawback was the last bloke on the production line , the one that fitted the oil leaks! A gallon per day was quite normal , even on relatively new engines . Wherever you parked a Gardner there was an oil patch underneath . Having said all that , they earned me a lot of money over a lot of years , cheers , dave

We had 40+ 6LXB’s and LXC’s at our quarry and I was rebuilding approximately one a week for a while. They were fine when trucks were running around at 40 mph and grossing 24 tons but they struggled above that. Ours were all 30 ton eight leggers, mostly Foden with a few Sed Ak 400’s, and they always seemed to overheat on either number 1 or number 6 cylinders resulting in piston seizure or in a few cases the gudgeon pin coming out though the side of the block. Some chucked a con rod out as well, resulting in a new crankcase and block required. When they got worn after a few of years oil consumption would be around a gallon per day and then we usually fitted an exchange block and pistons. Valves hitting pistons was another thing, usually when the camshaft sprocket bolt came loose due to the tab washer breaking, the LXC’s had to have LXB type heads put on them under warranty when new as they drank oil otherwise. I took a couple of LXC powered Fodens back to Patricroft as they just would not pull properly, Gardner’s answer to me was that if you wanted something to pull better then you should have ordered a ■■■■■■■■■ I also took one back with a water leak from a plug in a new cylinder block that I fitted, there was a ‘special tool’ to tighten the plug, but the foreman had gone on holiday with the key to the tool cupboard so they couldnt do it, eventually it sealed itself with rust. Couldn’t make it up could you?
I will say that we never had crank problems though, and the engineering quality was second to none but the Rolls 265’s that replaced them were far more reliable in service, mine did ten years and God knows how many miles without even having an injector replaced.

For all that they are still my favourite engine and I wouldnt mind rebuilding another one, though that would seem unlikely now!

Pete.

In all the years I was driving I only ever drove one vehicle with a Gardner and that was a Sed Atki 400 with the 240 for Glass Glover, VWA 427S.I had it for about 6 months and it was eventually sent to our Altrincham depot much to my disappointment,it was a grand tool. Our fleet was nearly 100 % Scania at the time,all 81s and the Sed Atki would pee all over them on trunk,loved it. I never had any problems with it.

My first full time driving job with Chilton Transport of Bow, London blessed me with a Seddon Aktinson with a 240 Gardner in it. It smoked a bit and used to “surge” on tick over, I can still hear it now !! almost 30 years on…but it used to pull those loads of reels and steel tube alright.! I remember the steering lock was better one way than the other, dont know if that had anything to do with the set up or the fitter !! I used to have to stand up to get it on full right hand lock.
Then after a while I got promoted to a Marathon 2.
Here is a picture of the old ■■■■■■■ my first trip to Oxford. Those were the days, eh lads.

Ah Saviem, could be a can of worms opening up here!

As a driver you either loved 'em or hated 'em. I was in the latter camp having been brought up on ‘faster’ engines such as AEC and Leyland.

I’ve huge respect for Garners for what they achieved in terms of fuel economy, and considering the design of even the 6LX it dated back to 1930 in many aspects, and it was a brilliant piece of engineering.

Having spent 7 years researching the company and its products to write my book ‘L. Gardner & Sons Limited, - Legendary Engineering Excellence’ there is much I could write both for and against Gardner engines, its family, company, and policies (or lack of them). The book is still available on its second reprint from Old Pond Publishing.

When I first went ‘up the road’ in 1967 the company I worked for had the choice of Gardner in an ERF or Gardner in an Atki and later Gardner in a Guy BigJ the engine in all cases was a 180hp and they all used oil at the rate of a pint per 100miles + a pint (probably lost through the startup smoke).
They did seem reliable but noisy and slow, about 57 mph max on all the above if I remember rightly, and after a while you learnt what gear and when to change for every road and hill on regular journeys. To be fair speedwise there was a 40mph speed limit everywhere, dual carrageways included, except for the (then) limited motorway network so maximum torque at 56 mph wasn’t a requirement then.
I think the ultimate demise was mainly due to Gardners assumption that turbochargeing was a soon to be forgotten gimmick.

rigsby:
A well built engine , tough as old boots were gardners , but the drawback was the last bloke on the production line , the one that fitted the oil leaks! A gallon per day was quite normal , even on relatively new engines . Wherever you parked a Gardner there was an oil patch underneath . Having said all that , they earned me a lot of money over a lot of years , cheers , dave

Ah, that’s one we can blame on the wimmin, there were a lot of the fairer ■■■ on the Gardner engine production line.

