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[w3526602]

Hi,

At one point in time, two wheels very close together counted as a single wheel for VED and driving licence purposes. I think yje Hienkel (sp?) bubble car had two rear wheels. Or was it the Dornier?

What did they call the four-wheel Meschersmitt (sp?) Something like "Tiger"?

At least one Mini had it's rear suspension arms (One? Both?) swapped side to side, to bring the wheel(s) into the middle of the car. Maybe the Stimson (Stimpson) Scorcher kit-car did the same?

There was also a trailer that was fixed hard against the tow-car, but free to "pitch and yaw". The single wheel was mounted in the middle of the back of the trailer, in a pair of swivelling forks. It steered like you holding a bicycle by the saddle, and pulling it backwards.

602

[Porkscratching]

I seem to recall they produced (possiby in the 80s? ) some tiny little thing with a wheel, you could bolt to a larger motorbike, thereby making it technically a sidecar outfit and avoiding the  full licence  issue etc..

[oddjob]

A great example of when a law is made people immediately find a way round it!

[oilstain]

^^^^ if you had one of these on each side does it become a car

[Nomisb]

A great example of when a law is made people immediately find a way round it!

They were sooooo much fun...

[Wittsend]

..... and made in Norfolk - near me 

Put an ill-thought through law in place - a knee jerk reaction to some received problem and some clever dick will think a way round it.
So many examples of this (please don't list).

I have to say in all of this licence ramble - is it not easier just to take the test
Probably works out cheaper than trying to dodge the rules.

Eventually, those of us with Grandfather rights will die out and new drivers coming along now will have to take the relevant test.
(Just make sure all your entitlements are transferred onto your new license when you hit 70.)



 

[w3526602]

^^^^ if you had one of these on each side does it become a car

Hi,

By my reckoning .... YES.

Anything with more that three wheels is a motor car.  A three wheeler is a motor cycle unless (according to my memory) it weighs more than 8cwt. Same memory says a motor-bicycle may not weigh more than 8cwt . And yet again, any motor vehicle weighing more than 8cwt must have a reverse gear.

The above memories were stored between 1956 (into bikes) and  1958 (into cars). Treat them with whatever contempt you feel they deserve.

In Barbara's early days at DVLC (EO in charge of a Driver Enquiry Unit team), she had to deal with a "howl of protest" from an annoyed biker. He claimed he had taken his bike test on a 50cc two wheeler ... that had been de-restricted, and had been given a Test Pass" for a moped.

She said she would up-grade his licence ... if he could provide evidence that his bike was unrestricted. He did, so she did.

Alan, it takes time and money to take a test ... which you might fail. Judging by the number of those "stabilisers" you see on the road, most bikers did take and pass their test ... or probably graduated to cars.

Memory fades ... can you ride a combination, on L-plates, continuously, or is it still two years ON, one year OFF?  Do the same restrictions still apply to those who have passed a car test?  Thinks ... must look at my driving licence, see if I have provisional bike entitlement.

My UK MOPED entitlement gave me FULL bike entitlement in Malaya (Malaya did not have a seperate MOPED group) but that was in 1965.

602

[Peter Holden]

602
My mum was a WAAF driver during the war.  She left service with an all groups licence.

(On the airfield she illegally drove petrol bowsers and tractors pulling bomb dollies to arm the Lancaster bombers, both were supposed only to be driven by men.  She was an expert at reversing trailers, even 4 wheeled ones)

Peter

[w3526602]

She was an expert at reversing trailers, even 4 wheeled ones

Hi Peter,

If I remember correctly ... 1960ish, so a long time ago, and I'd only passed my driving test in 1958 (prewar Austin 10) and again in 1959 (Bedford RL 4x4), and had never towed a trailer before, I had cause to move an RAF bowser (600gallons?) with a swivelling front axle (what's the technical term for that?) ... I guess it would be similar to reversing a car on a towing dolly. I was driving a SWB Land Rover, probably an S1.

Shall we just say I was not very successful with the reversing bit.   (Luckily, nobody was watching). Does anyone have a picture of such a trailer?

"Maj" was in the ATS during the war, so knows how to change CB points.

More recently, Maj took a group of "Eastern Dignitaries" for a tour of the Balmoral estate. They climbed out of the Land Rover looking very shaken. They were not used to being driven by a woman ... let alone a mad woman.

I guess most of us have seen the film "Battle of Britain". Most of the incidents depicted actually happened. (I suspect the pilot with the burnt face was the author of "The Final Enemy"). In one scene, the bodies of straffed  WAAFs were laid out on the grass. Their friends and colleagues were taking it fairly calmly ... until they saw that one girl had been decapitated.  Also true was the incident of the pilot who left his two sons in a church, while he went to rescue civilians trapped in bombed buildings. He returned to find the church had been bombed.

