Just for clarity, the Marathon was designed, developed & built by AEC at Southall between 1973 & 79. AEC had become part of the ‘Leyland Group’ on the merger of Associated Commercial Vehicles, of which AEC was a subsiduary, & Leyland Motors in June 1962. The last Southall Marathon was built in April 1979, after that they were built by the Scammell plant at Watford.
After the withdrawall of the AEC V8 the AV760 was the only engine within Leyland Group suitable for development for heavy truck applications. The AV760 was devloped into the TL12 for the Marathon & was also an option on the early Roadtrains. The Marathon design brief also included optional ■■■■■■■ or Rolls engines. The non-turbo L12 went on to replaced the awful Leyland 500 engine in the Buffalo & Bison.
The book ‘AEC in the Post-War Years 1945-1979’ by Graham Edge gives a detailed account of the Marathon’s history.
Andrew
ok crap but if you,ve driven old erf,s mandators then back in the 70s when you had a couple of pound night out money the marathon and sleeping across the seats between wick and penzance was a dream ok not quite you had to look at drivers with big new pacel shelf,s not just for the sheets unless you wore flat cap and kept whippets
Think …Neale … must have got an awful lot of discount from Leyland, they were in all the brochure’s…
Just like Leyland… where are they now ■■?
Jerry
thats only half the photo i drove 1 for many years as i said penzance to wick and rotterdam i have the photo but image cave is not as good as photobucket. i,ve posted before and that was a shot from barking with the highrise flats taken out also to bridgend just after the m4 by pass was opened and when closed by snow i stopped on membury pulled off on hard shoulder police range rover pulled up said go to bristol so i got to the bridge and no one on tolls i slowed a man run out waved me through i went down into wales like a sleigh ride through cars here and there got to fords swansea in 8 hours waited because the ford workers had a problem getting to work, i did feel for them tipped then at a point near bridgend i drove on the wrong side of the road for the first time not the last up the m4 on the down side then i saw a lot of drivers going back to their cars trucks i guess they thought another poor soul stuck out now driving on wrong side of motorway well no i,d only just gone down and then back. ok i was a driver and did become an owner driver and well some of the stories of those days can wait
Sorry it’s got a DAF & F7 Volvo in between but it’s the best I have got.
John
well just before they shut doen we did some work for ccc which should read continetal cargo carriers or close any way the new guy there had just moved from container;ink tilbury so i knew him and did what ever i was asked to do, i think by then tachos had started anyway we had 2 or 3 units 5th whell changed to fit the tilts not my unit but i drove all over the country with ccc then the shut down so i said to ray bains later to become md can you work me he said of course so my package would have been a unit with a ;ot of work ok i already had a n od mindset like if a card aint good through it what you gasp cowboy shoot i aint started yet [ i am on old time site yes ] but i couldnt finance it and i gave up and went on to work for among others mtx untill i got my 2 cpc,s then tachos were bought by the box or given to me for a coffee and so on
I used to work for Leyland at the Chorley dept in my younger days.
It was when the weight limits were going to be lifted from the 32 ton max, we had a Marathon test vehicle that the engineers used to try different things, (This time I believe this was to move the brake valve from under the 5th wheel to under the cab) I was tasked to take it to Kirkham for a ministry inspection with a 40 odd ton test trailer on the back. (we had to have special exemption to run them over weight of the 32 tons)
I was going down halfpenny brow at Penwortham (near the fire station) when the traffic stopped in front of me. I started to stop in the usual way, but the brakes were that bad, I didn’t think it was going to, I was off the seat stood on the pedal, in the end I threw the deadmans handle, stopping about 1" from the car in front of me.
Needless to say, that it failed the brake test at Kirkham miserably!!
I personally never did like the Marathon after that.
Hi Real Biffo Do you remember a lad called Phil Davies who worked for leyland motors at chorley on different test trucks.
John
Sniffy:
Stanfield:
The problem with the brakes on the Marathon MK1 was that the brake foot valve was situated half way down the chassis and was controlled by a cable which if not well lubricated tended to seize up hence the slow reaction with the braking system as though the vehicle was’nt going to stop,they altered it to under the pedal on the MK2 and they were slightly better,unit only you may aswell have had an anchor.
Sounds like they nicked that from the transcon, or was it the other way round… same problem though !!
I think the Transcons problem was the wedge brake system which Fiat/Iveco nicked, they were crap too!
