newmercman:
The Sed Ak 400 was a rare beast with anything bigger than an E290 or RR290, so once again you are comparing apples to oranges.
The TL12 engined Marathon soundly beat the F10 in every road test they had.
The above statements are facts, not its, buts or maybes.
It’s a ‘fact’ that the 400 was available and ‘could’ have been specced by customers with a 300 hp + Rolls or ■■■■■■■ option instead of a Marathon with a TL12 in it,‘if’ the customers had wanted it,which shows that the problems for the UK manufacturers,in competing with the foreign competition,had more to do with their customers than their workers.Especially when those customers were often speccing the SA with the old naturally aspirated Gardner instead.
kr79:
Even if you move in to the 80s and 90s erf and foden etc went for the ■■■■■■■ fuller rockwell driveline.
This driveline with the 10 litre engine was probaly more reliable and fuel efficent than any scania volvo etc in that class and the 14 litre was more than a match for a v8 scanis but scania and volvo done a better all round product and tge cab looked more macho which is how geoffrey seems to measure quality
No I just measure quality in the same way as the customers ‘eventually’ did.In that it’s all about making a comfortable cab with plenty of room and speccing a decent engine which provides at least 10 hp per tonne.In which case as I’ve said it’s ironic that anyone would have chosen a TL12 powered Marathon instead of a 300 + hp Rolls or ■■■■■■■ powered SA 400.
Cargo re your post 23/05/13, the TL11 was a rework of the 690 but much improved my TL11 Bisons were good motors & never missed a beat!I came across 690’s but never in a UK built lorry ,Aveling Barford motor graders, Houchin aircraft starter units(they were overfueled to get the required power)& Matbro loading shovels(I was told they invented/held the patent on artictulated loading shovels but sold the rights to Cat) no doubt C/F will put me right on this as they were made not a million miles from Leatherhead at Horley in Surrey
kr79:
Even if you move in to the 80s and 90s erf and foden etc went for the ■■■■■■■ fuller rockwell driveline.
This driveline with the 10 litre engine was probaly more reliable and fuel efficent than any scania volvo etc in that class and the 14 litre was more than a match for a v8 scanis but scania and volvo done a better all round product and tge cab looked more macho which is how geoffrey seems to measure quality
No I just measure quality in the same way as the customers ‘eventually’ did.In that it’s all about making a comfortable cab with plenty of room and speccing a decent engine which provides at least 10 hp per tonne.In which case as I’ve said it’s ironic that anyone would have chosen a TL12 powered Marathon instead of a 300 + hp Rolls or ■■■■■■■ powered SA 400.
Why is it that when you compare other engines with the TL12 you always compare more powerful ones i.e a 300 bhp ■■■■■■■ ,a F12 , a 305 RR why not compare like for like .Why do you think every engine as to be of high horse power,what you seem to forget is that when the marathon was launched it was putting out 273 bhp whereas the average for that time was nearer 220bhp and maybe even less .You make yourself sound like a small child in a playground with some of your comments about high bhp engined motors of a certain make being better than others of lesser power .People keep trying to educate you on the way transport operations work but nothing lands its all about big engines and high power .Just how long did you work on a shop floor and how long were you a driver and have you ever done haulage or worked in an old fashioned transport operation ?If you did you wouldn`t be making the comments that you do .
kr79:
Even if you move in to the 80s and 90s erf and foden etc went for the ■■■■■■■ fuller rockwell driveline.
This driveline with the 10 litre engine was probaly more reliable and fuel efficent than any scania volvo etc in that class and the 14 litre was more than a match for a v8 scanis but scania and volvo done a better all round product and tge cab looked more macho which is how geoffrey seems to measure quality
No I just measure quality in the same way as the customers ‘eventually’ did.In that it’s all about making a comfortable cab with plenty of room and speccing a decent engine which provides at least 10 hp per tonne.In which case as I’ve said it’s ironic that anyone would have chosen a TL12 powered Marathon instead of a 300 + hp Rolls or ■■■■■■■ powered SA 400.
