S2C Forum Archives
Main Section => Workshop Wisdom => 602's Musings => Topic started by: 100+9 on January 20, 2020, 12:23:59 AM
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In the other thread MWAD7 shows us his Sankey, and very nice it is too. He's not alone, many have one. Normally I'd tell you a man can't have enough trailers. I have a trailer for everything; bikes, camping, bowser, car - I've four. I should have a Sankey too. Only I've never seen the fascination. The Sankey appears inordinately ungainly, heavy and awkward to use, with less practical value than any I own. They're small for their apparent awkwardness. I think I'm right , you're wanting a NATO hitch too. Nonetheless they seem the default choice, can anyone say why?
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Why.
Couldn't resist....... :thud
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I thought that until a mate bought one... Really really handy bit of kit and so solidly built. Granted I fitted a tailgate to it, but its done many miles up and down the country between us. Handy being on LR rims and tyres too. His is converted to a 50mm ball hitch which helps.
Andrew
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The Sankey appears inordinately ungainly, heavy and awkward to use, with less practical value than any I own.
That's pretty much the Land Rover itself summed up, yet people still enjoy using them.
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I had a standard one for several years, solidly built, well balanced and a delight to tow. I used mine for everything from work platform, collecting firewood to shifting engines and, on one occasion, a flat pack 88".
Wish I'd kept it, and currently looking for another.
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Why ???
Because they were cheap !
and plenty about.
If you have an MoD vehicle you were good to go.
They tow really well :first
If you have the space to park it - why not ???
:RHD
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I'm warming to the idea because, yes, they're cheap. Certainly good for engines, small but heavy items. The NATO hitch would stop the neighbours hassle to borrow.
Anything makes sense when it's cheap enough, and a Sankey is. Only, why the massive variation in prices? To the unwitting, prices are as puzzling as the trailers. Straight from the military at £100. eBay has them needing work at £65, decent order at £250. If you like - £1500? There's a few looking no better at £3000. Is there a preferred variant that's worth so much more?
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Hi,
I also converted my Sankey to a 50mm hitch, hung under the chassis, so it hooked (balled) onto a normal height tow-ball.
I'd also stripped off the braking system ... everything was rusted sollid. The trailer tipped the scales at 400kg unladen, so I worked on a payload of 300kg to keep it within the unbraked trailer limit of an 88". Actually, I'd check-weighed my S1 Bitza (with galv chassis) at a 1400kg, so maybe 300kg was pushing my luck. An S2 88" MAY NOT weigh 1500kg unladen. My S1 88", with Marsland s3 galv chassis, 2286 engine, and hardtop, weighed 1460kg, so only 730kg unbraked trailer allowed.
Whatever, I took it to halfway down France and back. I understand that you are permitted to take a vehicle to/from the nearest weighbridge, by prior arrangement, with impunity ... but don't push your luck./
For what it's worth, at that time, Craddocks were breaking Sankeys. Maybe still?
I sometimes wondered if the towing eye and shaft could be replaced with a simple shaft that would accept a bolt-on 50mm unbraked hitch, and still give you over-run braking ???
I understand that the hitch assembly was easy to convert to under-chassis mounting. ??? Save all that NATO pintle malarky.
602
Hi Wittsend,
Sankeys may tow well, I don't disagree. Manhandling them over rough ground is a different matter. Fitting a small boat winch to the draw=-bar would be high on my list. It could probably be contrived to help load engines.
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I bought a narrow track Sankey over 10 years ago with the intention of pulling the body off and building a camping/expedition trailer.
It came with a 50mm ball hitch conversion and a cover. Due to time limits I used it ‘as is’ for the first camping trip. I made a pair of roof bars and carry up to five bikes and fill the trailer with tents and camping gear. I also changed the wheels to 7.50’s to allow the use of the vehicle spare.
It all worked so well I never got round to altering it. I did however buy a brand new tub for it from Paddocks, when they were selling some off.
It tows very well and we’ve taken it all over the UK, including what is now known as the North Coast 500.
They are quite heavy to manoeuvre by hand, especially loaded and can be awkward to reverse. I tow a twin axle Ivor Williams trailer most days at work and they are so much easier!
