Taking the Crane on its first ever Road Trip! How long will it last? 

That’s a big heavy vehicle. Now, the question is, does Lawrie curse vehicles to break? Or does he only drive vehicles that are about to break in the first place?

Hi I drove the same Grove Allen crane back in the 80s and mine only had a top speed of 34 mph, and 5 mph up hill, great days I just loved that old crane, oh your manual pin is missing from the jib,

That was a truly exhausting journey but in all honesty I didn't expect it to do more than 40 mph with it being a crane, I thought they all weighed a lot and were slow because of it. I didn't expect the gear change to be such a chore though.

Dang, the camera mic actually picked up when the pipe blew and started dumping air

Not sure how fast you expected a 50 year old mobile crane to go 😂 Even the modern ones today don't tramp along much faster than 40mph. In fact I don't think they can legally go much faster as I think the axle weights are up in STGO territory.

Great to see the old crane, old vehicles sometimes have a hiccup! I drove Leyland Leopards and Atlanteans with the 0680 engines, but they are a lot lighter than the crane! The Leopards were very economical, but were not slow.

Iron Fairy .... Grove used to use these long ago and along with many of their counterparts they were often transported to sites on a lorry trailer owing to their ability to bounce and bounce this earning the name Iron Fairy . They were quite entertaining to drive and dangerous .

Pure stress well done, despite its slow speed the engine sounds very nice and the crane itself is lovely 👌

My brother in law had an Allen crane back in the 1970's that he used in his engineering works, he told me that it only did forty miles an hour, he told me that was the maximum legal for that type of equipment back then.

lawrie on something that old next time try double de clutch lol...I used to drive an Eaton twin spliter empty double clutch loaded 26ton clutch no issues

Those two could fix the Titanic - even given its current condition!!!

Hi Back in the 1970's we had a Club coach which I used to drive it would do 42 MPH Max , It never got caught in traffic jam's but caused quite a few.

That squeak from the (edit) clutch is disconcerting. It does remind me of a Volkswagen camper I drove in Cornwall a few years ago.

That’s like virtually every drive I’ve ever taken in my Rover P6. It just hates being used. That’s such a great looking truck though, 35mph gives everyone more chance to admire it.

Had a problem like that in my 1953 green goddess except only difference I was stuck in a live lane on a motorway 😂 Anyways good video

Having fun with a crash box and a random gear selector mechanism. Not to mention air pipes that decide the time has come for them to go. Hope you enjoyed the show despite these woes.

You did nothing wrong Lawrie, other than driving on the wrong side of the road ;) lol Anyway, the crane looks great! They did a great job cleaning it up. Given their experience with all of these classic/vintage/antique vehicles, I'm very surprised that your buddies don't keep tools in their vehicle. That would have saved them one trip back and forth.

Leyland O680. What a lovely sound

I often see even the modern cranes only doing 40 on Motoways and dual carriageways

Rule #1: When it is going well, never say it is going well.

Slow but sounds lovely 👌

I'm always nervous watching y'all drive on that side of the road. 😂 Cool machine.

Can you drive that round Ipswich, as a rolling roadblock it would still be better than all the roadworks in the town, because at least it's something interesting to look at 😁

Cheer up, mate. Could happen to anyone. Could've been worse in fact. Imagine if that air line had burst while on the dual carriageway! Reminds me of an incident some years back. Driving up I-35 to a university class in Austin, Texas. At the time, they were just building the interchange with the new 130 Tollway that went around Austin, and we were just approaching that construction zone in our Dodge Grand Caravan minivan, when disaster struck. For just a second, far too little time to have a chance to react and in quite heavy traffic so we had nowhere to go even if we could have, we spotted a huge chunk of truck tire on the road ahead. We had no choice but to drive right over it, a mistake we will never make again. The tire chunk tore out all of the electronics from underneath the van, instantly killing all electrical power including to the engine. And worst of all, we were right by the construction site where there was no hard shoulder to pull onto. And did I mention that this was all while climbing a hill? All we could do was pray that we had enough momentum to get past the construction and pull off on the closest bit of not-highway we could get to. Miraculously, we just about made it, and once we'd gotten over the worst of the panic we rang my father to come drive me the rest of the way to class and a tow truck to get us to the nearest Dodge dealership to inspect the damage. It was still a terrifying half hour sitting by the side of the road, feeling the phenomenon once known as "railway sway" as fast moving semi-trailers roared past us, sucking our minivan towards them enough to rock the suspension. I did make it to class only a little late, and my professor excused my tardiness on the grounds of near-death experience. The van, though repaired, was never the same; it would periodically lose power with no rhyme or reason; I recall more than one white-knuckle ride through the Central Texas Hill Country where the old girl would die right at the top of a big hill and we could only pray that the power would come back soon as it also meant no power steering and next to no brakes. Needless to say, we traded in that van not too long after, along with an old Buick we'd inherited from my grandparents, for a shiny new Honda minivan (my father's a musician, so we needed the haulage capacity), which served us for many years.