Why is it that when you compare other engines with the TL12 you always compare more powerful ones i.e a 300 bhp ■■■■■■■ ,a F12 , a 305 RR why not compare like for like .Why do you think every engine as to be of high horse power,what you seem to forget is that when the marathon was launched it was putting out 273 bhp whereas the average for that time was nearer 220bhp and maybe even less .You make yourself sound like a small child in a playground with some of your comments about high bhp engined motors of a certain make being better than others of lesser power .People keep trying to educate you on the way transport operations work but nothing lands its all about big engines and high power .Just how long did you work on a shop floor and how long were you a driver and have you ever done haulage or worked in an old fashioned transport operation ?If you did you wouldn`t be making the comments that you do .
Comparing the TL12 powered Marathon and T45 with the Rolls 305 and the Volvo F12 is a case of comparing like with like.As I’ve said it’s not an issue of launch dates it’s an issue of keeping ahead of the competition throughout the production life of the product from the point of view of the British manufacturers like Leyland Group etc.It’s not unreasonable to say that an output of around 10 hp per tonne was required to keep competitive during the production life of the TL12 both during the production life of the Marathon and the T45.
To anyone who was there in the industry at the time ( and since ) my comments,concerning staying ahead in the horsepower race ( at least up to the 10 hp per tonne point ) being an essential factor in maintaining competitiveness,would be entirely understandable,from an engineering point of view and from an efficient haulage operation point of view.Just as building a cab that was as least as good,if not better,as the F10/12 amongst other foreign competitors in terms of room etc.
As history proves the T45,let alone the Marathon,wasn’t good enough in that regard and nor was the TL12.If you think that it’s childish to point out those facts that’s your choice.However if you think that an efficient transport operation can ‘work’ using engines with less than 10 hp per tonne or that the Marathon cab was a competitive design during it’s production life it’s obviously not me who needs to be educated.
Jaguar’s problems came from unreliability and shoddy assembly. American Jag owners (Jaguar’s largest market) jokingly said they bought two to ensure that one actually worked.
Rover were hindered by Government policy refusing to let them expand. Then shoddy workmanship added a few more nails to the coffin lid.
Triumph, now you’re kidding me, this was an absolute example of militancy. The Speke plant was in trouble, so the saving grace that was to be the TR7 was very important, so important that the idiots went on strike delaying its launch in the USA (again the largest market) and when they did actually bother working they threw the cars together so badly that of the 35 launch cars shipped to the USA, only 17 were usuable, and that was after cannibalising the unusable 18 that remained.
A car built using the best ideas from JRT would’ve been a true world beater, of that I have no doubt, but instead of working together, they fought each other to the death.
The best ergo is a difficult one as it all depended on what work you were doing with them. For my old man the Bison 2 was a superb truck and he had a few over the years (all TL11s), apart from the odd turbo failure they were reliable. I do remember the last one he had smoked like a Gardner when it was cold though!. He had 3 tippers and one skip wagon over the years and none of them were young when he got them but they all made money and were easy to repair. So is there such a thing a bad truck or is it more a case of a bad specification truck being ordered for its intended use?. An example of this is my dad had an 8 wheel FL7 tarmac tipper 245ish hp, 8 speed box but 20 tonne+ payload, it was never going to set land speed records but we don’t have many big hills in east anglia so she coped well, but the same truck in somewhere like Cornwall would of been a bad move.
newmercman:
Jaguar’s problems came from unreliability and shoddy assembly. American Jag owners (Jaguar’s largest market) jokingly said they bought two to ensure that one actually worked.
Rover were hindered by Government policy refusing to let them expand. Then shoddy workmanship added a few more nails to the coffin lid.
Triumph, now you’re kidding me, this was an absolute example of militancy. The Speke plant was in trouble, so the saving grace that was to be the TR7 was very important, so important that the idiots went on strike delaying its launch in the USA (again the largest market) and when they did actually bother working they threw the cars together so badly that of the 35 launch cars shipped to the USA, only 17 were usuable, and that was after cannibalising the unusable 18 that remained.
