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Back to back: the T45 file

4th April 1981, Page 31
4th April 1981
Page 31
Page 31, 4th April 1981 — Back to back: the T45 file
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Introduction

'HEN GM Road-tested five 40 • nne tractive units last year :M, October 25, 1980) we iticised some British manufacTers, including Leyland, for beg slow to respond to the pos. bility of an increase in gross eights.

Now that Sir Arthur Armitage Is made his recommendations seems that the indecision has read to some European menucturers.

Spec for spec, Leyland's Dadtrain closely matches MerKles-Benz' recently-introduced Monner with the 0M422 I enne rated at 206kW (276 bhp). le two tractive units even ;are the same model number 16.28.

But Mercedes were unwilling r let their 1628 be tested gainst Leyland's Roadtrain at 3 tonnes over here because io decision has yet been made ; to which of the NG80 range ill be offered as a 38-tonner in re UK".

Mercedes-Benz (UK) didn't ant you to believe that the 528 was the only 38-tonner it ad to offer.

Leyland, though, was happy 'lough to run a Roadtrain at 38 )nnes gcw around our normal cottish test route and they also greed to let us test a Cruiser at le same time at its design cornination weight of 34 tonnes. We used CM's usual tandem de van trailer for the Cruiser nd the same Al Trailers tri-axle It that was used for the 40wine test, for the Roadtrain.

So what we have is the firstver test of vehicles in this couny running at the weights recommended by Armitage for two-axle tractive unit/two-axle semi-trailer and two-axle trac tive unit/three-axle semi-trailer combinations.

It must be emphasised that overall fuel consumption and average speed results should not be compared with other CM tests because our route this time had to be changed in a number of ways to satisfy the various local authorities — remember we were running above C and U weight limits.

Leyland had run the Cruiser at 32 tonns gross around a similar route before we got our hands on it, and it is interesting to compare the results. Using Leyland's figures, overall fuel consumption at 32 tons was 0.11 mpg better than at 34 tonnes and average speed was 3.7 km/h (2.3 mph) faster.

We shall be publishing a test of the Cruiser at 32 tons in the near future.

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