Asimo

This reminds me of a mad project of an employer. With lots of grass to have cut and no commercial suitable mower available (so they said) they had a local firm cobble together a mower from a pair of SaaB 900 front ends welded back to back at the A-pillars, hydraulic motors driving each wheel via the driveshafts and an Escort Diesel engine driving a JCB hydraulic pump. It was dangerous and useless. The driver sat really high , alongside the engine. The combination of high centre of gravity and the suspension travel made the rotary cutting deck useless as the thing rolled and pitched on it’s springs. Eventually the gardener just refused to use it and it was quietly hidden in a shipping container…

They might be slightly more complicated, but at least you can pull a proper handbrake turn with drums! For maximum ball-ache with brakes:- those fuck-awful disc calipers with "self-adjusting" handbrake or those horrendous swinging caliper things on Mk4 Zephyrs and P6 Rovers.

Plastic Fan blades are usually an aerofoil section and work much more efficiently in one direction than the other even if the motor will run backwards when the wires are reversed.

Manual gearboxes are all 4 speed. Don’t let only the just 4 speeds alone put you off. They don’t have enough power to feel like they need another gear on the motorway and the engines are quite flexible enough to cope with the gaps between ratios. The change is a bit slow however, partly because of the heavy geartrain between the clutch and the gearbox. A good one is a very comfy way of getting gently about so works better as an automatic imho.

Well bought. These are damn good cars. They were so succesful too, a very common sight when they were on the “ junior directors / senior managers” list; alongside Rovers, Granadas and Volvos.

Growl maybe intake noise, when 2nd choke opens?

That Cab: 55,000 miles and 9 months MOT. Are Diesel London cabs completely worthless now because of ULEZ / electric vehicles etc?

Thank you @tobyd and thankyou @Slartibartfast.

I think @TheIsleofShite

This is fruit season and we get 10 or so max-size chiller artics pass most days. It's a single track road, and they are doing 15 - 20 mph up a short hill of maybe 1 in 20 which is of course no problem. Except recently for some trucks, definitely Scanias but maybe others, which really struggle. They sound like they are really labouring in too high a gear as the hill steepens but they don't change down. Eventually they come to a complete halt. There is a moment or two of psst, psst, clank, clank and then off they go again, sounding happy in a much lower gear. Reminds me of a timid driver's way of getting first before bottom gear got synchromesh. Is this a limitation with some automated truck transmissions or is something just broken?

Hopeless advert, useless photos. Haflinger, featuring *nv*c*r power. Said to be a runner. https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/234096915647

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/304069048536