newmercman:
Mostly attributed is what it says, however it doesn’t give a breakdown, but the costs must have been significant for it to get a mention at all
Like you I’m not sure how the cab could account for a lot of warranty claims, it was too new to have rusted away, maybe there were some fundamental flaws in the design which, rather than being engineered out (or dealt with before production) were left to be fixed under warranty as the cash starved Truck Division had no other choice
Maybe the design fault in the floorpan/leaks/draughts issue was responsible for some of it. Nevertheless, it sounds like a bit of a ■■■■-up. Bearing in mind that the Ergo’s design work will have started around 1960, for a 1964 launch, it points to inadequacies in the design office long before the financial problems of the BLMC merger. The Power Plus unreliability adds fuel to this argument.
I suspect that Britain’s automotive industry did not employ enough clever people to cope with the rate of technological change from the 1950s onwards- they could do what they knew very well but, when faced with a clean sheet of paper, the companies did not have enough staff with the necessary theoretical understanding of engineering, to make the new ideas work properly. Austin Morris and Leyland recruited students and graduates through the 1970s and '80s- I remember seeing the brochures at school. I reckon they were trying to catch up with the Continental firms in this area. In Germany, for example, you may not practise as an engineer without a higher degree, which is why most of them are called Doctor. In Britain, for example if you know how to assemble a gearbox in the workshop, you can get a go on a drawing board, if you are lucky. Similar to allowing car drivers to drive lorries without doing an HGV test, in a way…
newmercman:
I was referring to Scammell’s other designs rather than the Crusader, so excuse my omission, but in fairness it was designed to be used by BRS and not for the open market. However I remember hearing somewhere, I think it may have been in a speech by Garel Rhys, that if you put the Crusader chassis and a Rolls engined Marathon chassis side by side, for every inch of pipework or wiring on the Scammell, there were two on the Leyland, a lot of the components on the Leyland products were from the parts bin so were shoehorned into place, whereas the Scammell was a proper design job
That Garel Rhys bloke must be a mine of useful information, considering the work he has done over the years. I am surprised that the Marathon was so inferior in chassis layout to the Crusader. I would have thought that Leyland had more facility to design bespoke components than Scammell. Their use of the Motor Panels cab springs to mind, in contrast to Leyland’s having the luxury of developing their own cab for the job.
I’m puzzled by warranty claims on Ergo cabs? having worked for fleet operators,main dealers&as an operator of them!,at my time with a main dealer the warranty claims were mostly on the 500 range of engines,some of the major fleet operators had 2/3 replacement engines in the same vehicle some even self destructed on road test after a replacement engine had been fitted, belive me it was a nightmare time,I felt sorry for the Leyland field service engineers they were fighting a loosing battle!
splitshift:
I’m puzzled by warranty claims on Ergo cabs? having worked for fleet operators,main dealers&as an operator of them!,at my time with a main dealer the warranty claims were mostly on the 500 range of engines,some of the major fleet operators had 2/3 replacement engines in the same vehicle some even self destructed on road test after a replacement engine had been fitted, belive me it was a nightmare time,I felt sorry for the Leyland field service engineers they were fighting a loosing battle!
The figures he quoted were for 1968, so the delights of the 500 series were yet to come!
I remember reading somewhere that the 500’s problems were due to poor manufacturing quality. I think the article said that, if a 500 was built with every dimension within tolerance, it would be reliable. Some contributors to this forum have said that they have had good service out of them, so maybe this is true, to some extent. All I remember of the things was that National buses operated by Ribble had them- they made loads of clattery noise and black smoke.
splitshift:
I’m puzzled by warranty claims on Ergo cabs? having worked for fleet operators,main dealers&as an operator of them!,at my time with a main dealer the warranty claims were mostly on the 500 range of engines,some of the major fleet operators had 2/3 replacement engines in the same vehicle some even self destructed on road test after a replacement engine had been fitted, belive me it was a nightmare time,I felt sorry for the Leyland field service engineers they were fighting a loosing battle!