'short shifter kit ' for the gears?! & some oil for whatever was squeaking? Another great effort Lawrie, thanks! 🙏🙏

Heya.. Your shirt is soo fitting to your situation you were in, also I would love to have one of those weee cranes (since my back is busted and I can't lift anything)

I don't know much about air brakes but was not expecting that thin wall plastic pipe.

The power is there but it’s down to the gears, it was never intended to go fast the power is for the crane, I had too many years stuck behind many of then sadly with HGVs that didn’t have the acceleration topass

The axle ratio are low hence lack of top end speed.

Cor that must have been an interesting drive despite the hiccup along the way to the show ground. I look forward to seeing the 2nd part of the video looking at the other vehicles that attended the show.

Well lawrie if history is any indicator will be a interesting adventure 😁

Cant trust you with anything!! I know I ve asked before,but any chance of a tour of that Commer artic,looks a lidy tool. Great vid as always,keep them coming.

Can't be in a rush with something like that . You will get from point A-B eventually just plan accordingly .

How old is that crane? Looks relatively modern on the outside, perhaps it’s the fresh paint that’s fooling me, but ancient inside the cab

And to think people want help moving just when you have a truck.

Yes

It's a crane, I wouldn't want to do much more than 35 in it anyway. They take even longer to stop than they do to get speed up. All the horse torques fell out of the engine many years ago mate, goodness knows how many hours are on the poor thing. They spend a lot of time at idle so putting some deglazing treatment thru it would probably help as well.

It got the most squeaky cluch in the world and did any one hand radio on hand

well you got there ( and i assume you got back to base ) .. so i'm saying it was a success

I've broken down in your crane, come and rescue me, ok we'll be right there, we need to fix the xxxxx, oh we'll have to go back and get a spanner. What a pack of numpties.

Hehe the truck may well be powered by a big lump of cast iron... but you are moving a big lump of Steel! I'm guessing that crane is around 20-24 tons and as I remember the engine in around 160 horsepower... not a good power to weight ratio. Be hey it was enjoyable watching you hurd the rig down the road.

The crane loaded a generator on my trailer at the weekend but didn't see you

Time to buy a case of Chinese adjustable nut rounders, put one in everything.

It sounds well though!

Is that a 15 ton Allen with a Leyland in front and 6354 Perkins in the crane?

Even at 30mph, you would eventualy have encountered a sunday driver who woukd have held you up had you been driving long enough.

Probably an O.680 judging by the glorious bellow but definitely not a Power Plus 😆

35 mph in that would be plenty fast enough for me

To be fair if u went over 40 it would probably be the scariest thing on planet earth still very ballsy that some people have driven them heavy old lump and probably the coolest bit of gear I’ve ever seen

Needs a turbo!!

So Lawrie what was top speed flat out? Get Mat to fit a turbocharger 🤣

what festival is this?

good old machine I operated one of those for quite a while 15 tonner ? grove good machine in it's day , slewing ring used to go on them.

Some modern mobile canes in Germany are limited to 62 km/h (38.5 mph), so the performance of the old thing doesn't feel too bad. 62 km/h sounds like a strange number, and I'm not sure why it is used, but 60 km/h is the minimal top speed your vehicle needs to have to be allowed to drive on the Autobahn. As far as I know the limit has to do with the degree of fail-safe of the hydraulic steering of multi-axle vehicles, so cranes with redundant hydraulics are allowed to drive faster.

That squeaky clutch pedal would of done my head in.

Hardly gutless. It's bound to be low geared, probably its maximum speed was never intended to be much over 30.

youll need to learn double decluthing with the old crash boxes

That thing only has a four speed? No wonder it feels under powered. Is that gearbox unsynchronized or just bad/the oil not really warm?

What Is it based on looks like Leyland what engine is it?

Speed may be limited due to amount of heavy counter balance weight, a heavy boom and extra hydraulic tank. Saying that modern road cranes are just as slow on the road as this crane.

If you want slow try a RL Bedford with a 330 diesel then drive it over 2000k Morris minors overtook me and the smile on there faces was priceless

*on its first ever run (no apostrophe needed in the word its)

Breathe. Laurie. Breathe.......

Yep, Lawrie Rose is a Cosmic Plaything...

Take heart Laurie, it wasn’t one of your own vehicles so it doesn’t count. Ime clutching at straws here but you could always blame the old boys for poor preparation 😂

What engine is it? Sounds rather like a Leyland

🤣🤣🤣🤣👍

To be honest, your experience is not that different to vaguely modern all-terrain cranes🤣 most of them are limited to 40 due to their weight anyway. But thankfully we have automatics now

And you do this for fun, yes? 🙂

😎😎😎😎🚜🚜🚜🚜🖼🖼👍

If you think that is scary, try driving a Smart car on a motorway

Just hate the sound of crunchy gears in the morning....