Ashcollection

Couple of pictures of ours. A replacement starter has been procured, just need a day to play!

We have one. lovely machine. later type with the ACE AV760 in it AEC axles I believe, Aveling Barford badge on the front, Leyland badge on the back, Scammell LD55 cab. The last days of the British motor industry Leyland empire. poor thing is outside at the moment, starter motor dead and Clutch slave seals gone.

well I've got a sentinel tug that was designed to tow the V bombers. don't think our Norfolk roads are wide enough though. because if it was that easy we bloody would have it haha.

glad to hear that.

wouldn't we all love to save it! some things are just not practical though. I hope someone saves the tail at least.

thats a political issue about keeping the great unwashed masses in work and the pension schemes going to keep paying all the retired people. not much to do with our hobby.

yes the best way, "user trials" the user can find ways to break things the engineers would never have thought of!. been there haha. I designed a piece of kit once that was perfect in our eyes, all high tech bells and whistles etc, it came back split in half and scratched to buggery. What the user had done was in an emergency situation he rolled the unit over and used the top heat shield as a shovel. I never in my wildest dreams thought anyone would do that. so beefed it up, extended and curved the front edge of the shield and gave him duel use. then as expected they never came across that emergency situation ever again haha.

yes. thats why Hydrogen fuel is a better option, you can fit a motor, smaller battery and fuel cell and tanks to anything

thats what trials are for, after a few versions they will love driving them, or at least not notice the difference

Spot on! stop turning the wind turbines off when the whole sale electricity price drops and make hydrogen instead.

hi Simon, no problem, most of us on here are engineers or closely related to the "art form" so have a pretty pragmatic approach to the future, personally I see a whole load of opportunities, ok shows might be fewer and smaller, but we will still do our thing, as long as we are helpful to the changing situation and don't become a load of stick in the mud luddites, it will be ok, if we don't then the general public will turn against the hobby.

hi Simon, I've only just got round to looking at the winch and the arm and roller is bent on this one as well, looking at the other posts it looks like you have found one.

so are you against the Bio Ethanol or for it? I cant quite tell from the post.

Yes we have strayed from the point, it was a simple question but there are a whole range of things that will affect the future once you get into how we can keep them running and that unfortunately includes politics. As for show, I think there will be less and smaller in the future, on any given weekend in the summer there are hundreds and several clash badly, but it is what it is, I would personally only exhibit at more local ones, down to cost and time. Probably a lot of the people who own something just as an investment with no historical, family or emotional attachment will disappear from the "hobby" that may be good? not sure. Those of us who love them will keep then weather we can use them or not. Transport to shows, well electric heavy goods are dam close already. again here we can go into the electric V hydrogen debate, also why not fit a nice new electric drive from a bus to your truck. there is a perfect unit that would drop right in the middle pair of bevel boxes on any Alvis 6 wheeler right now. and the tech is moving fast, all the parts we need will be available 2nd hand in 10 years from breakers yards, we just need to learn electronics and control systems. awful lot of military vehicles for sale? well the ones no one want will end up in the scrap pile, the rest will be cheaper for idiots like me who already have too many! Our younger collectors will probably come into the hobby thinking nothing of stripping a crashed Tesla and using the parts in another vehicle, the same as our grandfathers did with steam and we do with those dam new fangled internal combustion engines. The hobby won't die it will just change.

minor point. energy saving will play a big role too. just did a quick calc. over the last 3 years we have replaced all the strip light bulbs in the factory with led ones as the old ones went wrong. that saves me 4.2kw/h on a 12 hour day so 50.5kw. thats enough to fully recharge my electric car. and yes the led ones do last longer so far the 3 year old ones are still good. never had a standard one last that long in a machine shop before.

Yes and evolving fast. trouble is everyone is hung up on electric. bit like a few years back the government pushed Diesel to reduce Co2 emissions totally forgetting about all the other stuff in diesel. The future will defiantly be a mix, as things will become more localised. 8-10 years ago round me all we had was the national grid. now we ourselves have 70KW generation, there are 4 large digesters within 10 miles, about 150 acres of solar and 2 straw/chicken shit power stations. and god know how many Mw off the coast 40 miles away. all we need are 100 odd medium size bio diesel plants, farmers co-ops could do that, and a couple of dozen hydrogen big plants round the coast. job done.

