The Random thought thread

[willedoo]

Grand Caravan EX

[willedoo]

What's the EX stand for - EXecutive or EXpensive?

[willedoo]

5 hours ago, old man emu said:

The word 'caravan' is Persian. It comes from the the word 'karwan' which means a group of people travelling together for safety through a dangerous place. The image that word can produce is of a group of Arabs and their loaded camels travelling in single file across a desert.

During WW1 my great uncle spent a bit of time on detachment to the Imperial Camel Corps when he was with the 5th. Light Horse Regiment. He hated it and really didn't have much time for camels and their Arab camel drivers. I don't know what they were doing, probably mounted infantry escort for the Camel Corps. By the tone of the letters he wrote back home, he was glad to get away from them.

[onetrack]

They're simple people, those Carnamah folk. They understand big is good, bigger is better, orange is good, and Orange Tractors are the best!

The 40KA sold well, because the engine ran on Power kerosene, which was cheap and reasonably efficient, and the engine was a simple, low speed (1200 RPM) horizontally opposed twin.

 

Bob Chamberlain also struck it lucky on several fronts - he saw the massive pent-up demand for tractors in the period right after WW2, when many soldiers took up farming, and developing farms from bush. The wool boom, and a little known accompanying wheat boom (wheat doubled in price between 1950 and 1952), all added to increased tractor demand.

Chamberlains acquired a former Australian Govt munitions factory in Welshpool for a fraction of the cost it took to build it. The factory was well served with an excellent power supply, a big furnace, a rail line, and a main road.

Bob couldn't afford costly Swiss gear-tooth-polishing equipment, so the Chamberlain transmissions were left with machining marks in the gears that produced loud whines when the gears were hardened.

Not a lot of farmers worried about the noise the Chamberlain transmissions made, the tractors were made locally, supported with spares and factory backup, and they were readily available, unlike many other imported brands.

 

Bob did well with the horizontally-opposed kerosene engines, but when he tried to make the engine into a diesel, it was a disaster. The diesels blew up regularly, because of faulty design that didn't take into account the vastly increased stresses on engine components caused by the higher energy level of diesel fuel, and the much higher compression ratio needed to ignite it.

 

The answer was to buy in "brand name" diesel engines in the form of GM diesels and Perkins and Meadows diesel engines. These engines proved to be winners, but the noise the Chamberlains made didn't decrease! - in fact, with the GM diesels, noted for their 2-stroke scream from their Roots blower, the Chamberlains only got noisier!

 

But regardless, the Chamberlains are fondly remembered by anyone who has had anything to do with farming - and many thousands of them are still running today, testament to their fundamental reliability and simplicity.

[old man emu]

I arrived in the area I'm living in now for the 1974 wheat harvest. I got a job driving a Chamberlain, pulling a PTO header. No cabin, and only a beach umbrella for shade. Having grown up seeing backhoes with their typical tractor seat, I was amazed by the bench seat of the Chamberlain. After the harvest, I got back onto the Chamberlain to do ploughing later in the summer.

 

These young farmers today wouldn't even jump on one of these Chamberlains to drag a sled loaded with pig food to the sties.

[red750]

Aussie brothers stunned by rare animal encounter.

 

Read the story here

[nomadpete]

You need six of them to pull Santas sleigh in Australia

[facthunter]

We have SANTOS here. THEY have been known to run the show. They had the right CLAUSES in legislation to fill their Xmas stockings. 

[red750]

Council elections coming up, voting papers etc in the mail. This guy is a certainty to get a few votes.

 

[willedoo]

6 hours ago, old man emu said:

I arrived in the area I'm living in now for the 1974 wheat harvest. I got a job driving a Chamberlain, pulling a PTO header. No cabin, and only a beach umbrella for shade. Having grown up seeing backhoes with their typical tractor seat, I was amazed by the bench seat of the Chamberlain. After the harvest, I got back onto the Chamberlain to do ploughing later in the summer.

 

These young farmers today wouldn't even jump on one of these Chamberlains to drag a sled loaded with pig food to the sties.

We had a Super 70 with the 371 GM motor, one of the models before the bench seats. Just a drawbar, no three point linkage and you climbed on from the rear of the tractor. The seat was a single seat. It was the same as this one in the video:

 

 

[willedoo]

The Super 70 was far from the safest tractor to drive. That hand clutch could be a bit jumpy. They work opposite to a dozer clutch; with the Chamberlain you push it forward to engage. It makes for a lot of fun reversing up to an implement to hook up.

[facthunter]

Sounds like a 3cyl GM diesel. Hearing won't last long there. They don't like to be idled either.   Nev

[facthunter]

A lot of tractor foot clutches are too heavy. Ruin your back in no time..   Nev

[willedoo]

16 minutes ago, facthunter said:

Sounds like a 3cyl GM diesel. Hearing won't last long there. They don't like to be idled either.   Nev

Yes, it's a 371 GM. We had ours for 49 years and the only time it stopped was when it did a crankshaft in the late 60's.

[facthunter]

I've worked on a lot of those GM's. Used in ferries and graders up to 6 Cylinders. They always sound "Busy".. (Being two strokes).   Hard to muffle them .   Nev

[willedoo]

It's easy to understand how the two stroke GM's got the nickname of bird scarers. I spent a year working on a trawler that had a 671. That high pitched drone was constant even though it was muffled a bit by being down in the engine room. I used to envy those boats with Cummins and Gardner engines.

[willedoo]

You see the GM engines a lot in Bangkok in the river taxis. They have a fairly quick response so my guess is they are more nimble docking and maneuvering around the jetty. Fairly good fuel economy as well I seem to remember. Someone might be able to verify that.

[onetrack]

The earlier GM diesels weren't too bad on fuel because they ran at 1800-2000RPM. But the later models ones were "souped up" to meet the increased output of other engine manufacturers and they started pulling 2400-2800RPM. Once you go over about 2200RPM with a diesel, the fuel efficiency suffers - diesel is a slow-burning fuel, and at high speed, it doesn't get time to combust fully.

Edited October 13 by onetrack

[onetrack]

And if you want up-close and clear photos of the BIG Chamberlain, just to understand how BIG it really is, then the Guardian has them. You'd have to admit, the steel workmanship is pretty impressive.

 

https://www.theguardian.com/australia-news/2024/oct/08/giant-red-tractor-carnamah-wa-australias-big-things

 

Edited October 14 by onetrack

[pmccarthy]

It would have been easier to make a very small model of the white car.

[Bruce Tuncks]

Didja hear about the Ayer's rock dingoes changing to Massey-fergusons? Apparently they got tired of eating Chamberlains.

[onetrack]

It's the first time I've ever seen a Police patrol car look small!  Normally, they loom twice the size of any any other car, in the mirror!!  😄

 

[red750]

I didn't know where to post this:

 

Former Prime Minister Scott Morrison has joined the board of one of Australia's most ambitious space industry companies.

 

Space Centre Australia, which is building Australia's first permanent spaceport at Cape York in far north Queensland, has appointed Mr Morrison non-executive chair of the company.

 

More here.

[old man emu]

Give him a chair in the first outbound flight.

[onetrack]

Scott knows a lot about Space. He's got plenty between his ears.