Solly:
OK gents. As the thread is in danger of descending into a personal slanging match maybe this PhD thesis will resolve some of the arguments, dispel many of the myths surrounding the industrial relationships that were propounded as to the demise of L Gardner by a certain Prime Minister and her MSM mouthpieces at the time and offer a more truthful insight into what really happened to L Gardner & Sons of Patricroft.
It is lengthy, but if patient, well worth reading by those who are interested in truthful research.
Hello Solly.The above University of Bolton Gardner Engines 1955-1986 Article link/Website has got problems:-
It’s slow,it freezes,and now,when you try to link to this Website,this message keeps coming up:-
HTTP Error 504: Gateway Timeout
The server, while acting as a gateway or proxy, did not receive a timely response from the upstream server it accessed in attempting to complete the request.
So it looks as though Bolton University’s Website has got computer problems…but I
will give it another try.
I’ve been able to download it fine, just haven’t got the time to read it all now. For someone who has learnt a lot about the Gardner Company and the demise of what was once seen as a premier UK engineering company I think the thesis will take some absorbing.
newmercman:
Carryfast, you keep extolling the virtues of the American lorries and their engines, along with the rest of your tripe
So, answer four questions, with a simple yes or no
When Gardner Engined Lorries (and others without stratospheric power to weight ratios) were charged with hauling goods in our little backward thinking Island, were people starving because food was rotting in fields/warehouses because the slow lorries couldn’t do the job, were factories shutting down because the slow lorries could get raw materials in and finished product out fast enough
When the slow Gardners and suchlike were finally forced off the roads by the foriegn lorries, did British Industry and the British people immediately benefit from the faster journey times offered in comparison to the Gardners
If the hauliers of the 60s and 70s had shared your remarkable insight (using your sarcasm there [ZB]) and told the British Lorry Builders that they wanted 8v92s and NTC350s instead of Gardners, do you think it would have made the slightest difference to the economy of GB
Finally, if the workers at BL and other State Owned Businesses were paid more money, instead of the money going to ze Germans, do you think they would have still gone on strike for ridiculous reasons like having Custard Creams instead of Garibaldis with their morning cuppa or put out such shoddy workmanship
For the record, my own answers to the above questions are No, No, No and Yes
There’s no point in me answering any of those questions because thay are irrelevant although having worked in a successful British truck manufacturing factory building decent products sold without complaint around the world during the 1970’s the final question just requires answering with the contempt it deserves.
My ‘relevant’ question is.
Do you think that a decent sized turbocharged engine that provides at least 10-12 hp per tonne gross weight on the roads a they stood here post 1960 to date will be more productive and fuel efficient than a naturally aspirated boat anchor which provides a lot less.If the answer is no then you’ll need to re write truck engine development history to date including the (eventual) buying habits of financially expert operators like Bewick.
The question wasn’t one of which is the right option between those two but just a question of how long it took the backward Brits to get to the right answer compared to their foreign counterparts.
Really Over the last 30 odd pages you’ve been harping on about how British Hauliers should have been getting higher horsepower lorries, so those questions are very relevant
The fact is, that you cannot honestly say yes to any of the first three questions and you cannot say no to the last one, a small matter of history would make you a liar if you did try
The way I see it is that we’ve got some agreement across the topic that Gardner was behind in the horsepower race and had production target issues .
It’s my theory that the reasons for that,especially in Gardner’s case,was a combination of the typical issues related to investment which affected every sector of the post war British manufacturing industry,an undervalued highly skilled workforce resulting in retention and recruitment issues and industrial unrest,and a backward customer base resulting in a matching level of backward development (in view of the fact that product development is customer demand driven ) assuming the money had even been there and Gardner had a product which was capable and had the potential and capacity to accept the level of development required.
As I’ve said there was no need to answer the first questions because they are irrelevant and answered by the above.
The last question is the subject of the small matter of history which itself has been written by the victors in the industrial strife of the British manufacturing industry.The inconvenient issue for those liars is the fact that some of us,who were there at the time,are still around to give the inconvenient truthful account of what actually happened.As opposed to what the Thatcherites tried to alter history to say happened by putting all the blame on the workers,instead of where it actually belonged with the government,bankers and the erroneous buying habits of the misguided domestic customer base.In which,as history shows,the Japanese and the Germans (and in the case of the truck manufacturing industry also the scandinavians) turned out the winners,in Europe and now joined by the Chinese.
I notice that you never provided an answer to my question though.
Solly:
OK gents. As the thread is in danger of descending into a personal slanging match maybe this PhD thesis will resolve some of the arguments, dispel many of the myths surrounding the industrial relationships that were propounded as to the demise of L Gardner by a certain Prime Minister and her MSM mouthpieces at the time and offer a more truthful insight into what really happened to L Gardner & Sons of Patricroft.
