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OT- A real piece of lifting gear

Dad bought this piece of US military surplus when I was about 3/4 years old and vowed it would be the last thing he ever sold:

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it was sold on when he retired some years ago and picked up by a collector. Not many secondhand pieces of kit deliver revenue for 30+ years!

You'll notice the diff on the front axle - yep real traction. The winch is missing from the front, but its partner at the back could drag a D8 out of a hole. The stays on the jib were locked down to the chassis to increase the lifting capacity. I have a picture somewhere of Tiny being used to pull down a crusher plant, breaking a couple of wire ropes, the last one being over an inch or so thick. Maybe it was already damaged. In polite terms I was very frightened when the rope reared up and made its way back...

It was manufactured by Ward-Le-France in the US, and was initially equipped with a guzzler (and I don't mean 10mpg either!) of a petrol engine, promptly swapped for a diesel.

If there's any interest in this sort of stuff I'll pitch some of the "family album" up onto the website (given time!)

Best Regards

Steve

Reply to
Steve
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A bit familiar, a local firm has had one for even longer and as far as I know they are still using it for the odd truck recovery. What was a family transport business, was founded on surplus army vehicles after WWII. Well into the 50s, they had about 5 acres of surplus vehicles that they cannabalized for parts. The last to go, about 5 years ago, were a row of about 10 Guy 6 x 4 searchlight carriers. They had sidevalve engines in which Guy had inclined the valves and utilised rocker actuation. My father had always wondered why they had bothered, as in the local vernacular: "They couldn't pull the skin off a rice pudding."

Tom

Reply to
Tom

Nice one!! :-)

Ward la France (note spelling) were very well known for fire engines, which were one of their specialities. we saw a V12 and V8 petrol engine of theirs at at the agricultural museum in Heidrick:

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Peter

Reply to
Peter A Forbes

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