A car built using the best ideas from JRT would’ve been a true world beater, of that I have no doubt, but instead of working together, they fought each other to the death.
Firstly there’s been plenty of happy Jaguar owners over the years who have actually benefitted from the battles which took place between Leyland’s management and Jaguar’s management to keep Jaguar totally independent of it’s two partners in the JRT division of Leyland.Which as I’ve said is why they didn’t end up carrying out the suicidal Leyland idea of putting the Rover V8 in the XJ saloon for example.
As for build quality it’s ironic that you can often see plenty of Leyland built Jaguars winning concourse competitions to date while the so called ‘better’ German opposition ( like that old BMW E3 for example ) have survived in nothing like the numbers having ended up in the scrap yard years ago.Although nothing changes in that one of the best modifications that can be made to the Jag is to dump the bonkers Lucas ignition system which was a lash up based on typically British underinvestment trying to satisfy a non existent problem in the form of emmissions bs.In the case of mine it’s now distributorless with ECU ignition control with no emmisions compromises using a crank sensor and therefore starts all the time every time.While bonnet louvres and a decent aluminium radiator and twin electric fans keep it cool enough in the heat of an Italian summer probably unlike an ERGO. All of which is a shop floor level fix to problems caused by Leyland’s bean counters and bs US policies which were all about trying to put decent sized engined cars off US roads during the 1970’s and which didn’t affect just British imports.
As for the TR7 it was anything but ‘important’ more like a pointless retrograde product compared to the TR6 although it was improved,just like the saloon range would have been,by fitment of the Rover V8 instead of the gutless small 4 cylinder motor that Leyland’s bean counters ordered to be fitted to the thing originally.Although even then it made absolutely no sense at all v the idea of a Rover V8 powered Stag and concentrating production capacity on that instead.As for union unrest at Speke like most other disputes the workforce weren’t striking for the fun of it.In fact the dispute wasn’t much different to the one which the ex pats on here are often moaning about concerning management removal of a guaranteed hourly rate ( Mutuality agreement as it was known in this case ).Although it’s arguable wether production of Triumphs should ever have been removed from Canley with it’s loyal West Midlands workforce anyway as proved by the eventual return of TR7 production there.
That’s right mate, depends on the terrain you’re working in.
The old Leyland box combined with no engine brake meant you had to wait a long time between cogs for that engine to die down.
In hilly city stuff, you were stopped before the engine had dropped enough rpm to grab the next cog, could only get going by using the crawler gear as a split box.
But taken out in flat terrain, you can grab gears with very low rpm and just let the torque do the job.
Our work was all highway, pretty heavy loads for Beavers and always at high speed.
Those big old reduction hubs were great for slogging heavy slow stuff but they got dreadfully hot at highway speeds all day.
Same for the diffs and gearboxes, anti foaming agent needed to keep the oil in.
A local contractor had a turbo 680 in a twin row cane harvester. No cooling problems since as a stationary engine it ran a conventional fan/fanbelts, not the crankshaft mounted thing.
Would have also been de-rated compared to a highway application so it coped quite well.
dazteahan:
The best ergo is a difficult one as it all depended on what work you were doing with them. For my old man the Bison 2 was a superb truck and he had a few over the years (all TL11s), apart from the odd turbo failure they were reliable. I do remember the last one he had smoked like a Gardner when it was cold though!. He had 3 tippers and one skip wagon over the years and none of them were young when he got them but they all made money and were easy to repair. So is there such a thing a bad truck or is it more a case of a bad specification truck being ordered for its intended use?. An example of this is my dad had an 8 wheel FL7 tarmac tipper 245ish hp, 8 speed box but 20 tonne+ payload, it was never going to set land speed records but we don’t have many big hills in east anglia so she coped well, but the same truck in somewhere like Cornwall would of been a bad move.
1975 The National Enterprise Board “bought” a 95% shareholding in British Leyland. The remaining 5% was retained by City investors. Since 1970 British Leyland’s world-wide sales had fallen from 190,000 commercial vehicles of all types to 165,000 commercial vehicles of all types
Carryfast i admire your determination but the build quality of 70s and early 80s jags was not a patch on the likes of mercedes.