As you all say there are good and bad in all Engines ,We ran Gardeners ,4 ,5 ,6 ,6lx ,6lxb .8lx,must admit had a few bad ones, but overall they done us well ,fuel was good oil leaks ,well show me one that doesnt ,then iwould think you were joking ,But will say iwas not impressed with the 6lxtc, no diffrent to the 6lxb for preformance ,we ran AEC ,Leylands ,they were ok ,a bit heavier on the fuel ,AECs head gaskets a few ,injector pipes by the thousands ,Leyland lots of headgskets ,overheating ,very heavy on fuel ,headgaskts on the 6oo not a easy job ,used to take longer to remove the manifold,and the other pipes than the heads them selves ,they all had good points and bad but we soldierd on kept us work, Volvo f 86 ,easey to work on they had to be gear boxes , turbos ,overheating and Headgaskets by the score, we only ran the one thank god ,yours Barry

I’ve had two lorries with Gardner engines, one a Seddon Atkinson 400 with a 180, the other a Foden 8 wheeler with the ‘uprated’ 201hp engine, they were both heaps of junk that wouldn’t pull a greasy stick out of a dog’s arse and I hated them both with a passion. I have no idea about oil consumption, as I never checked it in the hope that the gutless wonders would self destruct

I did have the one in the Sed Ak run backwards on me though. I was on the north side of the Woolwich Ferry, as you join the pier there is a bit of a hump. I was almost on top of it and when the queue moved forward I let out the clutch, but nearly stalled it, so I dipped the clutch and gave it a bootful of revs, then all hell broke loose, the thing was screaming its nuts off and blowing blue smoke out through the air filter. I put it in gear and went hurtling backwards Had I known then what I know now, I would’ve left it to blow itself to pieces, but like a fool I stalled the engine and it went on to live another day, many days in fact

I’ve read the comments about oil consumption, wow, a gallon a day, that is some serious wear to the cylinders/rings. Common practice by engine manufacturers today is to rebuild if oil consumption is more than a gallon every 3500 miles. (the actual figure is worked out on oil use compared to fuel use, but a gallon every 3500 miles gives a rough idea) I think the problem that the Gardner engines had was that they never got hot enough when new to allow the rings to seat properly, therefore oil was escaping past the rings and blowing out the exhaust. I can’t comment on reliabilty issues, mine were both very reliable, too bloody reliable in fact

As you can guess, I’m not a huge fan of the Percy, but I have to say they did make a lovely noise, especially those straight eights

So what led to the end of Gardner engines, in a word…Arrogance

I loved em,they were not the fastest but i found them reliable,i drove sed atki,s[early 70s]with 180s and an erf b series with a 240 in it[late 70s.In the 80s i had a sed atki with the new[at the time]320,that in my opinion brought about gardners demise,it ran and pulled well but went through cylinder heads like no business,i had 3 sets in 12 months the fault was the castings kept going porous.This i think contributed to them losing the contract they had with erf as a first choice engine,i stand to be corrected.
regards dave

I was trying to reckon up how many Gardner engines we ran over the years and I got up to the high 30’s and there will be,no doubt,one or two I missed ! There was one 6LW and a couple of 150Lx’s the rest were mainly 180LXB’s as well as circa into the teens of 8LXB/C’s.The Gardners gave us excellent service during the years we ran them and ,of course,we did re-build quite a few albeit after high,trouble free,mileages.However I have got to say that with the introduction of the Scania into our fleet both trouble free higher mileages,and increased reliabilty was the order of the day.Driver acceptabilty improved and fuel consumption was similar and possibly better,the halcyon days of the legendary Gardner had definitely come to a grinding halt.But in their time the Gardner was indeed the benchmark that all others were measured against and when pitched against the Leyland ,AEC,Meadows and Foden engines there was,during that era “no contest” the Gardner was king !!All good things come to an end at some time.While we are on “all things” Gardner,does anyone remember the “chinese” gent that was in the Service Centre at Patricroft ?PS If all good things were never to come to an end “Saviem” would still be CEO of that obscure French manufacturer and he would be at a small family owned Parisien restaurant this evening regaling some African Potentiate and his entourage with some Bosting “Tales from The Black Country” Cheers Dennis.