Evening all, in one of my barns stands a tandem axle trailer, fabricated in the workshops of the late Ralph Ferry, (Brownhills Commercials), which was designed and built with the sole purpose of carrying two “broken” 500 engines, and returning with two “new” ones, so great was the rate of attrition of that most calamatous design! The trailer was pulled by a Sherpa van, driven I believe by a young Dave Slatcher, who I understand holds some fairly senior Dealership post today. The outfit was fully employed throughout the working week…quality design work eh!!
I agree with previous posts regarding the difficulty of obtaining accurate experiences of the industry from people who were there at the time. Quite often people involved in design or production view their role as “work”, and somehow do not understand individuals wishing to “rake over the long cold ashes”. Again many never really appreciated the actual impact of the product in, or on the market place, and many never understood the market place anyway!!! We can all think of designs that should never have left the drawing board, but they did, got built,and then some poor devil had to work with it!!
Regarding research, a long and labourious slog, and gingerfolds , and anoraks “committee”, would perhaps be a logical way forward. I myself am totally fed up with the constant banality, and inaccuracy of detail that seems to be a ribbon running through contemporary “classic”, or historic commercial vehicle industry journalism. There are obviously no editorial checks and balances, (or perhaps industry experience).
Saviem:
I agree with previous posts regarding the difficulty of obtaining accurate experiences of the industry from people who were there at the time. Quite often people involved in design or production view their role as “work”, and somehow do not understand individuals wishing to “rake over the long cold ashes”. Again many never really appreciated the actual impact of the product in, or on the market place, and many never understood the market place anyway!!! We can all think of designs that should never have left the drawing board, but they did, got built,and then some poor devil had to work with it!!
I can quite understand a reluctance to discuss things which have not gone to plan. We have all worked on things which went wrong, and suffered the “blame finger” swinging in our direction, like a broken compass needle! Big firms can be horrible places to spend the sunny hours of the day, especially ones with a disease, whatever it might be- usually a salesman at the helm, like Leyland Motors!
Saviem:
Regarding research, a long and labourious slog, and gingerfolds , and anoraks “committee”, would perhaps be a logical way forward. I myself am totally fed up with the constant banality, and inaccuracy of detail that seems to be a ribbon running through contemporary “classic”, or historic commercial vehicle industry journalism. There are obviously no editorial checks and balances, (or perhaps industry experience).
Cheerio for now.
If we decided to write a book, the meetings with the interviewees would be fun, if nothing else.
I was fortunate to spend an evening with Garel Rhys and you’re quite right [zb] the man knows his stuff
You beat me to it re: the 500 series
The lack of graduates within the organisation in the pre 70s era did have a significant impact on future designs. The scattering of factories around the country due to Government Policy on Urban Regeneration had an impact too, as a complete part could be comprised of components from many different parts of the country, anyone with any common sense, let alone an engineering background, will tell you that’s a disaster just waiting to happen and happen it did
The biggest impact though, that has to be from the workforce itself, I include designers and engineers in this category too, the upper management should have had the design and engineering sides under closer scrutiny, but because of the Government interference they were too busy trying to stop Hattersley, Castle and Benn from sticking their oar in and the controls that should have been put in place never were.
The production staff were refusing to move with the times (not just within BL, but at suppliers too) and were refusing to let go of the piece work pay structure, they also wanted a common wage across the country, the assembly plants were also overstaffed by around 40%, but under Government pressure, the necessary lay offs could not happen so soon after the devaluation of the Pound. So an assembly line would be working way under capacity with nearly half the workers not having a lot to do, those with tasks saw their colleagues sitting around reading the Mirror or the works of Karl Marx and adopted an indifferent attitude to the tasks they were supposed to be doing, the result was poorly built products
Maybe Donald Stokes was the wrong man for the job, but I reckon he did a bloody good job keeping it all together for as long as he did
According to this maybe the 500 issue had something to do with it being designed by someone who listened the ze Germans,in wanting to make a too small engine,do the work of a decent sized one,and then left this world maybe through the resulting stress.Possibly it was manufactured on Imperial calibtrated machine tools to drawings calling for metric measurements ( having done it it’s not easy ).Which just leaves the issue of the Cheiftain tank motor which as anyone who knows anything about British engineering was another German based disaster ironically according to this also with the involvement of the same British version of Werner von Braun.
