Ford Russian Ran Successfully Completed
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BY A. J. P. WILDING
FOLLOWING a difficult 406-mile run on the last leg of the trip (see last week's issue) the convoy of Ford D-Series trucks and accompanying vehicles with which I travelled arrived in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi at a minute to midnight, after a I6-hour journey, on Thursday. This meant that the schedule set for the 1,500 miles from Kiev had just been maintained. Credit must be given to the quality of the new models, for the entire journey—and the previous run of 1,550 miles up to Kiev—was made without trouble in spite of the vehicles being pushed to their limit.
My report in fast week's issue covered that part of the run during which the convoy was accompanied by British and Continental journalists up to Pyatigorsk. Two-days were taken to get from there to Sochi, the overnight stop being at Tbilisi, in the Russian state of Georgia. We had to cross two ranges of the Caucasian mountains, often above the snow line. The road was very difficult and narrow in one 8,000-ft. pass, with 12-ft. snow banks. Gradients were both long and winding.
Darkness had fallen on the second day of this leg befote we reached the most difficult part of the whole journey—the coast road to Sochi. This was so bad that at times we thought we must be on the wrong road.
Throughout the run, obtaining accurate figures for fuel consumption had proved difficult. This was, in any case, such an arduous run, with low gears being engaged for much of the time and frequent brake applications being necessary, that figures would have had little relevance to normal operating conditions. It was also unfortunate that the vehicles were not fully laden.
The D.500 was near to its designed gross weight limit, with a 4 ton 8 cwt. load, and gave a consumption of 141 m.p.g. The petrol-engined D.600 carried 3 ton 7 cwt. and gave 10 m.p.g. The D.800 had a load amounting to 4 ton 10.75 cwt. and the consumption figure for this vehicle was 12.8 m.p.g.