I`ve only driven 1 lorry with a Gardner engine D355 GWX a Foden with the 320 in it and i thought it was a great motor,it was a very good puller it had a 9 speed Fuller and a Rockwell axle,i had it for around 8 months and never had a problem with it ,mind i did come off a Renault 290 GT dont know what the GT stood for but i had an idea

rigsby:
A well built engine , tough as old boots were gardners , but the drawback was the last bloke on the production line , the one that fitted the oil leaks! A gallon per day was quite normal , even on relatively new engines . Wherever you parked a Gardner there was an oil patch underneath . Having said all that , they earned me a lot of money over a lot of years , cheers , dave

Hiya rigsby,i went into Gordon plants yard one day with a quit nice 180 tractor unit, this chap said to me i dont like lorries in this yard dripping oil, i said you show me a gardner that dos.nt have a oil leak…he replied i own 60 erf.s with gardner engines and not one drips oil.
Plants yard was marked out so each lorry had its own parking place, checks was made to see if any was leaking oil.
i know this to be true as years later i worked with 8 ex plants drivers at S Coopers of Bolllington.
John

Well anyone who knows about The Gardner Engines ,they had no gaskets on the rocker covers or the side plates, We had two Fodens with 150s in them & they did leak at one point but we removed them & coated them with a type of sealing paste, I cant recall the name but we used to get it from Commercial Truck Services at Faverdale when they were Foden dealers, & it worked a treat our problem solved, Great engines in my opinion, Regards Larry

windrush:
We had 40+ 6LXB’s and LXC’s at our quarry and I was rebuilding approximately one a week for a while. They were fine when trucks were running around at 40 mph and grossing 24 tons but they struggled above that. Ours were all 30 ton eight leggers, mostly Foden with a few Sed Ak 400’s, and they always seemed to overheat on either number 1 or number 6 cylinders resulting in piston seizure or in a few cases the gudgeon pin coming out though the side of the block. Some chucked a con rod out as well, resulting in a new crankcase and block required. When they got worn after a few of years oil consumption would be around a gallon per day and then we usually fitted an exchange block and pistons. Valves hitting pistons was another thing, usually when the camshaft sprocket bolt came loose due to the tab washer breaking, the LXC’s had to have LXB type heads put on them under warranty when new as they drank oil otherwise. I took a couple of LXC powered Fodens back to Patricroft as they just would not pull properly, Gardner’s answer to me was that if you wanted something to pull better then you should have ordered a ■■■■■■■■■ I also took one back with a water leak from a plug in a new cylinder block that I fitted, there was a ‘special tool’ to tighten the plug, but the foreman had gone on holiday with the key to the tool cupboard so they couldnt do it, eventually it sealed itself with rust. Couldn’t make it up could you?
I will say that we never had crank problems though, and the engineering quality was second to none but the Rolls 265’s that replaced them were far more reliable in service, mine did ten years and God knows how many miles without even having an injector replaced.

For all that they are still my favourite engine and I wouldnt mind rebuilding another one, though that would seem unlikely now!

Hiya Pete.i think you may have hit on somthing there. the gardner engine was the most fiddly engine to work on, when scania and volvo
come along you could strip one cylinder and pop a piston in easy , when it came to gardners at was a total strip down as you well know.
John

GS OVERLAND:
My first full time driving job with Chilton Transport of Bow, London blessed me with a Seddon Aktinson with a 240 Gardner in it. It smoked a bit and used to “surge” on tick over, I can still hear it now !! almost 30 years on…but it used to pull those loads of reels and steel tube alright.! I remember the steering lock was better one way than the other, dont know if that had anything to do with the set up or the fitter !! I used to have to stand up to get it on full right hand lock.
Then after a while I got promoted to a Marathon 2.
Here is a picture of the old ■■■■■■■ my first trip to Oxford. Those were the days, eh lads.

my old mate bobby fox dead and berried now bless him i still have a pint with his son the old firm is still going but young bob sold the yard in lanrick rd dont know were they are now i used to buy the old boc fridges of him and the transvite lhd french bedford tms proper firm and a very shrewd man who owned it

Evening all, good recollections coming in. Nobody has as yet mentioned the really heavy accelerator pressure needed to maintain progress,really quite unacceptable, but accepted it was! (Ive still got the wooden wedge that I made to alleviate the problem on an S36 Foden)!

