From the U.S.A., great video and well maintained good looking Bedford's. The repowered 335 horsepower Detroit 92 series showed no smoke. Turbo- charging made a big difference with them.
The silver 92’s were a fairly clean running engine even by 4 stroke standards, especially the last of them with the DDEC-2 electronic controls…and on those ones there was no rack to run. If the EPA hadn’t pushed so hard on diesels coming up on Y2K and after they’d probably still be putting electronic 6 and 8V92TA’s in busses and fire apparatus today, especially with how popular automatics have become, the 2 strokes liking the revs to stay up above 1700 works out great with a torque converter type automatic.
Just stumbled on this video-took my test in a 3250- .I remember when I was a kid - the tipper in the video (Hyatt's) used to be owned by a local furniture company in Bridport called Solent furniture -.its name then " The Pymore Princess" Never forget that sound of the Detroit! what a great looking truck.
The Bedford TM was a nice looking lorry, they were never really popular down south around the London area in tipper form, plenty of artics, 4 and 6 wheel rigids in flats, d-side etc but very few tippers. In fact I can only recall three companies that used them Pinch plant who had 7 TM 6x4 tippers, P.T.Read who had 6 TM 6x4 tippers and P.W.Keen sand & gravel who ran 2 TM 6x4 tippers.
I used to drive these in the forces. Mine was a 8 tonner. She carried the box body and towed the genny trailer. Her reg was 62 GT 29. Awesome and i miss her massively
I am using my partners phone to comment. Back In 84 / 85 I was on the young thick and stupid scheme better known as yts. I was working in the stores of a datsun dealers Monday to Thursday. On Friday had day release at a local college. As there was no stores related course I was put on city and guilds motor vehicle trade studies. One day we were told we were going out for the day to two local vehicle plants. One being Bedford and the other which was just across from Bedford which was Renault / Dodge.was awesome to see the production line and the svo special vehicle operations. Seeing the Military / fire vehicles. That was just before the sad news Bedford was to close.
Always loved the Bedfords, my dad used to drive the TK’s in the late 70’s and 80’s lots of fond memories of them they had a character all of there own, I passed my class 1 in 1986, a short time later I did a spell on BOC Transhield running out of Crewe when they had a fleet of TM’s, always remember the sound of them Detroit’s. 👍👍👍
Drove one of these for Rockey Creek in Cork, she could pull but by jaysus she could drink and make noise. If memory serves me she struggled to get 4 mpg.
Love 😘 this vehicle very underated truck 🚛 in its time ,as good as anything else in its class? At least they thought of drivers comfortable conditions which was lacking in a lot british trucks at the time.
Oh yeah, I had J-series Bedfords and a TK. Pretty gutless in the '80s, but I loved them. Mind you, the TK had a 350 Chev in it... My favourite was a 1980s J1. Immaculate and reliable. Except for expensive brake parts...
It would be great to see more from the Tailgate Productions (HGV DVD’s) archives, They produced many in-depth videos from 2000-2006, I suppose the rise of RU-vid and illegal copyright infringement uploads like this created an unsustainable market for many smaller enthusiast production company’s.
I've gotta say I've never heard of a 2-stroke Detroit breaking the crank. Especially the 71 series. The 6v71 chewed out roller rockers if you constantly overrevved them, but breaking a crank? Poor bloke got very unlucky there.
In Australia they had repowered single drive prime movers with a 4-53 going Sydney-Melbourne. No offense to this guy but the poms have no idea. They were brought up on Gardner's, Rolls Royce, Leyland. Totally different way of driving and they'll just glaze it up driving around the country side.
They did succeed, there were plenty of TMs back in the day, sadly Bedford stopped making Lorries in Britain and the business was taken over by AWD, but AWD didn't continue with the TM cab.