It is lengthy, but if patient, well worth reading by those who are interested in truthful research.
No need to read it all the first few lines/paragraphs say it all.It wasn’t the workers fault and that’s all that matters in the case of needing to shoot down the Thatcherite version of history.
Oh dear C/F I take you didnt like Mrs T, Nore did you like Mr G, Sad really two great British people, & then we have got you ,dear oh dear whats the world coming to, ■■?< Regards Larry a true Brit.
Lawrence Dunbar:
Oh dear C/F I take you didnt like Mrs T, Nore did you like Mr G, Sad really two great British people, & then we have got you ,dear oh dear whats the world coming to, ■■?< Regards Larry a true Brit.
Thatcher great. Absolutely for the Germans,Japanese,and the Chinese.( And in this case the Swedes )
To answer your question Carryfast, No, i don’t think a higher horsepower lorry would’ve been any more efficient, it may have been faster, but that doesn’t equate to efficiency The haulage operations of the time were not planned around lorries getting from A to B as fast as possible, so the extra power and speed wouldn’t have achieved anything, other than adding to the driver’s ego
Put it the other way around and ask the question, would a slower lorry, like a Gardner engined example for instance, be less efficient in today’s haulage industry and I would have to say yes but the other way around, it’s a firm no
A few posts back, seems like a lifetime, someone asked the question, has anything by the foreigners ever been designed with the British Market in mind? The answer is yes, All the 8x4 chassis and most of the 6x4 rigids from all the manufacturers are tailored for the British Market. The F88 @ 290hp was British Market only and more recently the Mercedes Benz Axor range was designed for the British Market
I covered the launch of the Axor and the basic idea behind the concept was for a Gaffer’s Lorry, simple, cheaper to buy than a high spec lorry, easier and cheaper to maintain and lighter tare weight, I can’t remember the actual words used, but during some of the spiel, it was likened to a Gardner Powered Atki
Just goes to show, the fundamentals of the Gaffer’s Lorry, can still find a market today, the Axor/Volvo FM/Daf CF/Renault Premium etc bear testament to that philosophy
newmercman:
To answer your question Carryfast, No, i don’t think a higher horsepower lorry would’ve been any more efficient, it may have been faster, but that doesn’t equate to efficiency The haulage operations of the time were not planned around lorries getting from A to B as fast as possible, so the extra power and speed wouldn’t have achieved anything, other than adding to the driver’s ego
Put it the other way around and ask the question, would a slower lorry, like a Gardner engined example for instance, be less efficient in today’s haulage industry and I would have to say yes but the other way around, it’s a firm no
But the latter answer contradicts the former.Not surprisingly because the answer,as I’ve repeatedly tried to point out,is that efficiency is all about torque outputs.It doesn’t matter wether that extra torque is used to provide extra average speed,or the same average speed,or a combination of a bit of both which is what we’ve ended up with now.At any given weight the fact is at least 10-12 hp per tonne gross weight,as long as that power doesn’t come at the expense of extra engine speed,translates into more torque which means a better combination of average speed and/or fuel consumption hence efficiency.That’s the reason why the latter answer will never match the former one and that’s why no one with any sense chose a Gardner in a truck compared to something like a turbocharged ■■■■■■■ or a turbocharged euro or scandinavian import.It’s just that it took th Brit customer base a bit longer to get it’s head around that fact.
Carryfast:
No need to read it all the first few lines/paragraphs say it all.
Just replace the rest of the reading with made-up stuff, tailored to suit whichever cherished prejudice that enters your head. Then repeat it ad infinitum.
newmercman:
To answer your question Carryfast, No, i don’t think a higher horsepower lorry would’ve been any more efficient, it may have been faster, but that doesn’t equate to efficiency The haulage operations of the time were not planned around lorries getting from A to B as fast as possible, so the extra power and speed wouldn’t have achieved anything, other than adding to the driver’s ego
Put it the other way around and ask the question, would a slower lorry, like a Gardner engined example for instance, be less efficient in today’s haulage industry and I would have to say yes but the other way around, it’s a firm no
But the latter answer contradicts the former.Not surprisingly because the answer,as I’ve repeatedly tried to point out,is that efficiency is all about torque outputs.It doesn’t matter wether that extra torque is used to provide extra average speed,or the same average speed,or a combination of a bit of both which is what we’ve ended up with now.At any given weight the fact is at least 10-12 hp per tonne gross weight,as long as that power doesn’t come at the expense of extra engine speed,translates into more torque which means a better combination of average speed and/or fuel consumption hence efficiency.That’s the reason why the latter answer will never match the former one and that’s why no one with any sense chose a Gardner in a truck compared to something like a turbocharged ■■■■■■■ or a turbocharged euro or scandinavian import.It’s just that it took th Brit customer base a bit longer to get it’s head around that fact.