Certainly the Bernard produced Gardners had a much lighter, and responsive throttle, and I think developed a little more power than the "original LXs, and I recollect that they did not seem to smoke as much when cold. The only UK operator I can recollect operating a Bernard to this specification being Geoffry Cave-Wood.

When Gardner engines customer demand dramatically outstripped supply, why did not Gardner try to source from the European manufacturers whom Gardner had granted licence to build their engines? They could have acquired units for resale to the “assemblers”, and reduced chassis lead times, which may, and I only say may, have reduced the opportunities for imported chassis selling into the UK.

Something I really hated as a young Lorry Salesman was the dictate from my management, (if we were lucky enough to have a new Gardner powered chassis in stock), “if he wants it, it is £1000 on top of list price”!! Some accepted this near 25% increase in acquisition cost, others did not, and in many cases purchased other makes. (Also , and of prime personal concern to me,I received no commission on this price premium)!!

What of the emissions? Always we accepted the Gardner smoke screen from cold, but do you remember the choking atmosphere in many workshops where these engines were being worked upon? How many have lost their lives to Cancers formulated in these atmospheres?? I have lost a very good friend, who was always working on Gardner engines from his fleet, and he was second to none in his skills, but I would much rather he still be here. Perhaps in todays litigous world, had Gardner survived, then they may have faced legal action against their product.

On that serious note, I bid you good night, Cheerio for now.

Yes Dennis, I remember the ‘Chinese Gent’ at Gardner’s very well and had some laughs with him! I had to fit a new crankcase and block to one of our 201’s, it had thrown a rod when it was dropped back in gear after a long decent in Scotch overdrive and had also twisted the crankshaft and cracked the gearbox primary shaft. The camshaft sprocket had also split but we had a good used one in stock. Anyway the new crankcase arrived but the oil return pipe fitting from the pump to timing case was different and needed a new pipe etc. Because I was fitting another cam sprocket Gardner’s very kindly lent me a protractor which you needed to set each cam in turn so that valves didn’t hit pistons etc so while I was at the works I went to see their Technical Officer about the oil pipe set up. His reply was that he knew nothing about such a thing and he reckoned that I should fashion a piece of wood to bung the extra hole up in the crankcase!!! So I went to see our Chinese friend who practically exploded with fury and said that the hole was the only means of lubricating the timing gears and presented me with a new modified pipe etc, I wonder what Chinese swear words were directed at the Technical Officer after I left. He spent most of his life at the works but every time that I turned up he would moan about “Bloo*y Tilcon, what you do at our nice engines eh, you always blowing them up” but he knew his stuff and got really wound up when I told him that the best place for his nice engines was in his countries JUNKS.

Incidently the Sed Ak 400 that I drove ran backwards once, I selected crawler when climbing away loaded from Ashbourne market place but the truck wouldn’t move and the cab was filling with smoke coming from the airfilter! Took me a second or two to realise what had occoured but I stopped and restarted it and no harm was done.

Pete.

The gaffers loved them and most drivers hated them as Saviem said if you did not have a wedge or stick to jam the throttle open you had a knee ache I only drove a Big J with a 180 and a Atkinson Venturer with a 240 and the 240 was crap at the side of my 250 ■■■■■■■ viewline and not much difference on fuel when we ran together with identical loads plus the 240 had a 10 speed fuller while I had a ZF straight 6. I think the fuel consumption was due to the gearing as the 240 would only do around 38/9 with the 10 speed where as my ■■■■■■■ would do 46 with a 6 speed box and loaded we had to keep around 30 to 35 for the tyres so I would be running at lower revs.
cheers Johnnie