THE FLATLEY DRYER

[Stanley]

I remember it Tiz, I think it deposited Teflon on worn surfaces. Then there was Molyslip, which used Molybdenum Disulphide to do the same thing. They worked to a certain extent on worn parts but were never a long lasting cure. There were all the fuel additives as well. I think with modern fuels, lubricating oils and engines they get enough additives.
Remember the howls of protest when Tetra-ethyl lead was banned in fuel? It didn't mean the end of the world.....
Far more serious was the move to cut sulphur down in diesel. Sulphur is a lubricant and cutting it down caused no end of wear in injector pumps which are high duty and lubricated by the diesel itself. This was a particular problem in tank engines in the army but I think that was kept quiet as it happened at the time when we went into Iraq.

[Tizer]

The adjustments made to VW cars to correct the emissions cheating has lowered their performance on the road but I haven't heard any complaints about that. Pity they didn't do it properly in the first place.

[Stanley]

I've always thought Tiz that the concentration of performance was wrong and pandered to the worst instincts of a certain kind of driver. Seventy years ago if a car could do a steady 50mph without being distressed it was reckoned to be fast!
I've always thought that the best sales ploy for the Ordinary Joe was cost of maintenance and reliability. What's the use of performance in traffic? In those days when a car had done 50,000 miles you were thinking about a reconditioned engine. Numerous small firms in every large town made a good living out of reconditioning engines by reboring and in some cases crankshaft grinding. That has largely vanished now except for Classic and Vintage cars. The original manufacturers did it as well and sold exchange 'Short' engines. That was an engine with all the accessories like carbs and electrics stripped off them. I don't even know if such a thing exists these days.

[Stanley]

In 1939 petrol rationing was introduced and was in force until 1950. It spawned a lot of activity on the black market in genuine and fake petrol coupons and even in stolen fuel. We had another brief spell in 1956 during the Suez Crisis and preparations were made for another one in 1973 during the OPEC fuel crisis but we narrowly escaped that one. I forget what the amount per week was but it was tiny and many people laid their cars up for the duration. Essential workers on armaments like my father were immune because his car was fuelled by the works so we never felt the brunt of it but 'pleasure motoring' ceased entirely.
One of the consequences came in 1950 when everyone got their cars on the road and set off for a spin. You've never seen as many cars stopped at the side of the road with steaming radiators and mechanical breakdowns in your life! Even though in the best cases, cars had been jacked up and sat on blocks to take the weight off the tyres, They had deteriorated and I'm afraid many of those 'grand days out' ended in problems.
This habit of taking cars off the road persisted after rationing ended and many people just taxed their vehicles quarterly and put them in the garage for winter. We saw the same vehicles broken down at the side of the road again if essential maintenance hadn't been done.
Then there was the matter of 'Snow Tyres'. Despite the fact that we get very little snow many 'careful motorists' religiously took there summer tyres off each Autumn and fitted special tyres with deep block treads. Great for the tyre manufacturers but I often wondered if it was really worth it. It never happened on wagons......

[Tizer]

My father learnt to drive and to maintain cars while in the RAF. He got an RAF driving licence, then a South African one while serving in the RAF there, then a UK one when he returned here. He was miffed when they wouldn't accept his RAF and SA licences here and he had to take a test again! All this meant he had old cars while I was a child in the 50s and we would drive to the coast or into the countryside every Sunday. He wouldn't use it for work, only for best! He worked at the Philips factory and cars were always been sold or exchanged among the workers there so we had a different car almost every year. In his later years I tried to get him to list all the cars he'd had but there were too many to remember. They ranged from a soft-top Reliant 3-wheeler through an Austin 7, lots of family saloons, and to a big old Jaguar. He went through a patch later on of no cars but motor bikes, m/c combination and scooters instead. Our first trip from Blackburn to Brixham was on the m/c combination...overnight!

[Stanley]

They must have changed the system or it was different in the army in UK. When I passed the Army driving test, just a drive out to a pub with the MT sergeant, I was given a form to take to Colchester Town Hall and got a full license.



Father's work car was a pre-war Vauxhall 10. After the war when he had to buy his own car he got a 1939 Vauxhall 14 with the six cylinder engine and ran that until he swapped it for a Dormobile van when he bought the shop at Sough.

[Tizer]

Those vans were a beautiful design, much easier on the eye than many modern vans.