While much of the problem seemed to be more about worrying about the Euro market,which we were never going to be able to crack by wiping out the Euro manufacturers with their loyal customer base anyway,instead of just looking after the domestic market and the colonies.Together with a government that should have been bright enough to stay out of the EEC/EU and impose import tarrifs to protect the domestic market.As for the impossibility of Imperial measurements being accepeted in Europe,because their engineers couldn’t handle working with both systems,maybe that says more about the skills of Brits who could,unlike their Euro counterparts.
newmercman:
First we had Bedford Fire engines, now we have Challenger Tanks How exactly is this Ergo related
We had the failure of 500 engines too and there’s a pattern there which might just explain the reasons if you want to look for it in the article which I posted.IE the ‘Challenger’ actually had a British designed and built Rolls V12 whereas the ‘Cheiftain’,which I actually referred to,had a Leyland conversion of a German based motor with the involvement of the same German ‘expert’ as the 500 obviously did. As for your comments that just proves the old saying they pretend to pay us so we pretend to work.If it had been about so called overmanning those workers would never have been hired to start with considering that production was supposed to increase not decrease from previous levels.The bs overmanning issue,as I’ve said,was actually a case of the bean counters wanting more work,from less workers,for less pay in real terms.
As for finding someone who was there working in a truck factory at the time at the level of being high up in the shop floor engineering or drawing office design level simple mathematics says that maybe you should abandon everything you think you know based on Thatcherite dogma and listen to the generations who worked under them because we’re probably all that’s left. Bearing in mind that I was a new starter at the age of 16 in 1975.Therefore it doesn’t take a genius to realise that even someone at the level you’re looking for would have needed to be at least 25 years older than me.Probably more like 30-40 years older which would make them around 80-94 years of age if you just want to go back that far.For 1960’s they’d obviously need to be at least around 10 years older than that.So let’s say around 90-100 + years old.
Carryfast:
We had the failure of 500 engines too and there’s a pattern there which might just explain the reasons if you want to look for it in the article which I posted.IE the ‘Challenger’ actually had a British designed and built Rolls V12 whereas the ‘Cheiftain’,which I actually referred to,had a Leyland conversion of a German based motor with the involvement of the same German ‘expert’ as the 500 obviously did. As for your comments that just proves the old saying they pretend to pay us so we pretend to work.If it had been about so called overmanning those workers would never have been hired to start with considering that production was supposed to increase not decrease from previous levels.The bs overmanning issue,as I’ve said,was actually a case of the bean counters wanting more work,from less workers,for less pay in real terms.
I’m no expert on lorries, let alone tanks, so pardon my mistake
Overmanning was a real issue, the various companies that merged to form Bl had a lot of overlap, they should have streamlined operations to make the most of the available resources, yes jobs would have gone, but maybe if they had we would still have a British owned car and lorry manufacurer and many more jobs would have been saved in the long term but Union led Labour wouldn’t dare, the tail was wagging the dog
Carryfast:
We had the failure of 500 engines too and there’s a pattern there which might just explain the reasons if you want to look for it in the article which I posted.IE the ‘Challenger’ actually had a British designed and built Rolls V12 whereas the ‘Cheiftain’,which I actually referred to,had a Leyland conversion of a German based motor with the involvement of the same German ‘expert’ as the 500 obviously did. As for your comments that just proves the old saying they pretend to pay us so we pretend to work.If it had been about so called overmanning those workers would never have been hired to start with considering that production was supposed to increase not decrease from previous levels.The bs overmanning issue,as I’ve said,was actually a case of the bean counters wanting more work,from less workers,for less pay in real terms.
