Interesting Features in a New Hands Semi-trailer
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Low-platform Machine Carrier with Ingenious Wheel and Brake Arrangement Which Enables Bogies to be Detached by the Removal of Only Two Bolts Each
COMPLETED recently for a Glasgow operator, the machinery-carrying semi-trailer, illustrated on this page, is a product of Hands (Letchworth), Ltd., Letchworth', Herts. It incorporates certain novel and interesting features. Among these are the ease with which the rear wheels, complete with brake gear and mudguards, can be detached, and the suspension arrangements.
Built of electrically welded rolled-steel girder-section main members, boxed at intervals and braced with pressed crossmembers, the frame has an overall length of 20 ft. 5 ins., the low-level part being 14 ft. 1 in. long and only 1 ft. A ins, above the ground.
It incorporates two main longitudinals, each of which accommodates at the rear a cantilever spring mounted on a bushed pivot. To the end of each spring is secured, by
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a ball fitment, the two-wheeled-bogie carriage. It will be observed from an accompanying picture that the spring rests upon the undersIung portion of this, being held in
position by the plate, which has a steel coupling ball. The arrangement allows for free oscillation of the wheels, but provides for torque and directional stresses to be
resisted. Moreover, each axle can be detached by the removal of only two bolts. When these have been withdrawn and the frame jacked up, the bogies can be rolled away, ready for lowering the end of the trailer. Our smaller illustratioh also shows that the brakes are applied by a push-rod, acting upon a lever fulcrumed at one side and connected to a vertical double-ended lever on the other side. This operates a short pull-rod attached to a third arm on the final wedge-actuating unit. The brakes are Girling products with a Hands vacuum system.
Designed to carry 12-ton loads, the trailing wheels are equipped with India 36 by 8 tyres, and the unit is attached to a Commer forward-control N5 machine having 34 by 7 tyres. The wheelbase dimensions from front wheels to driving wheels and thence to the trailing wheels, respectively, are 9 ft. 2 ins. and 9 It 9-ii; ins., and the overall length of the Hands machine is 24 ft. 2 ins.