The beauties of old Albion
Page 22
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SEVERAL MONTHS ago I took one of your road test writers to task slightly over his suggestion that the Albion six-speed gearbox fitted to the Clydesdale under test was a little bit long in the tooth, and in need of replacement by a synchromesh type, implied to be of European origin.
I noticed from the corn parison tests on a number of 16-ton vehicles (CM, March 8) that another one of your test writers shares the view that I have long held, when he wrote about the DAF he had driven.
There is a very real fear from an operator's view that a driver, frustrated by the uncertain and heavy change speed system of this particular gearbox, will begin to -take it outon the vehicle, and that maintenance costs will increase due to the abuse of the gearbox.
I would not suggest that it is entirely deliberate to start with, but after the continual difficulties of trying to find gear positions, the heavy movement into gear and the noise which accompanies the attempt to engage it, there is quite a temptation to use force when every other method seems to fail.
I do not know whether I am correct. but I think that the sixspeed box fitted to the Ford DSeries in the parallel test, and which was also criticised for bad selection, has a similar ancestry, even if it is not actually made by the same firm.
As on this occasion, your test writer had named the ZF gearbox fitted to the DAF, and as I wrote in support of the Albion box fitted to the Clydesdale, perhaps it is opportune to express a hope that the proposed co-operation between Leyland and ZF on the new gearbox project will not simply be one-way.
Leyland. with the ageless Albion design, makes a superb constant mesh gearbox for light and middleweight vehicles that is a joy to use and has such a light change.
Could ZF learn how to do the same thing with a newer and heavier gearbox for the 1980s for any new Leyland range? Possibly then the operator would have the benefit of a low maintenance cost product and the driver once more has an easy change box similar to that fitted to countless Comets, Super Comets and Clydesdales over the past 20 or more years.
R. M. EALES Wellingborough Northants