T HE original of a new Duple coachbody conception has three
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outstanding features. It is truly allmetal; it is prefabricated for export, and it can be built with "green" labour.
Prefabrication is the outcome of current circumstances. Shipping space is still frugal and costs are high. If a bus body can be shipped like a box of bricks—cheap, compact and safe—and easily assembled at its destination, the burdens of buyer, seller and carrier are greatly lightened.
Duple Bodies and Motors, Ltd.,,The Hyde, Hendon, London, N.W.9, has planned to carry the system of shipment in dismantled form to its logical conclusion in this venture by using master jigs and tools. Just as unskilled labour may be employed in the fabrication of most of the component parts, so may it be used in assembly. This is particularly important in the case of overseas markets. In addition, should the type come into service in the home market, the use of unskilled labour, both in forming and in fitting, would exert a marked influence in production methods.
On a Bedford chassis, the fully loaded prototype body has proved itself in a severe test representing 5,000 miles of the worst colonial going. It might be thought that, being the prototype, the body would have certain advantages in such a joust, but this was not the case. It was built and assembled with unskilled labour and is faithfully representative.
Knowledge derived from aircraft construction played its part in the hoopsticks, are interchangeable and universal.
Construction of the underframe and floor unit is .radically different from accepted practice, inasmuch as they constitute a complete raft, mounted on the chassis on rubber anti-vibration pick-ups. The system allows complete freedom of movement of the chassis independently from the body structure, and major high-velocity deflections of the chassis, which are extremely damag ing to the joints in the main body_ structure, are absorbed. This point was well proved by 'running the prototype vehicle under fully loaded conditions with all maintenance floor-traps removed. The variation in deflection between chassis and body was readily apparent to the eye. The floor framing is fabricated from rolled and drawn carbon or mild-steel sections, and is panelled with an aluminium alloy non-corrodible chequer tread-plate extending some distance up the .sidesof the body, forming a triangular bracket. The underside of the floor panels is sound-proofed with a bituminous impregnated felt sheeting.
The body-structure proper consists of the roof, rear dome. front screen, near side, complete with entrance doors and wing valances, and the off side. In