I’m no expert on lorries, let alone tanks, so pardon my mistake
It probably doesn’t need and expert to know that anyone who’d have said that his ambition was to see ‘Leyland trucks plying the roads of Europe’ ‘using a dodgy designed 8 Litre engine to do the work of the 11 litre one,which DAF eventually developed into the 3600 etc’ ,should have been one of those who needed to be got rid of not the workers. In this case it seems to have been on the advice of Leyland’s German ‘chief engine development engineer’ who’d been formerly employed by BMW on aircraft engine development ( which is how that piece of junk Jumo aircraft diesel got into a British main battle tank costing Leyland loads a money in trying,unsuccessfully,to fix it’s problems ).
No surprise after the inevitable result of also costing Leyland loads a money in wasted development funds on the 500 he then went back to Germany.
The question is why would a German,who’d been working for Hitler’s war effort,have wanted to help Leyland to wipe out the German truck manufacturing industry by taking the domestic market share away from the domestic manufacturers instead of helping his country to get itself back on it’s feet .It would aslo have been interesting to find out who he went back to work for when he returned to Germany after designing the 500 piece of junk and wether the whole issue,concerning the 500,was just a piece of industrial espionage on a massive scale in order to help Germany to win ze peace after losing ze var.
While also proving beyond doubt that the Brits were better engineers than ze Germans ever were.Which is why you’re not speaking German working for slave labour rates now.
Re: Warrenty Claims Ergo cab range: This would refer to the entire componentry range and not the cab in particular. The Leyland Power Plus engines were problematic as were the AEC AV691 engines (overheating problems). The AV760 was a far more reliable unit but most early ERGO Mandators and Mammoth Majors were fitted with AV691s. Turners of Soham had about 20 Ergo Mandators on 1966 ‘D’ registrations all but 4 fitted with AV691s. However they were still buying 15 new Mandators in 1975/76.
The fixed head Leyland 500 series engine. It was conceptually a very advanced design as a medium weight range engine. We tend to get side tracked into discussing premium build high spec, high power lorries on this forum but the bread and butter market for any manufacturer is the high volume “bread and butter” distribution truck market, and especially so in the '60s and '70s. The 500 series was designed for the "bread and butter " market. It suffered from a 35% rejection rate on the assembly line because its design required extremely fine manufacturing tolerances, which could not be achieved consistently with the machinery available at the time. Extremely high unit production costs because of rejection on the assembly line and failures in service leading to massive warrenty claims were unsustainable. However, having driven a Lynx with a non-turbo 500 it was an impressive engine to work with as a driver. Obviously a good one, that engine served at least 7 trouble free years from memory.
gingerfold:
Re: Warrenty Claims Ergo cab range: This would refer to the entire componentry range and not the cab in particular. The Leyland Power Plus engines were problematic as were the AEC AV691 engines (overheating problems). The AV760 was a far more reliable unit but most early ERGO Mandators and Mammoth Majors were fitted with AV691s. Turners of Soham had about 20 Ergo Mandators on 1966 ‘D’ registrations all but 4 fitted with AV691s. However they were still buying 15 new Mandators in 1975/76.
The fixed head Leyland 500 series engine. It was conceptually a very advanced design as a medium weight range engine. We tend to get side tracked into discussing premium build high spec, high power lorries on this forum but the bread and butter market for any manufacturer is the high volume “bread and butter” distribution truck market, and especially so in the '60s and '70s. The 500 series was designed for the "bread and butter " market. It suffered from a 35% rejection rate on the assembly line because its design required extremely fine manufacturing tolerances, which could not be achieved consistently with the machinery available at the time. Extremely high unit production costs because of rejection on the assembly line and failures in service leading to massive warrenty claims were unsustainable. However, having driven a Lynx with a non-turbo 500 it was an impressive engine to work with as a driver. Obviously a good one, that engine served at least 7 trouble free years from memory.