Exactly. we can make it here in the uk and it's limitless. I'd happily have a big fuel cell generator to run my machine shop, (not a hobby shop) I mean a proper one. we currently have 50kw of solar and 20kw of wind and I still spend £15-20k a year on electricity. the fuel containers for vehicles for hydrogen have been tested, burnt, dropped, run over impacted and its all good. The biggest problem to over come in everyday use is people being idiots. but maybe we let Darwin take over there haha.

no it doesn't have to be fuel cells tech, running a conventional engine of pure hydrogen would bring a whole new load of issues though. as I mentioned earlier Bio fuels will cover out diesel engines.

its seems we all prefer the use of hydrogen over full electric. there is still time for that to happen. fuel cells are getting better as well as batteries, they just aren't getting the press they deserve.

yes there is a big problem with the subsidy system at the moment, the government don't understand business and the greed factor at all! only got to look at the grants for first time house buyers and the massive profits that permission homes made for building shit houses! big business has different driving factors to most of us! lots of turbines get turned off as the rate they get paid for the electricity goes up and down, due to demand as well, thats why I like hydrogen. all the excess electricity could be used in hydrogen production, then you can just go to a filling station and run you "electric" car on hydrogen, fill time no different than filling with diesel, and still get your 4-500miles per tank.

Same here Ruxy, east of England all the village stations went years ago, the mid placed ones and lots of the town ones are now "hand car wash establishments" you just have the super markets in towns and the big boys on the A roads. Wales must be lucky, like being here in the 1970's but more hills. and I agree Johann Morris. lots has to be sorted out, and right now electric does not suit many people. I have an electric car but my vans are all diesel and I have a bigger diesel estate car as well, it's horses for courses. but if you had grabbed the government grant for solar and had a load fitted at yours, then bought a tesla which has a good a mileage as any diesel, taken the time to spread the word so that tesla sold more cars then they gave you a free power wall, that would run you house all night and re-charge you car, than you'd find you hadn't been bent over and shafted, but you'd have saved thousands over time, but if you do nothing until you are forced to you will feel shafted. you got a Steyr 1500a? lucky man.

there will always be a solution, bit it will cost us more, I've got over 70 pieces of kit in my collection and I'm well aware of the fact that some I will never drive, and they will go down in value. but thats not why I do it. I'm into green tech. I studied it in the mid 90's. Yes bio diesel as a cottage industry will cover us for diesel, but it will be regulated and have to be carbon offset I'd guess. but I have no problem with that, LNG will be used for a long time to come as its safer for the environment to burn it than let into the atmosphere. As for electric, I agree that we should be using the excess electricity in the grid to make hydrogen and push fuel cell tech in cars rather than full electric. The lithium should be used for household power cells and solar on new houses compulsory. And with the new battery tech that should be on the market in the next few years the problems should solve themselves, as long as the big boys and vested interests in oil and lithium don't F'k it up. long term my petrol lorries can be converted to diesel and run bio, my smaller petrol vehicles can be LNG or some can convert to electric. We spent thousands and years restoring these old beauties (in our eyes) whats a bit more cash and a another year at the end of the day. no worries. Don't fear change, embrace it, enjoy it and make money out of it.

Yes its a ban on production of new petrol and diesel cars, and I have no problem with that, the thing that might affect many people is towns and cities banning or taxing them off the roads in certain areas, in principle again a good idea. What will hurt us long term is the reduction in the availability of fuel and its predictable massive increase in price. in our hobby we also need to be thinking of alternatives to fossil fuels, there's bio diesel and bio ethanol, it just needs a few tweak's to suit our old pumps and carbs, or we need to look at new seals and modifying our engines. We need to start thinking about being proactive before we become seen as part of the problem, bearing in mind a lot of people think we are odd before we start.

hi Simon I'm right the other side of the country in Norfolk. I will have a look on the winch and see if that part is ok. yours Richard

put up a picture of the head stamp, that will have all the info on it to identify it.