The German bomber that jettisoned it's  bomb load over London changed the course of the war (The "miracle" mentioned in the film). To my mind, Britain was a "dead man walking". We retaliated, by bombing Berlin. Hitler moved his bombers away from military targets, and started bombing civilian targets, which gave the RAF a chance to regroup.

Whatever, we owe the "ladies" a big thankyou.

602 (former occupier of both Anderson and Morrison air raid shelters. The Morrison shelters were allocated to pregnant women, so they could sleep indoors, rather than in a hole in the garden.

[Peter Holden]

I watched a youtube video recently of a driver reversing a truck and 4 wheeled trailer (the one with the swiveling front axle not a close coupled one) into the loading bay at a Home Bargains store.  His starting point was a narrow road and he had to reverse through a small openning and then round a corner onto the bay.  He must have done it loads of times to be able to do it so quickly, he knew exactly where to put it to get the next manouvre right, a bit like playing chess.  It was very interesting to watch

[GlenAnderson]

My first proper lorry driving job was with a steer-axle trailer. Took me a good while to get used to it, but I mastered it eventually. You have to use the prime mover to position the steer axle where you need it to be, to make the trailer go where you want. 😉

[gvo416j R.I.P.]

Two types of drag trailer - turntable, where the whole front axle turns  [similar type thing as the 5th wheel on an artic trailer], and steered trailers where the drawbar is connected to the front pair of trailer wheels via a system of drag links and just the front pair of trailer wheels turn , much the same as a normal 4 wheel vehicle.

In my experience most old military stuff and the large older air compressors and generators had the latter type steered by drag links from the drawbar, whereas a lot of commercial vehicles and the majority of farm vehicles used the turntable system.
 Quite a few people who grew up on farms used to have at least some experience of 4 wheel turntable trailers [with a steer axle at the front]. We had one but I wasn't particularly good at reversing it.

There was a Dutch cattle lorry driver who went to Bakewell Market in the 1960s with a 6 wheel cattle lorry and 4 wheel turntable trailer and everyone used to stand around and gawk at him in awe as he would pull up and reverse into the 1950s size loading slots without ever uncoupling and pushing the trailer in with the front end of the lorry -- slots that a lot of drivers struggled to get medium sized 4 wheeler lorries into. He would then uncouple and reverse into another slot with the lorry [no through loading like they do in Oz]. The only concession to the size was that he had to leave via the closed road which the stall market occasionally trespassed onto -- a lot of unhappy stall holders ensued as they had to move the offending stalls, usually by the bare minimum, and sometimes got drenched by nervous cattle doing what they do [a lot of] through the ventilated sides of the cattle bodies.

[w3526602]

and sometimes got drenched by nervous cattle doing what they do [a lot of] through the ventilated sides of the cattle bodies.

Hi,
A cattle truck (c/w cattle) got stuck on the steep slope into the quarry at the end of my back lane.

My school teacher neighbour commented on the "effluent" pouring out from under the drop tail-gate.

602

[gvo416j R.I.P.]

A cattle truck (c/w cattle) got stuck on the steep slope into the quarry at the end of my back lane.

My school teacher neighbour commented on the "effluent" pouring out from under the drop tail-gate.

True there were absolutely no rules or laws to prevent that in the past, just as even now you do not have to clean up when moving stock across or along the road.

I think the rules for new vehicles have changed nowadays though. AFAIK they all have holding tanks for any effluent and have  to have the vents high enough so that there is no direct ejection of material from the sides.

[gatekrash]

Hi,

Quite a few Yoncs ago, I was told about a "military lady" (I can't remember if Army or RAF) who had a licence to drive just about anything ... all tests passed in civilian vehicles but paid for by the military. There is something in my mind, that I was told, that the RAF now contract out driving tuition to a civilian driving school (s)?  Does anybody have "chapter and verse".


602

The RAF and I think all the MOD use Defence School of Transport (DST) Leconfield (ex RAF Leconfield) for driver training. I know of some youngsters who've gone there for a week to get a D1 on their licence to drive 17 seat minibuses, I never had to being of that age where it was already on my licence. They had to do all the bits that was expected of a civvie bus driver too, including stopping correctly at bus stops, even though they were never going to use the minibus for that purpose !

DST is mainly military staffed, they have civvie support though.

Once it's on your civvie licence, you still have to do familiarisation days on the particular vehicle type you want to drive to get it added to your military licence which is a separate MOD document, else the MT section won't let you have the vehicle. I had to prove I could drive a Land Rover, even though the WO in MT knew me, and knew I had been daily driving a Landy for years as my personal vehicle - I still had to go and drive a couple of times around the station with him so he could sign me off. And because I hadn't driven it onto the grassy hill, he wouldn't give me "off road" on my military permit either !