Yes more survive then mercs of that period but thats down to the affection of the marque and thosr that do susurvive have probaly all been restored with lots of care.
I`ve just recieved the latest AEC Gazette and inside is an article on the 700 headless engine which was a top secret design with only 1 engine ever being built.Dr Mueller apparently discussed the possibilities of a headless engine with Sir Henry Spurrier but then left the company in 1959 .The reason that the 700 was dropped and then the 500 built was that the engine was too tall which made it unsuitable for normal production vehicles hence the scaled down 500 .The engine was designed at the Research and development department at the Spurrier works .A Norman Tattersall who was a chief engine designer at Leyland was in charge of this project
kr79:
Carryfast i admire your determination but the build quality of 70s and early 80s jags was not a patch on the likes of mercedes.
Yes more survive then mercs of that period but thats down to the affection of the marque and thosr that do susurvive have probaly all been restored with lots of care.
Firstly you need to take into account the price difference when comparing the Jag with a Merc or a BMW and what you were actually getting for the money in the case of the Jag.I’ll post just a representative comparison from 1974 as an example.The XJ12 was priced at £5270 while the Merc 450 was priced at £8,811 and the BMW 3.0 Si was £5301.Bearing in mind that the BMW 3.0 Si which I bought off of it’s unhappy first owner for around £900 in the early 1980’s was a 1975 reg with 57,000 miles on it’s clock. Whereas the equivalent XJ12 would have lost nowhere near that amount.
Probably because of the fact that with the Jag you were getting a decent V12 engine,rack and pinion steering,and wishbone suspension all round as opposed to a 3.0 Litre 6 cylinder motor,1950’s type Ford steering box and McPerson strut front suspension,and Triumph type semi trailing arm rear suspenion amongst other ‘issues’ like a body which rusted as bad as any FIAT.While the Merc wasn’t a lot different it was just that the extra £3,500 ,over the cost of the BMW,bought a 4.5 Litre V8 which was a lot of money to pay for an extra 1.5 litres and 2 extra cylinders over the BMW let alone the 4 fewer cylinders and almost 1 litre less than the Jag.In fact for the price of the 4.5 litre Merc you could have bought the XJ12 ‘and’ a Triumph 2.5 and still had change.Or even better modify the Jag with a manual box and up to a 7 litre engine upgrade.
Which is why very few of those old E3’s or 1970’s Mercs survive unlike the old XJ simply because when all the political bs,concerning so called ‘better’ German products,was stripped away,what you were basically left with was an over priced,overrated,expensive to maintain, poor value for money heap by comparison with it’s Leyland competition.While the German car buyers often shot themselves in the foot by listening to all the bs concerning militant British workers and then rushed out and paid over the odds to subsidise the much higher wages of German workers who therefore didn’t need to strike. I just hope that the seller of that BMW that I bought for £900 was one of them.
The fact is since Thatcher’s ideology won out history has been taught from the point of view of the victor.
ramone:
I`ve just recieved the latest AEC Gazette and inside is an article on the 700 headless engine which was a top secret design with only 1 engine ever being built.Dr Mueller apparently discussed the possibilities of a headless engine with Sir Henry Spurrier but then left the company in 1959 .The reason that the 700 was dropped and then the 500 built was that the engine was too tall which made it unsuitable for normal production vehicles hence the scaled down 500 .The engine was designed at the Research and development department at the Spurrier works .A Norman Tattersall who was a chief engine designer at Leyland was in charge of this project
According to the Knowles report the Leyland 500 engine size ( as opposed to the 700 AEC ) seems to have been set from the outset by Spurrier ( obviously under the advice of Mueller ).While the comments stating that, ''Spurrier’s ‘ambition’ was to see Leyland express trucks plying the ‘autobahns’ of ‘peacetime Germany’ using an engine of 8 litres to do the work of an 11 litre + engine seem to confirm that and are obviously more than just a coincidence and not something just dreamt up by Knowles.
