Yes, it did to internals in Qatar. Here’s a pic of it on Qatar plates.
That didn’t take long Ro.Just put in Wynn’s S26 it’s on Flickr but worried about the copywriter warning.Just as I said effectively a direct Contractor replacement with the forward control T45 cab.
Blimey Ro if that’s not a Scammell bogie on the video S26 those hubs look identical.Meanwhile now an interesting search to find out if the heavyweight S26 was closer to the Contractor’s drive line.
I wasn’t referring to articulation at all Ro I was just referring to the comparison of the relative respective hub reduction and weight capacity specifications.
The Contractor’s drive line and 40t rated bogie was obviously all about the latter.
While the S26 shown still seems to be of Scammell origin and similar weight capacity as ours was regardless of the relative articulation designs.
I’d be very surprised if that drive line spec, shown on the S26, was rated for the heavyweight 300t market sector ?.
Also bearing in mind the Contractor wasn’t specifically military orientated but seems to have been adopted as an interim between Antar and Commander for its ability to handle main battle tank weights as opposed to the Crusader ?.Also bearing in mind semi trailer configuration tank transport requirement rather than ballast tractor.Requiring lots of weight capacity in addition to the tractive effort requirement.
Interestingly the heavyweight S26 might be something more along the lines of an updated Contractor but obviously using the forward control T45 cab not the conventional design of Contractor.
It will be interesting to find out if the heavyweight S26 might have been something else above that shown in the video which looks closer to the medium weight Crusader type sector than Contractor’s.I know Scammell put some serious hill start capability into their designs and doubtful if the hubs shown in the video would have met that at the 300t rating.
Ours for example could do a standing start on the 1:2.9 test hill at almost 38t and even then was known to snap the propshaft.I think the Contractor was rated for 1:5 standing start at max weight.
If you are interested in following the way the Contractor was developed into the S26, you may be better off looking at the bonnetted S24. As I said above, the S24 was contemporary with the S26 and they shared the same standardised or default driveline, which was Cummins NTE 350 with Fuller 9 or 15 according to whether it was needed off-road. A small number of NTE 400s were supplied (but these seem to have been given Allison or ZF Transmatic gears).
Yes it was. You have to remember that the Cummins NTE 350 had a lot of torque in really useable places. It would have had enough grunt, given decent gearing to get the thing rolling. And the RTX 14615 was the beefed up version of an already very capable off-road 'box.
PS Standard unit in the Mk1 Contractor was Cummins NTC 335 
I guess that’s the definitive heavy weight 300 tonner deffo not a 65 tonner and ironically does seem to confirm that the larger hub housings actually relate to the medium 65 tonner.Which seems counter intuitive compared to the Contractor’s hub design.
Can we confirm exactly what those axles actually are IE ‘not’ Rockwell or Soma ?.
It’s not the output from the box that provides the tractive effort it’s the final drive reduction at the diff and hubs.
If there’s not enough at best it will just wreck the drive line between the box and diff or the diff and hubs.The video S26 doesn’t look like 300t rated hubs.These possibly look like the right drive line for the job.Certainly closer to the Contractor’s.
That was the last S26 to leave the Watford works before it closed in '88. Yes, it’s a heavyweight. No idea what axles it had. But it did have a Cummins 400 in it.
Yes, I had just assumed you would know the part the drive-axles played!
That orange one looks like a mediumweight 38-tonner but the 26.40 badge on the door tells us it’s got a 400 in it. Do you know anything more about it? I’d be interested to know what g’box went in it.
EDIT to add that I’ve just found out a little more about it online. It is seen here in the livery of K&SJ Harvey & Sons and in what appears to be a preservation livery.
It’s possible that artic configuration at 65t could require a just as heavy, if not even heavier, ‘weight’ rated bogie than a ballast tractor at 300t ?.Obviously artic and semi trailer configuration is out at those type of weights.
And/Or possibly weaker differences in the Rockwell’s ? diff and half shafts design actually requiring more hub reduction than the Scammell bogie ?.
Bearing in mind military spec artic configuration up to tank transport suggests a wider margin and cut off than just 65t using the same ( medium ? ) weight drive line as shown there in the orange example.
The photo caption doesn’t seem to provide much information about the orange tractor unit Ro.
I was just using it as an example of ( what erroneously appeared to be ) the/a ‘heavier’ rated bogie.It also seems to appear on the military type tractor units.Inncluding tank transport example running at probably closer to 75-80t than 65 ?.The plot thickens.
But the CM article says heavyweight 300 tonner spec uses Scammell axles and as I said at the beginning the hub housing design shown on the ( now established ) heavyweights matches known to me Scammell axle design.
At a guess maybe the larger, Contractor like, hub design, is actually the 65t medium lighter rated Rockwell ?.
As I’ve already explained, I know nothing about heavy haulage spec, as my interest was confined to general haulage 6x4s, so I can’t really help you there.
Or Rockwell was making tidier-looking 65t axles twenty years after the Contractor, more like. ERF had 6x4 Rockwell rear bogies on its Middle-East spec 60t C60 model, with Hendrickson suspension concurrently with Scammell making its S26. I haven’t a clear enough ERF back-end pic to show you, unfortunately but this RHD Econfreight probably has one.
I’m wondering if the Scammell bogie for the 300 tonner is actually less ‘weight’ capacity than the ‘medium’ weight because it’s only going to be ballast tractor configuration not tractor and semi trailer ?.
Maybe that led to compromises in diff and half shaft components torque/tractive effort capacity requiring more hub reduction than the Scammell heavy bogie required ?.
I guess that establishes the medium weight with SOMA bogie ? as a 65 tonner and then some.
If that’s a representative example of a Rockwell set up it looks like that leaves the examples shown as being SOMA 65t medium weight ? and Scammell heavyweight bogies respectively.I’d guess that standard S26 might be rarer than the medium and heavy.
The orange tractor unit looks like medium 65t which seems to have some margin when used in military spec.
To add another example of the mystery bogie which also seems to be a default hallmark of the military types, Scammell, SOMA, Rockwell, medium/heavy ???.