The only thing I would change is having a tailgate, or swapping it for a widetrack, which have a tailgate as standard.
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Funnily enough I don't find manoeuvring them by hand on flat ground a problem, easy when the load is balanced.
In fact, they are terrible to reverse, at the tip I find it easier to uncouple and turn the Sankey round by hand and re-couple - much quicker and less hassle.
All depends in what you want from your trailer.
If you are in the right place at the right time you can get one for a good price. Had mine for around 15 years now - cost peanuts. Like at the end of the day at a big show, the dealers don't want to load up unsold stock - you might get a good bargain.
The MoD had thousands of these and they are slowly getting sold off - we are now well into the wide-track era and these are a better proposition with the tailgate.
They are what they are - a good workhorse :first
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It's a well-known phenomenon that short trailers are much harder to reverse than long trailers. So a Sankey is likely to be very hard indeed!
Bbrian66
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It's a well-known phenomenon that short trailers are much harder to reverse than long trailers. So a Sankey is likely to be very hard indeed!
Bbrian66
Yes, one of my myriad of trailers is so long it's daft. I look like I know what I'm doing, a breeze to point. See everythiing in mirrors too. I'm shown-up trying the same thing with a short and narrow diddy-camping trailer - mine goes 'squirrelly' rather quick. Until I saw the vast difference I would be amazed watching lorry-drivers do what they do with 'artics'. Not to dismiss their skill, never done it, yet when it's 30-40 foot behind you, and it's soemthing you can see, must give more clues than 3-4 foot you can't.
Why do Sankeys vary so much in price?
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They are worth what they are worth ... in the same way Land Rovers are priced.
Sellers always have an exaggerated idea of price :shakeinghead
... and then it depends on how quickly someone wants rid of something :cheers
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It also depends on age as well, I think.
Lots of the narrow tracks have rotten bodies and floors, often repaired with mixed results.
Early wide tracks had drum brakes and later ones disc brakes which are deemed more desirable.
Also the body work on the most recently cast versions can be very good as some don’t seem to have done much work.
There are bargains to be had so just wait till the right one comes up.
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The narrow track trailers that would be of an age with our vehicles were cast from military service an age ago and most will have issues with rust, the wide-tracks too are long gone from military service and they are now casting the much newer "Penman" trailers that are 100% up to date with current road regulations. Note the MoD now has very few Landrovers, the 2.5na Defenders long gone, the remaining "WOLF" fleet were purchased nearly 25 years ago and most of the 90s already sold off. ….so the MoD does not need anything like as many trailers.
For us, well, they were specifically designed to go behind a Landrover, are very capable and come in cheaper than the tiny scrappy things you see on sale at Halfords - why not buy one for the tip-run, the wood pile or whatever.
More interestingly, why yet another wind-up thread Mr 100+9. Are you bored or something ?
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For my part....
The PO of my vehicle offered one for sale at the time - but I couldn’t (then) see any use for it. But it set a seed....
I wanted to start to learn to weld, a little later - and I learn best when I’ve a practical problem to fix rather than some arbitrary practice piece for the sake of practice. NathanGlasgow had one for sale locally, but I decided it was a bit too much of a project for me at the time...
Very, very few come up for sale in Scotland - so I leapt on an eBay item within collection distance. The body virtually fell off on the way home...
Renovated that chassis, scrapped the body and taught myself how to use one of the CAD packages to design a replacement tub - but found it tricky to source a supplier who could laser cut and fold parts. And the materials cost would’ve been eye watering anyway.
Managed to buy another eBay special locally a year or so later - much of the body looked recoverable - and I always planned to replace one end with a tailgate solution anyway. Stripped the chassis of bits I wanted and sold it on...
Fixing the body turned out to be a big task - fortunately I still had many salvageable sections of the first body to use as patches (the trailer is now called Patch....) but ended up having to fabricate almost all of the underbody brackets as well as the new back end.
It has cost me a fortune - but did give me the welding challenge I wanted. Now it’s finished, I do love the whole giant Tonka feel. Fitting a decent nose wheel assembly had transformed manoeuvres when uncoupled and I can also (just about) heave it up our sloping drive.