So if the machinery would have been available at the time maybe the engine would have been a success you’re not the first to say they performed well when behaving maybe its another case just like the V8 of been so close but so far
Yes, I think that we all “knock” the British Leyland years but let’s not lose sight of the fact that British Leyland truck division and its constituent companies had some very good engineers in its time and it over reached itself with ambitious engine development projects that it could not bring to satisfactory conclusions for a variety of reasons as outlined previously on this thread.
gingerfold:
…500… It suffered from a 35% rejection rate on the assembly line because its design required extremely fine manufacturing tolerances, which could not be achieved consistently with the machinery available at the time. …
Now we’re at the coal face. Dig a bit deeper and we will find the real source of the problems. Did the designers not incorporate known production tolerances on the drawings? I find that difficult to believe- if the thing was impossible to make, the drawings would never have been released for production. Even if the mistake occurred at that stage, then pre-production runs would have revealed the problems, when components were inspected. Did the production engineers overestimate the capabilities of their processes, then “wing it” through pre-production? Were proper quality plans not in place, or were these ignored by factory managers, in order to get product out of the door? The two latter scenarios still go on, in Britain at least. A disaffected workforce, inflamed by union leaders fomenting an us-and-them mood for the sake of their own moment in the limelight, will not have helped.
Did you read the MK report that our resident guru posted? It said that it was impossible to recut the valve seats, so the cylinder block was a throw-away item at 250,000 miles. I find that hard to believe too.
gingerfold:
…500… It suffered from a 35% rejection rate on the assembly line because its design required extremely fine manufacturing tolerances, which could not be achieved consistently with the machinery available at the time. …
Now we’re at the coal face. Dig a bit deeper and we will find the real source of the problems. Did the designers not incorporate known production tolerances on the drawings? I find that difficult to believe- if the thing was impossible to make, the drawings would never have been released for production. Even if the mistake occurred at that stage, then pre-production runs would have revealed the problems, when components were inspected. Did the production engineers overestimate the capabilities of their processes, then “wing it” through pre-production? Were proper quality plans not in place, or were these ignored by factory managers, in order to get product out of the door? The two latter scenarios still go on, in Britain at least.
The further you go back in the post war years the more likely it is that you’ll have found British engineering standards often being compromised by worn out machine tools that were still being used having been knackered by war output production levels.It’s difficult to understand exactly what the report which I posted is saying in regards to the exact status of all the machinery used in production of the 500 and exactly what is mean’t by ‘extremely fine’ tolerances and the obviously questionable abilities of the ‘machinery available at the time’,at Leyland’s engine manufacturing facilities,to meet them in this case. .
As for the possibility of engineering drawings not having tolerances clearly marked that really doesn’t sound realistic.
However the evidence certainly suggests that the design aims of the 500 certainly were all about producing a small engine stressed to do the work of a much larger one which in itself provides a clue as to the flawed thinking going on at Leyland at high levels certainly not shop floor level.
Which obviously leaves the question as to what would have been the answer when you’ve committed loads of Leyland’s already limited investment budget and production capacity,to a product which was flawed in it’s design aims from the outset.Those being a small overstressed 8.2 litre engine,to cover all Leyland trucks from 16 t - 32 t gross,including for long haul use on the motorways of Europe and UK,and made on machinery which was obviously incapable of turning out the product consistently to the engineering standards required.All of which seems to provide a reason as to why stress might have been a part in Spurrier’s medical condition and why he and Leyland’s management shouldn’t have listened to their German ‘advisor’.
All of which seems to fit in with the flawed idea of also using a cab more suited to the local distribution and refuse collection sector on products intended for the premium long haul sector.At which point we can clearly see the lead which DAF was given and why Leyland was never going to be able to make up the lost ground in product development from at least that point in history.
