Hail hail the gang's all here! After the return of Nick Garlick, Clutchslip and The Boss to Biglorryblog, what do you know but 'The Keeper of the Flame Martin Phippard has put in a time appearance... With some half-cab Dafs! Martin says: Hi Brian, This photo comes from my colleague and El Supremo Peter Green driver, Pete Connock, who having seen your reference to a 'split cab' DAF on BLB thought that this might be blog-worthy. The photo was taken outside the Brown & Hurley Paccar dealer in Brisbane last year and all we can remember is how much the driver hated it! Apparently it had a typical North American wheel cut of about 30-degrees which meant that he often had to take a shunt, or even a double shunt at a round-about! Not only that but the cost of the two-thirds cab conversion would probably have gone a fair way towards the price of a new KW K-108! And that's what he (the driver) really wanted!
Thanks and BR Martin P. PS (says Martin) - Another picture to follow. And if you click through here you'll see the weirdest eight-legger ever...!
So tell me... Why would anyone want a split-cab EIGHT-LEGGER? Answers on a post card please... Or better still post a comment telling me what it's for on Biglorryblog! And my thanks to Pete and Martin for the shots...
These are a little more common in Europe and carry pipes or metal bars, extra long items can be carried beside the truncated cab, the square plate beside the cab is to stop these items shooting forwards.
There is actually a rule here that a body truck must be able to turn in 25m.When you do a chassis extention on most of the european cab chassis they ussually all make it.I drove an 8 wheeler DAF home from Mackay a couple of weeks ago and it seemed to have a pretty good steering lock,it wasn`t 12.5m long like this one though.The reason they have narrowed the cab on that truck is to get 12.5m lengths of steel on it.12.5m is max for a body truck,and 19m for a semi trailer.They used to have island cabs here for the same reason,they where things of bueaty,and a little bit on the dangerous side because you sat in the middle of the truck with sometimes the load down each side restricting your vision.They were mostly used for steel and timber which are low sort of loads anyway.