ERF E14:400 'Supertruck'

For some reason or other, best known to ERF, their E14:400 appears to have been set up to match the Cummins NTE 400 with the Fuller RTX14609 and RTX146013 ‘boxes, when all the other E-series had Eaton Twinsplitter or the SAMT version of it as standard.

I can find several examples of 6x4 units with the 13sp option and some 4x2 units with the 9sp option. Furthermore, ERF offered the E14:400 with 9sp among their Supertruck package options aimed at owner drivers (see cutting from Patrick Dyer’s book below).

I am trying to piece together more information about this particular ERF offering. Below, I will show some examples below. If you have any, please add them along with any additional info you can supply.

This example was factory-supplied with NTE 400 and RTX14609 box:

Another example of E14:400 but 'box unknown. Someone might have met this on the show circuit and fill us in:

These 6x4s / 6x2s all have E14:400 lumps and 13sp Fullers:
13sp Fuller E14 400s a

E14 400 3ax ERF
E14 400 uprated 440 F13
ERF E14 400 3ax

This one had E14:400 and 13sp Fuller and later acquired a tag-axle:
ERF E14 400 Fuller 13-sp

And this was an E14:400 but I don’t know what transmission it had:
JLC00203-12

Here is what Patrick Dyer had to say in his book ERF A, B, C, CP & E-series on the subject:

I am particularly interested in the 4x2 9-speed examples.

Choosing a Fuller RTX14609 over an Eaton Twinsplitter would definitely have been a lifestyle choice, so there can’t have been that many of them :wink:.

What are Eaton Twinsplitter and SAMT?
I’m thinking the former is like a 13 speed but without the crawler gear.

The Eaton Twinsplitter was a twin-layshaft constant mesh design much along the lines of the Roadranger, except the gear-shift involved the usual H-pattern but with three splitter positions in each corner. So you changed up through 1st, 2nd and 3rd with the stick in first position; then 4th, 5th and 6th with the stick in 2nd position and so on. Most of the changes could be made by feel, without recourse to the clutch. They took some getting used to but once you mastered them, they were superb. The SAMT was an automated version of it.

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Just found an old article about the Paul Whittick machine above. It said 14:400 on the grille, but was in fact a 365 tweeked to 410, so it probably had a Twinsplitter :wink:

Here’s another 400. Wonder what cogs that one has :thinking:

E14 400 but what box

Cheers mate, that twin splitter sounds a bit Spiceresque.

You could be quite creative with the Twinsplitter. Normally when changing down a split (as opposed to a whole stick change) all you had to do was to pre-select the switch down a cog and break the torque by backing off the throttle for a second; but when running heavy or in the mountains I’d often ensure a clean change by selecting down, knocking the stick into neutral giving the throttle a blip and double-declutching back into the same stick position. Sound fussy but it was only a moment’s work. Also, when heavy, you could use a similar technique for changing up in very low gear - known to drivers as ‘bunny hopping’; but in this case you didn’t use the clutch at all and the stick in-and-out was rapido. Drivers who didn’t like the Twinsplitter dubbed it ‘the box of a thousand neutrals’ because careless use of the box could land you in neutral at the drop of a hat.

It was eventually outlawed by the EU drive-by decibel test that simultaneously outlawed the Roadranger. Now we’re out of the EU can we have our favourite gearboxes back please?!


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A few EC14s to sort, me I know nowt about ERF gearboxes.
Oily









Great pics Oily! But all but one of them show EC14s, not E14s :wink:

What about this one Ro in NZ.
Oily

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The thing we’re after is the one with the Fuller box. Standard equipment on ERF E-series was the Eaton Twinsplitter or its automated version, the SAMT. However, a lot E10 fleet motors had 9-sp Fullers in. Fewer E14s had that option, though I can find some E14:320s with them in (both 9-sp and 13-sp). The E14:400 flagship seems to be the peak of this offering, as once the Cummins Celect versions came in (E14:410, 375 etc), Fuller seems to have been more or less ditched.

E14:400 with Fuller RTX14609 was offered with the owner-drivers special package and I wonder how many are out there.

The 9 speed Fuller was the standard box behind the L10-250, the L10-290 got the twinsplitter as standard. When I was in traffic at Northwest Freighters we got 4 E10 250s July 83 C reg very early examples they all had fuller 9 speeds, and they certainly weren’t special orders. They were bought because they were in stock and we needed them quickly.

Thank you for that information, acd1202; that’s most useful. And it makes sense too. I had forgotten that after the E14:250 the newer E10:250 took its place. I do know a lot of E10:290s had Fullers too. The only E10 I drove was a 275 and that had the Fuller 9-sp 'box in it. Transhield had a whole fleet of 275s down-plated to 28 tonnes IIRC. Cheers! :grinning:

EDIT to say: Just discovered that Patrick Dyer confirms your info on pp103 & 114 of ERF A, B, C, CP & E-series :+1:

Three more.
Oily



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Thanks Oily! The 350 is still a bit of a loose canon in my pursuit of these beasts!

EDIT to add: a very high proportion of E14s have NTE 320 lumps with Twinsplitter boxes. It’s specifically the E14s with NTE 400 lumps with Fuller 9sp boxes I’m after :wink:

Hello, 400 Cummins had too much torque for a twinsplit.
I speak from experience after getting my old 350 strato breathed on in Cummins Rainham… are you sure boy ? Asked the chap who run the place. It’ll do the box in. Me being 25 and cleverer than anyone said yes yes I’m sure…… didn’t feel that clever changing the box on an Easter weekend about 4 months later……

Ah, that’ll be why they used the heavy duty RTX 14609 Fuller rather than the RTX 11609 then. I suspect the NTE 400 might have had torque in different places than the NTA 410 and 465 that followed it, because the latter had Twinsplitters.

Higher powered engines tended to come with ZF Synchromesh boxes by the time the EC came in. Though I think this also coincided with the imminent outlawing of Fullers that were too noisy for Euro 3 (IIRC).

EDIT to add that I’ve found a spec sheet that states that the 410 had Twinsplitter and the 465 had 13sp Fuller. Another ERF press release says that the 465 had Twinsplitter so those conflict :joy:. It’s pretty academic anyway, as I understand that ERF only sold two 465s because the Cummins Celect was about to be launched :roll_eyes:

EDIT 2: Also, TRUCK magazine tested the 465 and that did have a Twinsplitter - and partly to answer your comment about the torque loads on Twinsplitters, this was fitted with the heavy duty version - the TSO 15612 (15 being the figure denoting strength of box).

I think it was only for a relatively short period a couple of years maybe after introduction when the Twinsplitter only came in one flavour at 1150lbft max rating. When the Strato was introduced it was offered from day one with NTE400 and the 1450lbft version of the TSO.

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