So an interesting personal project - but financially it would’ve been well worth snapping up a mint condition one down south and paying a fortune to courier it up here....🙄
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Ha...yes the NATO hutch does stop neighbours from borrowing!
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Sankeys are far too small for my camping firewood requirements.
(https://i.postimg.cc/PxY6FNCd/55-AD2457-3046-4-BCD-B034-7-DE9-AD1-EDB17.jpg)
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Sankeys are far too small for my camping firewood requirements.
Why haven't you got a pile of old fence panels stacked on top of the hood sticks?
Alec
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If you need an extremely robust and compact trailer for off-road work a Sankey is hard to beat, but for me they’re too small, too heavy, too awkward to load stuff into and too prone to rot.
I have a small, light, Ex-GPO Pitt toolbox for small stuff, and a twin wheel Saris for big stuff.
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Why haven't you got a pile of old fence panels stacked on top of the hood sticks?
Alec
Because then I wouldn't be able to top up my tan on the M40.
:RHD
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I like the ex-GPO trailers as posted by GlenAnderson.
But way back in 1972 I bought a 1953 Brockhouse (they weren't all made by Sankey!)
Found it quite heavy (it was, after all, a combat trailer, designed by committee to do everything they could think of, just like the Champ.) Eg. the double-barrelled drawbar, designed to rotate to match the tow hook of different height vehicles.
It has 4.5" split rims, and I think from memory, fitting 5" or wider rims put the wheels outside the body enough to not cover the tread pattern entirely.
The lack of a tailgate was a nuisance, but they were designed to deep-wade/float (all the external hardware was bolted to top-hat brackets, welded to the body so no fixings penetrated the body).
Didn't use it much. It has spent all these decades in the back of a shed.
Took it out once to re-fit some of the stuff I took off and stored years ago, spray it with diesel/old oil and take some photos.
Can't bring myself to sell it.
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The lack of a tailgate was a nuisance, but they were designed to deep-wade/float
Hi,
I understood .. but happy to be corrected ... that the "floaters" were intended for use by the Royal Marines. ???
My Sankey was a floater,. and had obviously been parked, in the rain, for a long time, without the drain plugs being removed I replaced the remains of the tub with a wooden box.
Every bit of the braking linkage was rusted solid, so I removed the lot, including back-plates, and skimmed the drums down to spacing discs.
I removed the complicated tow-hitch, and cobbled a "draw bar stub" out of scaffold pipe and 50x50 angle, hung it under the chassis, and fitted a simple 50mm hitch. A visit to the Amenity Centre's weigh bridge indicated I had 300kgs of payload available. That was enough. It did two trips from Swansea Valley, via the Chunnel, to our place near Dinan, say 600 miles each way, behind my S1 2286cc Bitsa.
Warning. You do not want to one-man-handle even an empty Sankey up or down a slope, or over rough ground. I think mine weighed 400kg empty, with the dregs of the original body.
602
It's just possible that Wittsend has some of my photos on file (???)
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Hi again,
Try a Google for FEU254 SANKY IMAGES
602
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Here’s Mr 602’s Sankey.
:tiphat
(http://www.lrsoc.com/forum/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=23022.0;attach=49613;image)
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Hi Oddjob,
Thanks for that.
Note the "home-brewed" bulkhead. All the steel was 3mm thick. Sheet and box section.
The wider out-riggers on the S3 chassis allowed me to bolt through the A-posts, rather than add "feet".
I did not bother cobbling "vents".
All mechanicals were S2.
602
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PS.
Note the folding ladder in the Sanky ... we were obviously "loaded for France".
602
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Hi,
I've just re-read this thread, and have some more comment/questions.
I found the Sanky difficult to man-handle over rough ground, and grass, no problem on a hard flat surface. I'd hate to be in charge if a Sanky made a break for freedom on a 1:8 slope.
I first towed my Sanky, complete with the NATO "ring coupling" using a "pin hitch" from my local caravan shop. Yes, it clunked, but it's supposed to. A ring hitch pulls on the pin, but brakes against drop-plate.