ramone:
I`ve just recieved the latest AEC Gazette and inside is an article on the 700 headless engine which was a top secret design with only 1 engine ever being built.Dr Mueller apparently discussed the possibilities of a headless engine with Sir Henry Spurrier but then left the company in 1959 .The reason that the 700 was dropped and then the 500 built was that the engine was too tall which made it unsuitable for normal production vehicles hence the scaled down 500 .The engine was designed at the Research and development department at the Spurrier works .A Norman Tattersall who was a chief engine designer at Leyland was in charge of this project
According to the Knowles report the Leyland 500 engine size ( as opposed to the 700 AEC ) seems to have been set from the outset by Spurrier ( obviously under the advice of Mueller ).While the comments stating that, ''Spurrier’s ‘ambition’ was to see Leyland express trucks plying the ‘autobahns’ of ‘peacetime Germany’ using an engine of 8 litres to do the work of an 11 litre + engine seem to confirm that and are obviously more than just a coincidence and not something just dreamt up by Knowles.
Apparently the engine was nothing to do with AEC ,it was Spurriers baby he died of a brain tumour in 1964 ,the cost of the new tooling and factory in Leyland Lancs was in todays money £100 million ,and like i`ve earlier stated the reason for the downsizing was that the original 700 was too tall for normal production lorries ,just buy a copy of the latest AEC Gazette its all in there
Ok geoffrey your right jags and triumphs were the best cars on the road and were built like they were carved from granite and never broke down.
It was a conspiracy by thatcher the eec and the chinese to make out that if you could get one built inbetween strikes the doors would fall off and the electrics only worked three days a week
ramone:
I`ve just recieved the latest AEC Gazette and inside is an article on the 700 headless engine which was a top secret design with only 1 engine ever being built.Dr Mueller apparently discussed the possibilities of a headless engine with Sir Henry Spurrier but then left the company in 1959 .The reason that the 700 was dropped and then the 500 built was that the engine was too tall which made it unsuitable for normal production vehicles hence the scaled down 500 .The engine was designed at the Research and development department at the Spurrier works .A Norman Tattersall who was a chief engine designer at Leyland was in charge of this project
According to the Knowles report the Leyland 500 engine size ( as opposed to the 700 AEC ) seems to have been set from the outset by Spurrier ( obviously under the advice of Mueller ).While the comments stating that, ''Spurrier’s ‘ambition’ was to see Leyland express trucks plying the ‘autobahns’ of ‘peacetime Germany’ using an engine of 8 litres to do the work of an 11 litre + engine seem to confirm that and are obviously more than just a coincidence and not something just dreamt up by Knowles.
Apparently the engine was nothing to do with AEC ,it was Spurriers baby he died of a brain tumour in 1964 ,the cost of the new tooling and factory in Leyland Lancs was in todays money £100 million ,and like i`ve earlier stated the reason for the downsizing was that the original 700 was too tall for normal production lorries ,just buy a copy of the latest AEC Gazette its all in there
It’s that issue ‘of downsizing of the 700’ which seems to be an erroneous idea of what took place at the outset of the 500 design ‘if’ VALKYRIES’ account of the origins of the 700 being Dr Fogg’s idea are correct.Which seems logical to me because there’s no way that a 700 engine can possibly be ‘downscaled’ it would have to be a totally different engine from the outset.The evidence and logic seem to confirm that the Leyland 500 design was in the pipeline first and the 700 was then thought of later by AEC.It’s just that both designs coincidentally shared the fixed head idea to circumvent the head to block joint issues in the case of using high forced induction boost levels.The Knowles report seems to be specific in Spurrier’s reasoning in the case of using the 500 engine size which seemed to be first and foremost a case of ‘making an 8 litre motor do the work of an 11 litre + one’.