[Stanley]

It ran well and the only problem we ever had was a broken half shaft, grossly overloaded on Wendy's farm track actually in the days when I was a mobile grocery shop.

[Stanley]

I was reminded yesterday by the technical marvels of Mick's new Rav 4 petrol hybrid how much things have changed in the last 60 years! Thinking back to the Dormobile, nothing technical about it at all. The only concession to modern design was the fact it had a steering column gear change to keep the floor clear, everything else would have been familiar to someone from 50 years earlier. From what I can see you need a minor degree just to understand the dashboard lights and the audible warnings
The wagons I drove then were exactly the same. The Bedford J Type.....



had a six cylinder GMC petrol engine and four forward gears. Nominally a 'five tonner' we regularly ran them with over 7 tons on them. The brakes and steering were not power assisted, the only concession on the brakes was a Clayton Dewandre vacuum servo that worked off the inlet manifold if you were lucky. On a sharp bend, if the chassis twisted, the steering could lock up which was interesting, like the brake performance you had to be aware of the problems and drive accordingly. Despite these drawbacks which would horrify today's drivers I can't remember an accident.
Driver aids were limited to small wipers with 8" blades, there was no heater and you had to rely on waste heat from the engine. No windscreen washers apart from climbing on the bonnet and peeing on the windscreen which was a good way of defrosting it first thing in the morning. The electrical system was 6volt and it was quite usual to need to use the starting handle first thing. You soon learned not to park too close to a wall or other obstruction that could prevent you getting the handle in! By the way, you also learned not to wrap your thumb round the starting handle because if you did and the engine kicked back a dislocated or broken thumb was almost inevitable! Ah, happy days......

[Tizer]

From what I can see you need a minor degree just to understand the dashboard lights and the audible warnings.

And then there are the electronic handbrakes...

[Stanley]

I don't know about them..... I did hear Susan and Mick discussing it but it was beyond my pay grade.....



This pic of wagons on Shap in the snow in the 1950s is a good example of something else where everything has changed. This was before to M6 of course and the West Coast route from London to Scotland was over Shap Fell in Cumbria. Even on a good summer's day the speed of the traffic was governed by the slowest and there were some very slow wagons in those days! Today's drivers would complain about this as they do traffic density! No chance of overtaking of course, notice the empty six wheel flat limited to second gear like all the others.
Notice also the bigger gaps between the wagons coming South down hill, the problem there was that they also were in second gear as you couldn't trust the brakes. The rule was to go downhill in the same gear you went up.
Notice as well the tidy sheeting and roping of the big load on the nearest wagon. They were sack and bag manufacturers, almost certainly from Aberdeen which was Jute City. Sacks are a thing of the past as is roping and sheeting on flats like that. Enclosed vans were only light vehicles.

[Big Kev]

I can remember roping and sheeting plasterboards, with my dad, out of British Gypsum in Rochester, Kent. I'd struggle to remember how to tie a dolly now as this would have been 45 years ago

[Big Kev]

From what I can see you need a minor degree just to understand the dashboard lights and the audible warnings.

And then there are the electronic handbrakes...

Electronic gear shift in a Mercedes Actros wagon was an interesting concept after getting used to the 4 over 4 range change, with 'half gear' splitter in the Scania.

[Stanley]

You never forget how to tie a dolly Kev, it would come straight back as soon as you were faced with the rope hanging down.
Plasterboard is heavier than you think isn't it.... And you have to be so careful about ropes cutting the edges....
A David Brown 6 speed and an Eaton axle was as complicated as I ever got Kev.....
On another topic China mentioned Flit insect killer. On Friday the consultant was quick to tell me that smoking causes cancers. I resisted the urge to educate him about all the nasties I have ingested over the years, far worse than black tobacco. (He did ask if I had ever worked with textile dyes.....) I wonder just how dangerous Flit was and those yellow Vapona blocks that you hung up to kill flies? I know that ICI had to discontinue them after it was found how bad for us humans they were....

[Big Kev]

You never forget how to tie a dolly Kev, it would come straight back as soon as you were faced with the rope hanging down.
Plasterboard is heavier than you think isn't it.... And you have to be so careful about ropes cutting the edges....

I'll have to get a bit of rope and see if it comes back to me

I used to board out ceilings with 8x4 half inch plaster board on my own with a 'deadman' I certainly knew how heavy they were at the end of the day.