Whatever the problems I do recall that my mentor Ray Holden ordered a Leyland Lynx tractor unit in late 1968 before any 500 series Leylands had even entered service. Ray was a time-served engineer (not unusual then in small family haulage businesses) and had complete faith in Leyland products. The delivery of the Lynx kept being put back, and back, and back, so obviously there were problems somewhere in the production pipeline. He got fed up of waiting and changed his order to an AEC Mercury tractor unit (NLG 443H) which entered service in August 1969. As mentioned before he did eventually get a Lynx despite all the bad reports about the 500 series engines.
Through the 50s/60s we ran Albion, Bedford and Dodge. Both tipper and flats. The first ergo cabs we had were on an Albion 4 wheel tipper and a couple of months later a 4 wheel flat. The ergo cab was a definite improvement over the LAD but was prone to damage at the lower extremes when on site work. I seem to recall one of the problems with the 400 engines was black smoke. This was an even bigger problem when in the early seventies Leyland fitted a turbo to the 400 series as in the Reiver. In fact the 4/5 Reivers we had were a total disaster, best forgotten about.
The first 500 series engine we had came in a Bison tipper in about 75 and the whole vehicle was a far superior product. We went on to have about 20 Bison’s and the 502 with the Fuller box proved to be an ideal machine for site work. Being on local site work, mileage was not a serious consideration but we would get about 4/5 years out of a 502 engine. As long as the air & fuel filters were kept clean there were very few problems. In fact when they did go wrong it was usually terminal and was easier to get the cab off and put a replacement engine in.
gingerfold:
Whatever the problems I do recall that my mentor Ray Holden ordered a Leyland Lynx tractor unit in late 1968 before any 500 series Leylands had even entered service. Ray was a time-served engineer (not unusual then in small family haulage businesses) and had complete faith in Leyland products. The delivery of the Lynx kept being put back, and back, and back, so obviously there were problems somewhere in the production pipeline. He got fed up of waiting and changed his order to an AEC Mercury tractor unit (NLG 443H) which entered service in August 1969. As mentioned before he did eventually get a Lynx despite all the bad reports about the 500 series engines.
You can imagine the frantic situation as it dawned on the senior designers that the factory was incapable of making the parts. Production managers saying, “You can’t make that to that tolerance on that machine,” the designers saying, “Why did you not say so when we were building the prototypes?” and so on and so on. Did the later 500 series engine have some of the build quality failures fixed, or was it just a case of “Do your best and we’'ll stand the warranty cost”?
tyneside:
Through the 50s/60s we ran Albion, Bedford and Dodge. Both tipper and flats. The first ergo cabs we had were on an Albion 4 wheel tipper and a couple of months later a 4 wheel flat. The ergo cab was a definite improvement over the LAD but was prone to damage at the lower extremes when on site work. I seem to recall one of the problems with the 400 engines was black smoke. This was an even bigger problem when in the early seventies Leyland fitted a turbo to the 400 series as in the Reiver. In fact the 4/5 Reivers we had were a total disaster, best forgotten about.
The first 500 series engine we had came in a Bison tipper in about 75 and the whole vehicle was a far superior product. We went on to have about 20 Bison’s and the 502 with the Fuller box proved to be an ideal machine for site work. Being on local site work, mileage was not a serious consideration but we would get about 4/5 years out of a 502 engine. As long as the air & fuel filters were kept clean there were very few problems. In fact when they did go wrong it was usually terminal and was easier to get the cab off and put a replacement engine in.
This tallies with the claim in the MK essay above, about the expected service life of the cylinder block being 250k miles. Were the engines junked because the fixed head prevented easy reconditioning?
As for your comments that just proves the old saying they pretend to pay us so we pretend to work.If it had been about so called overmanning those workers would never have been hired to start with considering that production was supposed to increase not decrease from previous levels.The bs overmanning issue,as I’ve said,was actually a case of the bean counters wanting more work,from less workers,for less pay in real terms.