Maybe possibly the idea concerning the ERGO cab being a close fit for the larger engine options was in mind at that point .It’s my bet that the ERGO’s design flaws and engine cooking abilities and the fact that the 500 was never going to be up to the job intended of it can probably be traced back to the involvement of Mueller advising Spurrier in those early years when they were first thought of before their production.Which would explain why Leyland ended up behind it’s competition,such as Mercedes in the case of the LP, from that point on.In large part because of all of the,already limited,development budget which had been thrown away on the ERGO cab and 500 engine.Instead of Leyland concentrating it’s efforts on projects like the 3 VTG cab and using the 700 fixed head design as a springboard to eventually making the TL12 competitive in the market assuming either had the potential as opposed to just outsourcing ■■■■■■■ and Rolls options instead.
As someone said as for Mueller it was probably a case of mission accomplished.
ramone:
I`ve just recieved the latest AEC Gazette and inside is an article on the 700 headless engine which was a top secret design with only 1 engine ever being built.Dr Mueller apparently discussed the possibilities of a headless engine with Sir Henry Spurrier but then left the company in 1959 .The reason that the 700 was dropped and then the 500 built was that the engine was too tall which made it unsuitable for normal production vehicles hence the scaled down 500 .The engine was designed at the Research and development department at the Spurrier works .A Norman Tattersall who was a chief engine designer at Leyland was in charge of this project
According to the Knowles report the Leyland 500 engine size ( as opposed to the 700 AEC ) seems to have been set from the outset by Spurrier ( obviously under the advice of Mueller ).While the comments stating that, ''Spurrier’s ‘ambition’ was to see Leyland express trucks plying the ‘autobahns’ of ‘peacetime Germany’ using an engine of 8 litres to do the work of an 11 litre + engine seem to confirm that and are obviously more than just a coincidence and not something just dreamt up by Knowles.
Apparently the engine was nothing to do with AEC ,it was Spurriers baby he died of a brain tumour in 1964 ,the cost of the new tooling and factory in Leyland Lancs was in todays money £100 million ,and like i`ve earlier stated the reason for the downsizing was that the original 700 was too tall for normal production lorries ,just buy a copy of the latest AEC Gazette its all in there
It’s that issue ‘of downsizing of the 700’ which seems to be an erroneous idea of what took place at the outset of the 500 design ‘if’ VALKYRIES’ account of the origins of the 700 being Dr Fogg’s idea are correct.Which seems logical to me because there’s no way that a 700 engine can possibly be ‘downscaled’ it would have to be a totally different engine from the outset.The evidence and logic seem to confirm that the Leyland 500 design was in the pipeline first and the 700 was then thought of later by AEC.It’s just that both designs coincidentally shared the fixed head idea to circumvent the head to block joint issues in the case of using high forced induction boost levels.The Knowles report seems to be specific in Spurrier’s reasoning in the case of using the 500 engine size which seemed to be first and foremost a case of ‘making an 8 litre motor do the work of an 11 litre + one’.
Maybe possibly the idea concerning the ERGO cab being a close fit for the larger engine options was in mind at that point .It’s my bet that the ERGO’s design flaws and engine cooking abilities and the fact that the 500 was never going to be up to the job intended of it can probably be traced back to the involvement of Mueller advising Spurrier in those early years when they were first thought of before their production.Which would explain why Leyland ended up behind it’s competition,such as Mercedes in the case of the LP, from that point on.In large part because of all of the,already limited,development budget which had been thrown away on the ERGO cab and 500 engine.Instead of Leyland concentrating it’s efforts on projects like the 3 VTG cab and using the 700 fixed head design as a springboard to eventually making the TL12 competitive in the market assuming either had the potential as opposed to just outsourcing ■■■■■■■ and Rolls options instead.
As someone said as for Mueller it was probably a case of mission accomplished.