I do believe, that Leyland, and Scammell, Ford, Bedford, Dodge had the same problem as BSA, Norton and Triumph, the same problem as Morris, Austin, Hillman, Riley and Vauxhall. We may have been the best developers and engineers but we were crap at marketing the product, we were ruled by shortsighted accountants and communist unions.
yappie:
jerry truckartist:
Unfortunately, the Marathon was like everything else that carried the … British Leyland badge, The designers at Leyland never had a prayer of a chance, because everything came down to cost cutting, when the Marathon came out , Scania and Volvo were already established as trucks with long haul capability, Leylands answer was a , Half ergo, half Bathgate cabbed truck, with a modified AV760 engine that was notoriously unreliable. All trucks in the 70’s suffered from tin worm, but the Marathon was terrible, as a kid i lived near" Isles of Stanningley, a large Leyland truck dealer back in the 70’s ( now chatfields DAF ) There yard used to be full of brand new Marathons in beige leyland primer… going rusty before they’d even been registered. I spoke to a man from Leyland many years ago at a Leyland Trucks open day ,when the T45 had just been launched, he had originaly worked for AEC, He told me that the sketches for the high datum cabbed Roadtrain were done in the early 70’s but the people in charge of the ■■■■■ strings made them make do with a modified ergo cab for the heavy range… makes you wonder doesn’t it ■■? The Roadtrain was the truck of the year in 1980, if it had been launched in 76 it would have been a real revelation !!! Britains designers were never the problem, all the early Datsun cars had engines based on Leylands A & B series 1300 & 1800 engines, early Saab’s had Triumph based engines, and of course, Scania’s legendary V8 was based on an AEC engine, they just knew how to make them work ! our designers never got any financial backing !
scanias v8 is nothing like an AECv8 look at the two engines side by side they are totaly differant it is only a myth that scania used that. scanias v8 came out in 1969 the AEC came out in 1968
Jerry
And here’s me thinking that you wrote all this JR!!! Then I saw it was “jerry” and I woke up!!! Dennis.
Bewick:
yappie:
jerry truckartist:
Unfortunately, the Marathon was like everything else that carried the … British Leyland badge, The designers at Leyland never had a prayer of a chance, because everything came down to cost cutting, when the Marathon came out , Scania and Volvo were already established as trucks with long haul capability, Leylands answer was a , Half ergo, half Bathgate cabbed truck, with a modified AV760 engine that was notoriously unreliable. All trucks in the 70’s suffered from tin worm, but the Marathon was terrible, as a kid i lived near" Isles of Stanningley, a large Leyland truck dealer back in the 70’s ( now chatfields DAF ) There yard used to be full of brand new Marathons in beige leyland primer… going rusty before they’d even been registered. I spoke to a man from Leyland many years ago at a Leyland Trucks open day ,when the T45 had just been launched, he had originaly worked for AEC, He told me that the sketches for the high datum cabbed Roadtrain were done in the early 70’s but the people in charge of the ■■■■■ strings made them make do with a modified ergo cab for the heavy range… makes you wonder doesn’t it ■■? The Roadtrain was the truck of the year in 1980, if it had been launched in 76 it would have been a real revelation !!! Britains designers were never the problem, all the early Datsun cars had engines based on Leylands A & B series 1300 & 1800 engines, early Saab’s had Triumph based engines, and of course, Scania’s legendary V8 was based on an AEC engine, they just knew how to make them work ! our designers never got any financial backing !
scanias v8 is nothing like an AECv8 look at the two engines side by side they are totaly differant it is only a myth that scania used that. scanias v8 came out in 1969 the AEC came out in 1968
Jerry
And here’s me thinking that you wrote all this JR!!! Then I saw it was “jerry” and I woke up!!! Dennis.
Here you are JR we did allow a crap motor into the fleet now and again !! and here’s a shot to prove it ! one guess what you would have been driving if you had been at Bewick’s at that time? But let’s see now , in 1976 you were still running around the school yard with a lump of "ginger cake " in one hand and pulling a wooden wagon on a bit of string in the other!!! and oh yes I bet your nose needed wiping!!! Cheeky b*****d !!! Dennis.
bsc rotherham opperated marathons from 76-86 double shifted-i & my brother got the first two with tl12 under the bonnet then later mk2 &then roadtrains after 3 years using guy big js-we thought they were fantastic-commanding driving position bags of torque& for a time we also had some on hire from kennings with ■■■■■■■ & rolls eagle power but could not live with the tl12-earnt me some brass over 10 years-pictured at wolverhampton-alan
… Seeing the Eale’s line up got my memory banks going on who had a large fleet of them 
the power & the glory
fleet no36 vwg573s-alan