Shepherd Neame brewery in Faversham were running one until relatively recently, mostly for novelty value.
I had a BMC FG with the battery under the seat. The smell of hydrogen caught our nostrils one day and I discovered it was grossly over charging. I diverted to the nearest Lucas outlet, opened the windows and put my cigarettes away!
The Albion with the LAD cab had the same thing. The driver seat had four pins on the back of the frame that sat in mountings welded to the cab rear.
The batteries were under both seats and over rough ground the seat frame could catch the terminals causing a few sparks 
Body builders had a habit of mounting the PTO lever on the rear cab wall in exactly the position your elbow ended when going for revers gear.
I still have a hole in my left knee from rubbing on the ratchet handbrake lever 
This video came into my youtube feed this morning, I thought Iād seen all the āLook at lifeā videos, but Iād missed this one.
Not necessarily, I donāt remember Atkis called Borderers 'till much later in my career, they were just Atkis, until the Mk.2 came along and then we started calling itās predecessor the Mk.I. I might have been mistaken but that is what I thought at the time, and certainly I had a Mk.1 with a solid seat and batteries under the other one, so you could be right.
Other things I remember about my Mk.1 was there was no key, ignition was by a toggle switch on the back frame to the right of the driver, and a big red button to start the engine. You might have had a key but that was to lock the door, but I didnāt have a key so, if I was leaving it anywhere, home on a dodgy for instance, I unscrewed the door handle and took it with me. Of course it was easy for a thief to just poke anything the right size into the square hole and the door opened. This bit me one night when I came back to find my transister radio gone. No fitted radios in those days. 
I remember that. Ours had keys, but they were added by the workshop not standard.
When the mark 2 first came out they were known as Silver, Black Knight etc then they had an update 1972 where they were then called Borderer, Searcher, Defender, Venturer. Still no key to start just flick the generator switch on dash then press starter button. Here is my dashboard this has got an upgrade to electric wipers, not the standard air set up 
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I wonder how many were nicked before someone had the bright idea of a key? 
With a 180 Gardner and a 6 speed DB you could give them a days start and still catch 'em
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You just had to follow the smoke trail 
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I donāt know about nicking the wagons but looking at the dash photo above I now know what gauges had been nicked from the defender I drove!
That brings back many memorys Teds Cafe i would like a pound for all the cups of tea i have had in there, Thanks for posting it,
The Seddon Group axle was a fine axle probably the best on the market back in the day and I canāt recall grumbling about it Doh !
ā¦and as you had your old thread taken āoff airā we canāt trawl back to find the evidence.
Clean sheet new start then 
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I do recall Dennis stating that he was unimpresse with the group axle, i dunno what a group axle is/was.
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Lovely dashboard there! So different from the all-digital crap plastic ones we have today.
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