I converted my Sanky to a 50mm socket, by removing the entire sliding ring hitch (heavy) and replace with tubular "stub" drawbar that bolted onto the same holes. It worked OK ... apart from not having any brakes, so visit to weighbridge to learn that I only had 300kg load capacity. I have a photo on Photobucket, but that is incomunicado (sp?) until I sort out my pass-word. Can anybody post a picture of howb their Sanky was converted to ball-hitch, pretty please?
602
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Interesting thread. A small trailer is an essential tool to use with any Land Rover. I’ll try to post a couple photos of mine, unfortunately neither is a Sankey which could use my Rover wheels. But they both have the original Luna hitch, for a normal pintle hitch on all my Rovers.
One photo is two each Korean War 1950s vintage M100 trailers. Incredible simple design, total weight is under 500 lbs, when empty it can be moved around like a wheelbarrow. No tailgate, as it was designed to float across rivers, and also for strength of the box. Happily hauls incredible loads, I have filled up the green one with steel tire chains, to the edge of the box, who knows what weight!
Tires are 7.00-16.
Other photo is the modern M1100 designed for the Humvee. All aluminum, beautiful construction, tie down points all over. Weighs around 1400 lbs, has nice cubic size. Hauls full size plywood sheets,has a full width tailgate. Cost the military around $8000 each, sells surplus for perhaps $1500 or less.
Bring a Sankey to my driveway in Fairbanks, Alaska, and I’ll probably buy it!
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My twin-wheel Saris.
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That's a practical looking jobby Glen. Not the best pic, didn't take it minded to what I was towing. One of mine... an ex-Authority Richardson toolbox trailer. Made to the sort of quality only the local-council could afford to spec. 4-5mm plate.
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Hi,
Er what is the "fall over" angle of an empty Sankey?
And when it is uniformly, and correctly, loaded with 750kg of 1500mm x 100mm x 100mm timber posts? (Assume timber has an SG of 1.)
Brain Storming. :stars What size wheel + tyre wouild, if fitted, lower the draw-bar to "Civvy Ball +Pin" hitch" height when mounted on a Series 12" drop plate?
I'm sure that Weller can (or could) make smaller wheels, (white, with 8 slots), to fit Land Rover hubs? OK, the spare tyres would not be inter=-changable, but surely you wouldn't go on expedition, driving six wheels, carrying only one spare wheel?
Maybe a lo-profile "part- worn" from a modernish limo, could be fittes to a Sankey/Landy rim, to drop the height? And ULW?
It would make it more desirable to me, for urban use. Might look silly, tho. I'll get my coat.
602
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Ahem!
Er ... I done a Google for "Range Rover low profile tyres./
How much would 40 profile tyres (new @ <£50) drop a Sankey? And how much would parabolic springs lift the Tug"?
Or maybe it's easiest to bolt a simple civvy pin hitch straight onto the chassis of a Series? Doh!
Could a 12" drop-plate and ball be used if fitted below the pin hitch mentioned above.
602
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That's a practical looking jobby Glen.
Thanks. It’s really my brother-in-law’s, he bought it new in 89-ish. We have operated a “I pay for and carry out repairs in exchange for unlimited use” trade about with it for thirty odd years. He’s pretty much given up using it at all in the last five years or so (he’s pushing 80 now), and no longer has anything to tow it with. It’s in need of four new tyres (the ones on there are the second set) and a new floor/side boards. I’ll do it over the summer probably. It tows so nicely behind the 109” you barely know it’s there. Long enough to be easy to reverse, light enough to manhandle alone (lighter than a Sankey), holds 8’ x 4’ sheets flat on the floor and at 2000kg gross it’s perfectly matched to a Land-Rover. If it wasn’t for the fact that the local authorities won’t let it in the tip I’d have sold my small trailer years ago and just kept this one.
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Ah, yes. Had that issue. I've this camping-trailer for much the same reason. Local tip let me in with it, because being half-baked doesn't look 'commercial'. Folds though, rolls down on castors, down an alley for example. Easy to store. My Duuo Plus...