ERF-Continental:
Rowena…is there any chance that the bridge towards the E-series (later EC-series) has some history to the late C-series?
When that is the case I have quite a pile of specs and brochures…feel free
That’s an interesting question A-J. But I think the C-series had its bridge to the B-series rather than to the E-series. It had a short production run of only four years, and that was during a period when ERF was struggling on a three-day week and had already pulled out of the European market. The E-series was a cleaner break and was a much more sophisticated lorry. The bridge between the E-series and the EC-series existed in the chassis of ERF’s export LHD E-series which were different from the RHD ones.
There is a C-series thread somewhere - or just use the LHD C-series thread - on which you could put any material you think we may not have see for a long time, if ever!
Still awaiting an example of a LHD E-series with a 9sp Fuller instead of a Twin-splitter. There’s got to be one out there somewhere! There were plenty of RHD examples.
I think the grille badge says E12TX - 400. So a Perkins TX 400, a rare thing in itself, there were plenty of 325s and quite a few 375s, but the 300 and 400 weren’t so popular from my recollection.
Yes, thanks: that looks like the right configuration of letters on the grille! Although most LHD E-series had Cummins, it seems that a fair few Perkins TX 400s made their way into France, Spain and Holland. Here’s some of the evidence I have:
I was re-reading Patrick Dyer’s most informative ERF A, B, C, CP & E-series book just now (as all decent retired citizens should do on a damp Friday afternoon), and I chanced upon the following snippet which rather clears up much of the speculation and discussions earlier on in this thread about the significance of the later, larger grilled bumper on E-series units.
Apparently, this bumper arrangement came in with the advent of the ‘Super-E’ uprated version of the Cummins 14-litre NTE, which was designated NTA (with variants). Thus the old 350 became the new 365 and the old 400 became the new 410 etc. Presumably, the new bumper remained in place also for the E14TX 400 for commonality of parts.
Looking back over this thread I can find only three examples with the old bumper. The thick plottens!
…and yes, the plot really does thicken. As so often happens with these leads, there are gremlins! I’ve located several pictures of E14:365s with the old style bumper, including one of the ERF promotional brochures which states clearly that the 365 in the picture has the new Super-E engine. My guess is that they were phased in to aid cooling, rather than designed like that in the first place as a reactive decision.
EDIT to say that after trawling through E-series ERF brochures, I find that there was a Cummins NTE 365 (as opposed to an NTA 365), which seems to explain the older bumper fitted to many of them