Quote from the gazette ,Dr Mueller left Leyland in 59 when Sir Henry was looking for more power from diesel engines .Circumstantial evidence makes it clear that he discussed this subject with Dr Mueller and he decided to eliminate the cylinder head gasket in the 0.680 engine enabling it to be highly turbocharged to 300 bhp plus horsepower.The engine wasmost probably based on the 680 components which were laid out in the Research and Development Dept at Spurrier Works and a set of castings were drafted to accomodate them.The result was called the 700 engine,of which only 1 was built and secrecy was maintained over the engine and all its drawings.Only 1 drawing was sent in a misguided routine manner to Chorley (service) and was promptly recalled to secrecy.Placing the 680 camshaft above the tappets increased the overall height of the engine especially at the rear where a large spur gear was mounted for the camshaft drive.Unfortunately this made the engine too tall for normal production vehicles except for underfloor engined coach chassis and Super Beaver and Super Hippo export truck chassis with a high and capacious bonnet.The 700 engine was therefore deemed impracticable for volume production and therefore the fixed head principle was retained but the application was scaled down to an engine of 500 cubic inchesdisplacement . Theres a few pages of this explaining the reasoning behind the fixed head and also the need to switch to metric
ramone:
I`ve just recieved the latest AEC Gazette and inside is an article on the 700 headless engine which was a top secret design with only 1 engine ever being built.Dr Mueller apparently discussed the possibilities of a headless engine with Sir Henry Spurrier but then left the company in 1959 .The reason that the 700 was dropped and then the 500 built was that the engine was too tall which made it unsuitable for normal production vehicles hence the scaled down 500 .The engine was designed at the Research and development department at the Spurrier works .A Norman Tattersall who was a chief engine designer at Leyland was in charge of this project
According to the Knowles report the Leyland 500 engine size ( as opposed to the 700 AEC ) seems to have been set from the outset by Spurrier ( obviously under the advice of Mueller ).While the comments stating that, ''Spurrier’s ‘ambition’ was to see Leyland express trucks plying the ‘autobahns’ of ‘peacetime Germany’ using an engine of 8 litres to do the work of an 11 litre + engine seem to confirm that and are obviously more than just a coincidence and not something just dreamt up by Knowles.
Apparently the engine was nothing to do with AEC ,it was Spurriers baby he died of a brain tumour in 1964 ,the cost of the new tooling and factory in Leyland Lancs was in todays money £100 million ,and like i`ve earlier stated the reason for the downsizing was that the original 700 was too tall for normal production lorries ,just buy a copy of the latest AEC Gazette its all in there
It’s that issue ‘of downsizing of the 700’ which seems to be an erroneous idea of what took place at the outset of the 500 design ‘if’ VALKYRIES’ account of the origins of the 700 being Dr Fogg’s idea are correct.Which seems logical to me because there’s no way that a 700 engine can possibly be ‘downscaled’ it would have to be a totally different engine from the outset.The evidence and logic seem to confirm that the Leyland 500 design was in the pipeline first and the 700 was then thought of later by AEC.It’s just that both designs coincidentally shared the fixed head idea to circumvent the head to block joint issues in the case of using high forced induction boost levels.The Knowles report seems to be specific in Spurrier’s reasoning in the case of using the 500 engine size which seemed to be first and foremost a case of ‘making an 8 litre motor do the work of an 11 litre + one’.
Maybe possibly the idea concerning the ERGO cab being a close fit for the larger engine options was in mind at that point .It’s my bet that the ERGO’s design flaws and engine cooking abilities and the fact that the 500 was never going to be up to the job intended of it can probably be traced back to the involvement of Mueller advising Spurrier in those early years when they were first thought of before their production.Which would explain why Leyland ended up behind it’s competition,such as Mercedes in the case of the LP, from that point on.In large part because of all of the,already limited,development budget which had been thrown away on the ERGO cab and 500 engine.Instead of Leyland concentrating it’s efforts on projects like the 3 VTG cab and using the 700 fixed head design as a springboard to eventually making the TL12 competitive in the market assuming either had the potential as opposed to just outsourcing ■■■■■■■ and Rolls options instead.
As someone said as for Mueller it was probably a case of mission accomplished.
