Night and day this is The one
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"MAINLY favourable" was the National Freight Corpora tion verdict on the Seddon Atkinson 400 tractive unit which has just completed a 12-month trial with North Eastern BRS Ltd.
Fitted with the now-superceded Rolls-Royce 280 engine, the vehicle featured a ninespeed Fuller gearbox and a Seddon axle with a final drive ratio of 5.47.
Working from the Barnsley and Consett branches on a 24-hour basis, it clocked over 103,000 km (64,000 miles) during the six-month period. It operated on a night trunk run hauling steel and on daytime general delivery work carry ing an average of 20 tons payload for 88 per cent of its mileage.
Total downtime was 23 days, with 10 days of that accounted for by an oil pump failure and consequent bearing replacement at 78,500 km (48,777 miles). A gearbox rear suspension spring failed costing another four days mainly due to unavailability of spares.
Failures of the speedometer, cooling system, and alternator were also recorded. And com plaintswere made about steering vibration and wheel wobble which were corrected by adjustments and wheel balancing. In spite of this, a consistently heavy rate of tyre wear has occurred necessitating three tyre changes.
It is also thought that the vibration was responsible for the failure of a rear cab mounting through metal fatigue.
In general the vehicle has been extremely popular with drivers for its liveliness and with the engineers for its reliability. Originally supplied by Seddon Atkinson forasixmonth free trial, it was subsequently bought by the company and the trial period extended to cover a full year.
Fuel consumption improved from 44.8 to 37.9 lit/100km (6.3 to 7.45mpg) after the fitting of a road speed governor.