Rolling

And out of the wilderness stepped a saviour.
Albion Club member and avid truck collector and restorer Phil Dixon offered to do the sandblasting and recoating of the chassis in the original silver, at an unbeatable price: zilch. Phil just happens to own Protector abrasive cleaning, industrial and powder coating in Parkes, NSW, west of Dubbo.
All we had to do was get the chassis there. Towing it was out of the question, and the only practical way seemed to be to load it onto a tilt tray truck. But the chassis is 27 feet long and 17 feet 6 inches between wheel centres. It might be too long to fit on the tray, or the overall length of the loaded truck might exceed limits even for a three axle vehicle.
Craig has a mate: mate owns a tilt tray and there might be a time when he needed to bring a load from say Dubbo, and instead of making the trip out empty could take the bus at a greatly reduced rate. So measurements were made and it was found that all the dimensions would be within limits.
A possible chance came up when a bulldozer might have to be brought to Sydney from Parkes, but the job fell through. Eventually however, in the stars, Venus came into alignment with Mars and Orion was in the ascendant, so the trip was on. I shall have to find out the name of the mate so he can be given a plug on the net.
The pictures tell the story.



Craig's van has done its job of towing the chassis out onto the road, now the cable and winch of the tilt tray can take over.

Despite everything the handbrake still works: the winch and cable can't stop the chassis running down the slope.





Steering on an Albion is never easy but standing up it's even harder.

Looks like it's going to fit.

How lucky is that: within the end of the tray by about 6 inches.


All photos by Bill Parkinson