[Tizer]

The doctors regret it if they've asked me if I was ever exposed to anything dangerous - I have to list organic solvents, carcinogens, explosives, poisons and pathogenic bacteria and viruses! But with luck (and a lot of care) I managed to keep them at bay.

[Tripps]

The advert on the back of one of the truck is very definitely 'of its time'.

black boy tea.jpg

[Big Kev]

You never forget how to tie a dolly Kev, it would come straight back as soon as you were faced with the rope hanging down.
Plasterboard is heavier than you think isn't it.... And you have to be so careful about ropes cutting the edges....

I'll have to get a bit of rope and see if it comes back to me

I used to board out ceilings with 8x4 half inch plaster board on my own with a 'deadman' I certainly knew how heavy they were at the end of the day.

[Tizer]

Oooh, Groundhog Day on OG!

[Stanley]

I noted the tea van as well David.....
Another load that was surprisingly heavy was asbestos sheets. I was once loaded at a firm on Tollpits Lane in deepest Essex and realised when I got going I had about 12 tons on the flat. That was an interesting run up country!

[Stanley]

I noted a report this morning on the design and locating of new housing developments, it criticised them for the fact they are car-centred, have no schools, shops or bus services and draws the conclusion that the political imperative to increase house-building is resulting in inadequate planning and requirements on private developers to provide these services.
It wasn't always like this. One of the triumphs of post war recovery under the 1945 Labour government was the growth of 'Council Housing', developments of houses built to a high standard in the right places with good services and all for an economic rent. This model of proper social housing was attacked by governments, first by 'Right to buy' legislation, then by starving local councils of the funds to build then by changing housing policy to focus on houses for sale. Finally 'housing associations' were set up and in many cases forced to sell to private developers who immediately raised rents.
This has developed now into a tragedy with many families evicted, put in temporary accommodation and in the worst cases, forced onto the streets. 'Progress' isn't always a good thing! Perhaps it's time we went back to the hated 'socialist' central control model. It's called taking responsibility.

[Stanley]

In the days before plastic bags everyone had a 'shopping bag' or, very often, a basket. I saw a woman with a basket a few days ago and it's the first I have seen for years! This was of course before the modern practice of wrapping all food. You weighed 5lbs of potatoes and dropped them straight into the bag or basket, dirt and all! In those days we always reckoned on 12lbs of soil in a 1cwt bag of spuds. The advantage of the basket was that any loose soil sifted out of the bottom. Loaves were dropped in the bag on top of the spuds with no wrapping. Everything else like biscuits was loose as well and was weighed out in paper bags. We had a lot more pragmatism in those days, the saying was that 'everyone eats a peck of dirt before they die'! No wonder our bins are full of waste wrappings!
The butcher's and the fishmonger's used 'greaseproof paper'. I think you can still buy it but it's called baking parchment now.
I remember my dad being given a full dinner service by one of his Staffordshire mates one Xmas. It arrived in a large wooden barrel on a railway cart, the crockery was embedded in clean wood shavings and was all in perfect condition.

[Tizer]

New housing developments...British housebuilding is still stuck in the past and needs booting into the 21st Century. The private housebuilding companies won't do it because it will need a very large investment in new equipment and training. It's an ideal project for the Labour Party to promote because it will need government funding and will raise the technical quality of the workforce. We need to catch up with housebuilding methods on the Continent where timber frame houses are built in factories to tight quality standards, transported like a kit to the final location and erected on site in a short time. They have much more insulation than even our new houses. Here we seem to be frightened of timber frame houses and wedded to masonry (`an Englishman's home is his castle' has a lot to answer for). In urban areas it does make sense to have some masonry in the walls to act as sound insulation but you don't need to lay it brick by brick. Once again, the factory approach is better. Large concrete panels can be made in factories, taken to the site and attached to the outside of a timber frame house. Similar large panels are already used on blocks of flats and office blocks. The design is planned so that window and door frames slot into place. Roofs can all be constructed from the outset as living areas instead of being `dead' areas obstructed by framework. We won't get these changes from the present housebuilders so it's up to the government to set an example.

[Tripps]

I've seen a couple of TV progs about this company. Huf Haus.

The efficiency and organisation all along the chain was formidable. You'd almost have thought they were a German company.

[Tizer]

Haha, they're usually German or Scandinavian but Potton is a British company. You can pop along to St Neot's to visit their show houses: Potton