Speed of trucks on the motorway these days

Errr, Comet haven't sold out? I just saw on TV that they went on sale at midnight and sold out in the early hours. Don't know what store that was. Have you got one reserved?

Steve

The message from "David Taylor" contains these words:

And anyway - there's only 200 people in the whole usenet space.

Not in Hull they hadn't. As Comet was founded and is based in Hull, guess where the last of their stock was?

Nope. Went shopping with the missus to Asda. Comet is on the same retail park. Fired up the phone and saw what they were doing on E-bay and decided it was worth seeing if they had any. They didn't have the premium but had a few Core packages left.

"shazzbat" wrote

I think women should have to display "W" plates on their cars so you are warned well in advance.

Not at all. Its simple..

Me 10ft above the ground able to see well into the distance + trucks

Just cos you can't see s*it out of your car doesn't mean the view for the rest of us is the same.

You must travel on straighter motorways than me.

I have no trouble at all seeing the traffic on the other side of the motorway from the seat of a normal car.

Neither do I have any problem with reply>

You just manage to make yourself look even more stupid with every post.

Have you actually travelled on motorways for any distance other than junction hopping on your way to work?

Even if you haven't I suggest you look at a road atlas. You'll notice one common feature on motorways is the lack of any real bends.

So what? If I choose to that's entirely up to me. If you don't like it, learn how to use your usenet client and killfile me.

Also, why is it that trucks slipstream each other and overtake, on motorways, when they all do (theoretically) the same speed?

As you say, it's theoretical. There are many factors involved, and slipstream is only one of them, the interplay between the airflow of two trucks in close proximity is very complex, as you will see when one of the trucks involved is a curtainsider. You can see the sides bulging out due to the air pressure inside being slightly higher than outside. Then when another truck starts to overtake, the sides go slack as the airflow between the two is disturbed, when they are very close together they are effectively one entity in aerodynamic terms. Also there are always small variations in speed limiter settings due to things like tyre wear. A speedo or tacho or speed limiter does not measure the linear speed of the vehicle, it measures the rotational speed of the output shaft of the gearbox, then divides [1] by a known figure to convert rpm to mph/kph. worn tyres, or fitting different size tyres changes the ratio. You can also find that an incline you don't even notice in a car can slow one truck down slightly more than the other according to their relative horse power, how they're loaded etc. It's as annoying to us as it is to you when we start an overtake and halfway along you find your self going backwards (in relative terms, natch).

Steve

Many thanks! I am actually HGV Cat C qualified myself (military trained) on DAF 4 tonners, but never actually been on a motorway. And our regs forbid overtaking anyway :)

DAF now is it? Luxury. Bloody Bedford RL I learnt on.

Steve ( RAOC/REME 1968-1980)

Also in service still is the Bedford, I've driven both and the Bedford's old school no-power steering is a blast from the past! I won't moan about the DAF anymore... :)

ROFL...

Oh dear. Are they still requiring that you have a bloke stand in front of you waving his arms about to tell you which way to turn the steering wheel when reversing?

Oh dear. No 8 tonne TMs then?

Thank God.

They still got any petrol MKs left? And that propshaft wobble at

It's the RL that was petrol, the one with the rounded front to the cab. The MK was diesel. They were in the process of changing over when I joined, and in the workshops for special purpose vehicles like tels repair, machinery (mashy) wagon etc we still had Commers and Fordsons etc. And of course the dreaded AEC tenny :-(( And we had a petrol straight eight Scammell recovery wagon, what a beast that was.

Steve

Conor ( snipped-for-privacy@gmail.com) gurgled happily, sounding much like they were saying :

You sound proud of your pupil, Conor.