Up-rated Chassis for Fire Appliances
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ALBION-CARMICHAEL FIRE CHIEF ON SPECIAL CHIEFTAIN
RECENTLY developed in conjunction with Carmichael am! Sons (Worcester) Ltd., Gregory's Mill Street, Worcester, and based on a standard Albion-Chieftain Super Six chassis of 12 ft. 4-5 in. or 13 ft. 4-5 in. wheelbase, a new Albion forward-control tire-appliance chassis is known as the Carmichael Albion Fire Chief and is equipped with a Leyland 0.400 Power Plus diesel engine developing 125 b.h.p. at 2,400 r.p.m. in place of the Leyland 370 diesel fitted as standard to the Super Six, which produces its maximum output of 110 b.b.p. at this speed. Although the chassis will be universally available for lire-appliance applications, it will not be offered as a goods-vehicle chassis. A Carmichael demonstration fire tender has a gross vehicle weight of 8-5 tons.
According to a spokesman of the Carmichael company, the chassis represents an all-important addition to available chassis that are suitable for fire-brigade work. Its first cost is highly competitive, service facilities are readily available at home and overseas, its ample power and tive-speed-and-overdrivc gearbox provide rapid ,acceleration and a top speed in excess of 60 m.p.h., the vehicle corners well, the air hydraulic brakes give good stopping power and the use of a diesel engine offers multiple benefits.
An interesting feature of the chassis equipment is a sandwich-type power take-off evolved by the Carmichael company which permits the fulltorque of the engine to be transmitted from the jack shaft of the gearbox to the main pump, mounted centrally in the chassis, through a propeller shaft of negligible angularity. The helically-cut ground gears of the p.t.-o. give silent and efficient operation andof greater importance— freedom from drive chatter obviates frothing and consequent heating-up of the pump. The p.t.-o. unit is also avail
able for any application in which full engine torque is required for driving ancillary units.
Fitting this type of p.t.-o. has necessitated moving the gearbox 7 in. to the rear and to compensate for the change in the gear shift position, Carmichael and Sons have fitted a remote control mechanism, the short control lever of which projects through the cowl. Movement of the lever is more positive than that of the standard lever, in that it virtually duplicates movement of the short selector lever.
To prevent engine overheating when the vehicle is stationary, and a high torque is being transmitted to the pump, water is fed from the pressure side of the pump to a coolant/cold-water heatexchanger below the radiator and returned to the intake side of the pump in a closed circuit, flow being controlled by a lever in the rear cabinet. Dual filters permit cleaning of one of the filters without stopping the flow.
In the case of the demonstration water tender, the galvanized mild-steel fullybaffled 400-gal. tank is of rectangular section and is open at the top. The six man crew cab has a standard Carmichael glass-fibre front panel and plastics onepiece roof, glass-fibre also being used for the instrument panels, the engine cowl and for the 1-5 in. of sound insulating material attached to the inner surface of the cowl, sound insulation being required to facilitate radio conversations.
The main pump is a CarmichaelGwynne, high-low pressure, two-stage centrifugal unit, the low-pressure outlet giving a flow of 500 g.p.m. at 100 p.s.i. and the high-pressure otitlet a flow of 44 gp.m. at 500 p.s.i. A pressure of 350 psi. is normally the maximum required by fire brigades to create a penetrating " fog " and a useful reserve of pressure is therefore provided.
Fully stressed 16-g. pop-riveted aluminium Panelling is employed for the bodywork, which has pillars of aluminium channel section and is mounted on
mild-steel, channel-section rails, Lightalloy 18-g, panels are-used for the cab, apart from the front panel.
Fire Chief chassis are also offered with other types of Carmichael fire-appliance bodywork .of light-alloy or steel construction, built to Home Office JCDD specifications, which include dual-purpose, major-pump and emergency tender bodies.