I went up on Wednesday to do some donkey work and accustomise
myself to standing by the engine with spanners. One good
thing with trucks is there's no back-busting grovelling
underneath as with cars; with the cab up the motor is right
there like a steaming cheeseburger on a diner counter.
You can imagine when they were designing it there was no
great need to jam it all in like a modern hatchback. Need
a compressor? Stick it on the side of the engine; spare
tyre? Lash it to a winch behind the cab. Airtanks, mysterious
brackets, metal boxes the size of a small fridge? Bolt
them to the chassis and aerodynamics be buggered.
The motor oil looked fresh
(the MAN was demobed a year ago) so that's 20 litres saved,
the antifreeze looked OK too but the 4 rubber belts powering
various things were all changed after which I put the LHD
headlights back on after Matt fitted RHDs for the MoT.
We may well have a go at the hoses too, thick with gren
camo paint. Even though the mileage is low, I believe its
best to replace all 1989 rubber components which age despite
the kms.
One thing soon became evident: the thing was 
covered from
all undersides in a thick greasy gloop which has done a
great service against corrosion but sure makes it messy
to work on or even brush against. Next job, prior to painting,
off with the cab roof rack which weighs a ton (I'm getting
used to it, everything does), and while up there unbolt
more clamps, brackets and cabling - more scrap for the
yard. Hillbilly Landrovers in Norfolk could not get it
together to send us some NATO sand paint as used on my
Merc, so in the end we popped down to Paint-u-Like in Matlock
and got 4 litres of like-coloured hue mixed off the colour
card menu. When it warms up we'll hand paint the lorry
to save time and if it looks too rough do something neater
when I get back from Algeria.
Now I know Denmark is a small country but the fuel tank
is a paltry 140 litres, enough for 500kms; twice that would
be handy. Obviously a used lorry tank would be the go and
the place we bought the MAN off was going to chuck one
in. But they didn't and the hassle in finding and fitting
a possibly rusty and leaky right-sized giant item with
only four shopping days left to Xmas made us decide on
a rack of jerries. So it was off with the big metal box
to remount in the gloop on the exhaust side and, shortly,
on with 4 chunky MoD jerry racks from Anchor and heck,
why not, 4 new jerries for the first time in years. That
will give me 220L or 770 clicks, still not enough to frighten
the horses so I may well just get me an oil drum locally
once the bikes are out; there's plenty of room.
Attack of the Winged Ferret
Honestly, when Matt moves it can give you 
whiplash just
watching him (but it does help if Barry the Acetylene
Kid is in the vicinity and gassed up). We had been umming
and ahhing about how to get bikes into the back of the
shoulder-high deck without hernias or damage. With a
shortage of trees to swing a pulley from, my instinctive
solution was a scoffolding pipe A-frame hinging off the
back corners - the way the Egyptians used to erect their
obelisks and a bit like a skip lorry lifting it's skip.
Another car pulling the rope and or the MAN reversing
with a tied off rope (so lifting the bike) was the plan.
NIce, light and simple; you wonder why all delivery vans
don't do it that way.
Matt liked the idea too until various operational flaws
manifested themselves - ideally the A-frame needed to be
not on the back corners but inboard a bit like a skip lorry
- but the tarp and frame get in the way. Then Matt had
the bright idea of an ex-lorry tail lift and sure enough,
after a couple of weeks surfing you-know-what he located
a nice one off a 2002 Iveco, nearby, at nearly the right
width and for a couple of hundred quid - probably less
than it would have cost to make a regular hinged tailgate
(missing off the MAN after the 'back-wall-with-door' got
stripped out with the office suite).
Sure it weighs a lot but lifts 500kg and anyway weight
is one thing you don't have to worry about too much with
a truck. It's unlikely to have any effect on performance
and in the desert the MAN will be barely loaded anyway.
I left Wednesday night and before I'd even returned home
from my Xmas goodwill tour Ferret Air and the AC Kid had
the tail lift all in place bar the wiring.
Ha! you're thinking, what a bunch of wallies. But actually
we always knew a regular van lift would not have the range
required to get from the ground to the rear deck on the
MAN. But it's near enough and once some recently acquired
sandplates are hooked on the back they'll make a nifty
ramp for rolling bikes on. As it is none of the desert
bikes weigh more than 200kg.
Another flaw with a MAN-high
deck is that you can't really cook off it without 
looking
like Leo Sayer stuck in a lift - so come dinner time the
tail lift will make a very handy variable height table
(VHT) and may be a good way of opening Coke bottles and
breaking the bead on bike tyres.
If
you ever come back you'll see the MAN wearing a rough coat
of Dulux Magnolia and hopefully a rego plate.
