For Workshop Service in East Africa
Page 53
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TIIE Crown Agents for the Colonies often have occasion to order special types of vehicle for overseas use to meet individual requirements, and in this connection the Crossley six-wheeled travelling workshop shown in accompanying illustrations is of interest.
The workshop body has been specially designed and arranged for service with the King's African Rifles in East Africa. It has fixed sides and a hinged back with a stout canvas cover of special material, carried over metal hoops, leaving an air space in the roof. It provides ample headroom for working at the large bench on the near side. The canvas cover is so arranged that it can be stretched out and secured by stay ropes to the ground, thus forming an awning at each side and thereby considerably extending the working space.
The workshop equipment is comprehensive and extremely compact. It includes a large fitters' bench with a drawer and two vices, a smaller bench accommodating a drilling machine, a grinder, one large and two small tool chests containing a complete outfit of high-grade tools for light and heavy duties. Included in the kit are specially made tools, for emergency and salvage operations in the open, drills, stocks, dies and taps, a heavy brazing lamp, large pinch bars, and a stout wire towing rope, with shackles.
The vehicle is equally efficient by night as well as by day, being provided with a complete generating plant, comprising a 2 b.h.p. fan-cooled petrol
engine driving a compound-wound dynamo having an output of 1 kw. with a voltage of 110. Wall plugs are provided for attaching long leads from lamp clusters, contained in large metal reflectors with wire guards. These are mounted on collaPsable stands with a universal adjustment, thus enabling the workshop interior and the surrounding area to be powerfully illuminated.
The vehicle is equipped with towing loops, and has powerful electric headlamps and oil side and tail lamps, accumulators having been entirely dispensed with by reason of the arduous nature of the work which will be tackled.
The Crossley six-wheeler is equally at home on the road or when negotiating cross country, and is capable of 45 m.p.h. on a reasonable level surface and of negotiating under full load gradients of 1 in 2. Overall chain tracks of special design are provided for use when travelling over marshy surfaces, which would be impassable to an ordinary vehicle.
Ey means of a special device the hood can be lowered and closed at both ends ; special fine gauze provides adequate ventilation.
This type of vehicle is found to be particularly advantageous in dealing with breakdowns of four-wheeled vehicles in uninhabited tracts, where garage or ordinary service facilities are nonexistent.