Commer truck just keeps on going and going
BY RICHARD WOODD
Relevant offers
A 1967 COMMER diesel truck that they acquired with the farm 26 years ago is still doing valuable service for the Marshall family on their Tikorangi sheep farm.
"It's never given us any major worries, and no trouble getting warrants of fitness so we've just kept using it," says Les Marshall, whose son Ian is now pretty much in charge of things.
"We bought it with the farm, from Richard Sarten in 1984. I put in a new radiator and new air brakes and reconditioned the motor," says Mr Marshall senior.
"It always starts first touch, with no heat plugs either."
The truck's engine makes a distinctive noise, a kind of constipated muffle that is known in the trade as the "Commer knock." It can be heard coming from Waitara, the Marshalls say.
Ian Marshall always used the Commer to pick up cull cows around the mountain.
"I put an ad in the Daily News which read: 'The Commer is red, the warrant was due, and do you know what? It got through.'
"That novelty worked well for us but I haven't done it for a couple of years because the truck wasn't road legal.
"However, I needed to get 80 weaners to the Stratford sale recently and to save on cartage costs I decided to try for the warrant and she flew through. So we're back in business."
He says a couple of his mates "have flash trucks and they're always disgusted when I get a new warrant for this one.
"It's noisy and hellish to drive. It will do about 55kmh flat out, unloaded."
It has a maximum laden weight of 12 tonnes.
Ian vows he's going to restore the old workhorse one of these days.
It's been used to go round the neighbourhood for Christmas carols a few times.
His son Rhys, a boarder at New Plymouth Boys' High School, says the Commer's next major public outing will be in a hostel stunt at the school swimming sports on February 19.
"We're planning something very special as a surprise for the day boys," he says.
Footnote: This model Commer gets its unique noise from the Rootes TS3, a two-stroke diesel three-cylinder horizontally- opposed piston engine, which came to be known as the "Commer Knocker" due to the sound it produced.
The engine has three cylinders, each containing a pair of pistons arranged with the combustion chamber formed between the crown of the piston pair and the cylinder walls. It was designed specifically for the Commer range of trucks and buses.
They were low-profile units designed to be deployed under the floor of the cab.
Each cylinder has specially designed ports to control the inlet of air and outlet of the exhaust which are controlled by the pistons. The pistons which control the inlet ports are known as the air pistons (left-hand side of the engine) and the pistons which control the exhaust ports are the exhaust pistons.
The pistons are connected through short conrods to rockers mounted on a common shaft on either side. The rockers are, in turn, connected through short rods to a single crankshaft.
A Rootes-type scavenge blower (not a true supercharger), made by Wade Engineering of Birmingham, is mounted to the front of the engine and is driven from the timing gear train at the rear of the engine by way of a long slim shaft to supply air under pressure into the cylinder which helps in the scavenging of the exhaust gases.
- © Fairfax NZ News
Sponsored links
Should the council exercise its right to ban smoking in council-owned flats?
Related story: Smoking ban expected