It doesn’t contradict anything FFS
In the heyday of Gardner, journey times were not important, so big hp wouldn’t have earned you any more
Today, it’s all JIT and there’s hardly time to catch your breath, so higher hp is necessary to eke the maximum miles out of a day’s work, so the Gardner would not cut the mustard
It’s not rocket science, it’s not a contradiction, times and methods have changed, it’s called evolution, but that doesn’t mean the older stuff was bad, at the time it was more than capable, the courses have all changed though, so now we need different horses
newmercman:
To answer your question Carryfast, No, i don’t think a higher horsepower lorry would’ve been any more efficient, it may have been faster, but that doesn’t equate to efficiency The haulage operations of the time were not planned around lorries getting from A to B as fast as possible, so the extra power and speed wouldn’t have achieved anything, other than adding to the driver’s ego
Put it the other way around and ask the question, would a slower lorry, like a Gardner engined example for instance, be less efficient in today’s haulage industry and I would have to say yes but the other way around, it’s a firm no
But the latter answer contradicts the former.Not surprisingly because the answer,as I’ve repeatedly tried to point out,is that efficiency is all about torque outputs.It doesn’t matter wether that extra torque is used to provide extra average speed,or the same average speed,or a combination of a bit of both which is what we’ve ended up with now.At any given weight the fact is at least 10-12 hp per tonne gross weight,as long as that power doesn’t come at the expense of extra engine speed,translates into more torque which means a better combination of average speed and/or fuel consumption hence efficiency.That’s the reason why the latter answer will never match the former one and that’s why no one with any sense chose a Gardner in a truck compared to something like a turbocharged ■■■■■■■ or a turbocharged euro or scandinavian import.It’s just that it took th Brit customer base a bit longer to get it’s head around that fact.
It doesn’t contradict anything FFS
In the heyday of Gardner, journey times were not important, so big hp wouldn’t have earned you any more
Today, it’s all JIT and there’s hardly time to catch your breath, so higher hp is necessary to eke the maximum miles out of a day’s work, so the Gardner would not cut the mustard
It’s not rocket science, it’s not a contradiction, times and methods have changed, it’s called evolution, but that doesn’t mean the older stuff was bad, at the time it was more than capable, the courses have all changed though, so now we need different horses
So the product planners just say during it’s ‘heyday’ pre 1960 things will always be like this .The fact is we haven’t suddenly arrived at the situation of where we are now.The motorway network was up and running at least by the end of the 1960’s and was being added to all the time as time went on.Then while Gardner was busy turning out a naturally aspirated 6 or 8 cylinder lump with around 180-250 hp max,the opposition was turning out more efficient turbocharged designs.While the aim wasn’t/isn’t higher max horsepower at all the max horsepower figure was/is just an unused by product of what we’re really looking for which was/is loads of low down torque,a large amount of which obviously produces loads of extra power as the engine speed increases but which we won’t often need to use because it’s just the extra torque which we want.Which as I’ve said is the difference between something like a 320-350 big cam ■■■■■■■ or the DAF 2800/3300,F10/12 and 6 and 8 cylinder Scanias etc etc compared to the Gardner.
As we all know,using your logic,most uk operators would have preferred the idea of using the Gardner given the choice between those options at least until the early 1980’s.That situation soon changed though when the operators (eventually) got their act together on the way to where we are now.
Which really is just a repeat of what actually happened in history in being one of the reasons why Gardner could never have got ahead of the opposition even if by some miracle,it had all the resources needed,to build something a lot better,than all those engines ranged against it.Which of course they didn’t have anyway.
Carryfast:
But the latter answer contradicts the former.Not surprisingly because the answer,as I’ve repeatedly tried to point out,is that efficiency is all about torque outputs.
Outputs plural? How many crankshafts do the engines have in la-la-land? Drawings please.
Efficiency has nothing to do with torque. The two parameters are displayed as separate curves on the graph. The only thing that the standard, simple graphs do not show are transient conditions. V8lenny had some knowledge of this, but your incessant bs seems to have driven him away.
It’s that simple- torque, speed, power, sfc- all on the same graph. No need for waffle. Wrap it up. Everyone is sick of it.
Solly- what a superb find that PhD thesis is. I will spend the next few days digesting it.
