(Click on Photos to enlarge)
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Bruce Elston of Botswana, Africa has graciously answered a question I asked of him about one of my favourite old trucks of the 1950's/60's. The LEYLAND HIPPO, an underpowered (By Canadian standards) fascinating truck that grows on you. A tough machine that was pretty hard to hurt. The following is his description to my question, --- Diesel Gypsy. The photo on the right is taken from the Australian Outback during the 1950's, just one other part of the world that Leyland penetrated. |
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Leyland is now owned by Paccar and still churning out trucks for export all over the world, but "badged" as Paccar brands. England's roads in the first part of the 20th century were definitely not suited to large or fast trucks. They do say "The rolling English drunkard built the rolling English roads!" There was a blanket 20 M.P.H. speed limit for trucks until after WW 2; also strict legislation relating to vehicle size and axle loads. These conspired to make the "conventional" truck layout impractical so far as maximising payloads was concerned. Everything over about six tons went COE. Leyland's trucks (and buses) were generally given animal names to identify the various models: Octopus (4 axle "8" wheeler), Hippo (3 axle "6" wheeler), Buffalo - a turbocharged Super Hippo, the aptly named Steer (this was a 3 axle "6" wheeler, but with 2 steering and one drive axle (often referred to as a "Chinese Six" by British drivers), then came the Beaver (2 axle 4 x 2), - so that makes the wine tanker in the last picture of Bill Weatherstone's Hippo memories actually a Super Beaver. For operation in England all these trucks would normally be COE with the few exceptions, that Bill Weatherstone mentioned, of conventionals used on float (we would say low-bed or low-loader) work. Notwithstanding the situation in England, Leyland produced thousands of "conventional" Hippos and Beavers for the "colonial" markets; in this form they were known as the Super Hippo or Super Beaver - which is how Bill's truck came about.
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| (Photo Below) Having the ability to slog through mud - Leyland Beaver bus approaching. | ||||||||
boxes where the relatively small engine screams away in a low gear, but can't pull the next one up. This arrangement was only offered as an option in pre - WW 2 days, but I honestly thought it was standard post-war - I certainly never saw a Leyland Hippo or Beaver in Africa without one. Perhaps Leyland's African operation treated it as a standard requirement. Rear axles had worm (screw) gears and were utterly reliable over huge mileage if you looked after the lubrication properly and "matched" the tyres carefully - this was essential with no inter-axle diff. (We used "William Penn" SAE 250 grade gear oil!!)
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Next development was in mid-1960's with the Super Hippo "Power Plus" version. Power steering (Hooray), air assist clutch, the old 680 motor up-rated to 200 hp. An Albion 6 speed transmission with 6th being an overdrive plus a built-in "under-drive" splitter working on the counter-shaft; the catch with this gear arrangement was that the splitter could not work on fifth gear as that was "direct drive" - there was absolutely nothing you could do about the wide 4th to 5th gap. It was a case, if heavy loaded on just the wrong grade, of "rowing" it along with the gear lever - grab 5th and then slowly lose it, down to 4th till she screams and up to 5th you go again, and so on - frustration personified. But just think what you could have done if that counter-shaft splitter had been an overdrive; it would not only fill the 4th to 5th gap, but give you a double overdrive on top of 6th - dream on! The down-side? Loss of the deep reduction 1st gear - I didn't weep at the thought! Also Leyland installed new design hub-reduction rear axles which were great as singles as in the "Beaver" but gave no end of hassles as double drives if you did much dirt road work. The inter axle prop shaft was at quite an angle up to a through-drive shaft in the front diff housing. This meant that as the axles bump up and down on bad roads the prop shaft, no matter how well greased, tends to give the rear bearing of the through-shaft a pounding with disastrous results - a real "Achilles Heel" in a potentially good truck. We did develop some modifications that alleviated the problem slightly. I even converted one Hippo from 6 x 4 to 6 x 2 for a client - an exercise I vowed never to do again as the complexities just seemed to grow as the job progressed! Sadly, the new Hippo's potential was never realized and it was about this time that Leyland started to lose the plot, to be overtaken in Africa and elsewhere by the likes of Mercedes Benz, M.A.N. etc - not to mention the Americans.
I have a 1936 (or thereabouts) Leyland Super Beaver that I acquired in Ndola, Zambia where I lived through the 1960's and 70's, it was known around the town as the "Queen Mary" and had started life with the town management board as a "night soil" tanker (!). With the advent of water born sewerage it was then re-bodied with a flat deck In those days the local Motor Sports Club organized an annual vintage and veteran (social) motor rally passing through most of the "Copperbelt" (mining) towns. It was a Sunday run, with a mid-day stop for judging the vehicles and ending with prize giving and bbq. We (the Motor Club Committee) managed to persuade the Town Council to enter the QM for a few years. The Council insisted on a qualified driver so it always fell to me and my great friend the late Bruce Kirtley to crew for the trip. I would collect the truck about a week before the run along with a couple of gallons of the Council's official green paint and a set of municipal-crest decals. The local Leyland distributor would do a swift re-spray as well as loan a smart new set of wheels and tyres from a stock vehicle.
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My acquisition of her was sheer luck. When finally auctioned off by the council in the late 1960's she was knocked down to an old guy who operated a small quarry. He wanted it to haul rock from the face up to his primary crusher. Fortunately the "driver" very soon (before too much other damage was done) snaggled up the transmission (stuck in gear, with the shift lever jumped out of the selector) and no-one knew how to fix it - and I never said a word; so it lay at the side of the track with a load of rock on board.
That afternoon I press-ganged a friend into helping and went back with a truck, oxy-acetylene, tow-pole etc. We cut all the "U" bolts holding the load body which we then chained to a tree and pulled the chassis out from under. With my friend standing on the clutch and steering I towed it home. A few minutes jiggling in the selectors had the shift problem solved, gallon of diesel in the Autovac, about 3 or 4 yard tow down the front lawn and she was running! There followed a leisurely 3 or 4 year strip down and re-build which required very little in the way of replacement parts - incredibly Leyland were still using identical steering tie-rod ends, road-spring pins and bushes and similar small items. The only item that we couldn't source was a replacement for a piston with a cracked skirt. I probably could have had one made at vast cost, but elected to weld and re-machine. Its still going fine as far as I can tell. When my wife and I decided to move down to Botswana from Zambia I acquired a large van body from a friend which I adapted to fit the QM. Quite a job as the chassis rails are quite a bit wider apart than modern trucks and the body itself was much too long for the chassis. I turned it into what is known in U.K. as a "Luton" body, with the lower front cut back and the top of the body extending forward over the cab. The trip to Botswana was going to be about 1000 miles and, with a top speed around 35 mph, a daunting prospect. I have found the old Leyland two-speed auxiliary transmission can be an absolute boon in the right circumstances, so with all our furniture and stuff due to be loaded on I installed one I had spare, but put it in "back to front" so it worked as both a splitter and overdrive for a cruising speed about 45 mph - only a pleasure!
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