Quote from the gazette ,Dr Mueller left Leyland in 59 when Sir Henry was looking for more power from diesel engines .Circumstantial evidence makes it clear that he discussed this subject with Dr Mueller and he decided to eliminate the cylinder head gasket in the 0.680 engine enabling it to be highly turbocharged to 300 bhp plus horsepower.The engine wasmost probably based on the 680 components which were laid out in the Research and Development Dept at Spurrier Works and a set of castings were drafted to accomodate them.The result was called the 700 engine,of which only 1 was built and secrecy was maintained over the engine and all its drawings.Only 1 drawing was sent in a misguided routine manner to Chorley (service) and was promptly recalled to secrecy.Placing the 680 camshaft above the tappets increased the overall height of the engine especially at the rear where a large spur gear was mounted for the camshaft drive.Unfortunately this made the engine too tall for normal production vehicles except for underfloor engined coach chassis and Super Beaver and Super Hippo export truck chassis with a high and capacious bonnet.The 700 engine was therefore deemed impracticable for volume production and therefore the fixed head principle was retained but the application was scaled down to an engine of 500 cubic inchesdisplacement . Theres a few pages of this explaining the reasoning behind the fixed head and also the need to switch to metric
There can be only two possible scenarios concerning how the 500 engine came into being.If the Knowles report is correct then that scenario can’t be.However ‘if’ the above story is correct it would be that the fixed head started out as the 700 engine.In which case the content of the Knowles report would be a total fabrication which is a bit difficult to believe.‘But’.It would also suggest that instead of going back to the drawing board and designing a totally different smaller capacity 500 engine,which is what it would have taken to have done the job properly,what they actually did was just scale down all the componentry and then expect the thing to work with all the stresses equalling themselves out proportionally in line with the downscaled components .
That’s in addition to the increase in overall stress levels considering the type of engine speeds the thing would need to run at to provide anywhere near the type of output required to meet it’s design aims.All of which might possibly explain accounts of ‘catastrophic failures caused by split block castings’ etc etc .
IE did they in fact make an 8.2 litre engine to do the work of an 11 litre +,with all the implications which that would meant in relation to engine speeds,‘but’ using the same bore stroke ‘ratio’ as the 700 together with just reducing the measurements of it’s components pro rata with the reduction in overall capacity,bearing in mind that the original 700 design would have been running at much lower engine speeds to get similar specific outputs.
The comparative bore/stroke measurements of the 680,as opposed to the 500,suggest that wasn’t the case with the 500 being a less undersquare,if not square,design than the 680 was,as expected of an engine designed to operate at higher engine speeds.
Which seems to add more weight to the Knowles documented scenario of the 500 being specced by Spurrier and Mueller as a 500 engine from it’s outset and therefore having no connection whatsoever with the Dr Fogg designed 700 other than both coincidentally using the fixed head idea to circumvent the obvious issues concerning high forced induction boost pressures.Therefore it would be interesting to find out what the gazzette was referring to in regards to the specifics concerning the so called ‘downscaling’ of the 700 engine design and the exact timeline concerning the secret 700 prototype as opposed to the 500’s development .
All the evidence seems to show that it was a matter of backing the wrong choice between two possible engine designs and I’m betting all the ‘secrecy’ and misinformation surrounding the 700 happened ‘after’ that wrong choice had been made by the bean counters together with the ERGO cab and had inevitably proved to be the wrong one in both cases.
I remember reading years ago that the fixed head engine was reduced in size during the design to bring the weight under 1 ton. Dont know if theres any truth in it though.
Also that there was a high rejection rate on the production line but how many also slipped through the net.
So it could be poor tooling and casting that didnt help as it seems by all acounts you got one that was either super reliable or more likely one that ■■■■ it self on s regular basis.
All of which is a shop floor level fix to problems caused by Leyland’s bean counters and bs US policies which were all about trying to put decent sized engined cars off US roads during the 1970’s and which didn’t affect just British imports.
I just hope that the seller of that BMW that I bought for £900 was one of them. 
.It’s my bet that the ERGO’s design flaws and engine cooking abilities and the fact that the 500 was never going to be up to the job intended of it can probably be traced back to the involvement of Mueller advising Spurrier in those early years when they were first thought of before their production.Which would explain why Leyland ended up behind it’s competition,such as Mercedes in the case of the LP, 