Carryfast, it is about hp, you yourself quote Gardner’s engines as 240s, which is their maximum hp figure, not their torque output
You talk about the 730 Scania, the manufacturers themselves talk about horsepower in all their advertisments
Yes torque is the thing that gets lorries moving and up hills, but it’s the horsepower figure that sells them
There have been some very canny operators around over the past few (post Gardner) years, how come not one of them has adopted your theory of the Kenworth/Peterbilt/Freightliner 6x4 cabover with 18 gears and a gigantic CAT/■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ Diesel engine
I’ll tell you why, horses for courses, just as an FH or R Series wouldn’t work in the USA, Yank Iron wouldn’t work in Britain
Gardner may have got left behind a bit and ultimately gone out of business, but that doesn’t mean they never had a decent product. There used to be companies making mangles and gas lamps, they were the best mangles and gas lamps that money could buy, but times changed and washing machines and electric lights put an end to their market, turbocharged engines did the same to naturally aspirated engines, it’s just the way the (real) World turns.
Firstly we are all seduced to some extent by the notion of a high power maximum weight artic moving loads over long distances. The facts of the matter are startingly different. in 2010 (the latest statistics available) the Department of Transport report on Freight Movements by Road give the average freight movement distance as merely 76 miles. Comments and observations please?
Secondly, CF, no one on here has said that the blame for the demise of Gardner and much of the traditional British manufacturing base was solely the fault of the British labour force. Those of us with balanced and objective opinions (not subjective opinions such as yours), and irrespective of our respective political leaning, recognise that the said demise was due to many factors, all of which have been mentioned previously and it is pointless to keep regurgitating things ad nauseum.
CF, for some-one who is obviously knowledgeable, I’m surprised at your negative response to the thesis. After all it is well written and easy reading, and the PhD student…as is expected… has gone to great length to produce a comprehensive account of the relative success and final demise of L Gardner & Sons. Secretly tho’…we all know you will read it… eh!
It s just staggering on from meaning less point to meaning less point, I wonder what the Gardner family or survivors if any would make of all this drivel, not to mention their engineers . With no regrets whatsoever I m putting it to bed. Crow.Oh btw Cf I look forward to your attacks on the TD 120.
i have been following this thread for a while now. Gardner’s in it’s heyday IMO had no equals, long life between major overhauls ,efficient reliable and importantly , economic to run. I would have thought that when Gardner’s were No.1 that the object of a haulage firm or an O/D was to move freight from A to B as cheaply as possible ,therefore putting more money into the bank rather than the treasury.
In it’s time a vehicle fitted with a Gardner did this usually better than anything else. And it applied then ,and it does now ,that you got x amount of pounds per ton to move that freight ,whether it be on a Gardner powered truck or a Rolls Royce. Same today, doesn’t matter if it’s a 730 Scania or a 85 CF DAF(nothing wrong with them , just an illustration) you still get the same rate for the job.
It would seem that there were quite a few canny operators in Gardner’s time because every one of them seemed to prefer Gardner powered trucks.
newmercman:
Carryfast, it is about hp, you yourself quote Gardner’s engines as 240s, which is their maximum hp figure, not their torque output
You talk about the 730 Scania, the manufacturers themselves talk about horsepower in all their advertisments
Yes torque is the thing that gets lorries moving and up hills, but it’s the horsepower figure that sells them
There have been some very canny operators around over the past few (post Gardner) years, how come not one of them has adopted your theory of the Kenworth/Peterbilt/Freightliner 6x4 cabover with 18 gears and a gigantic CAT/■■■■■■■■■■■■■■■ Diesel engine
I’ll tell you why, horses for courses, just as an FH or R Series wouldn’t work in the USA, Yank Iron wouldn’t work in Britain
In the case of what makes for an efficient truck it’s all about producing as much horsepower as possible,at as low engine speeds as possible (torque).Unfortnately for Gardner their products were one of the worst examples possible in regards to that basic fact which is why they were obsolete as soon as their competitors realised that fact and started making engines which reflected that realisation.Which just then left the time lag concerning how long it took British operators to realise it.
As for American ideas not working here that seems to contradict the fact that many of those ‘canny operators’ did (eventually) go for around 10 hp per tonne gross type power output American engine options like 300 + big cam ■■■■■■■ with typical US drivelines and it worked at least as well,if not better,than the other similar typical Euro/Scandinavian type choice.While those that didn’t go for that type of ouput,using either of those choices,eventually did which is how we got to where we are now.
CF, for some-one who is obviously knowledgeable, I’m surprised at your negative response to the thesis. After all it is well written and easy reading, and the PhD student…as is expected… has gone to great length to produce a comprehensive account of the relative success and final demise of L Gardner & Sons. Secretly tho’…we all know you will read it…
I never gave any negative response at all.All I said was that,not surprisingly considering my own experience of working in the industry at the time,within the first few lines/paragraphs it had already seemed to have cleared the company’s workforce of any blame which was relevant to Saviem’s and some other comments related to that issue.
