RE: Shed Of The Week: Leyland Convoy

[minky monkey]

I hired a minibus to drive a group of mates to a stag in Cornwall from Surrey.

I wanted a transit, I told them I wanted a transit.

I got a brand new LDV.

bks. For a brand new motor, I've never experienced such a lack of willpower in the brakes. It vaguely steered in the direction you wanted it to travel. Loaded up with luggage, people and a st load of beer, it had the go of a chronically asthmatic ant trying to walk against a windtunnel in full flow.

Through the will of the Gods, and much swearing I navigated the piece of ste to it's destination. God it was tempting to leave the handbrake off at the top of the cliff. And then I remembered, what handbrake. We left it, hoping to find it at the bottom of the cliff, but no the bugger clung on leaving me with the return journey.

Never been so glad to had back a set of keys.

[cheekyron]

A big red stty van for under a grand, what ever could go wrong...? Oh yeah, probably everything...

[Jonny_]

gazza285 said:

hairyben said:

The one the mail claimed to buy because of it's width was the smaller and even sttier 200/pilot

The convoy was "only" cheap and st, the pilot was a absolute joke- on every level they were like some throwback to the 70's, even the engineering of parts wasn't to modern standards (we had several crash because the propshafts were unbalanced, hit a reverberant frequency and seized causing the gearbox to either explode or fall out the bottom of the van..)

Nasty, horrible, hateful things, too many faults to list. I did a fking dance the day LDV went bust.

70s technology? You are way out, the Sherpa/200 van was a direct development of the 1960 J4 van, the only major change was the J4 was a cab forward design. The 2 litre petrol was quite quick, for a van that is.

Ten years ago in my student days I lived in Sheffield, in a fairly hilly part of town (Crookes). The postal vans at the time were Pilots, and the reason it sticks in my mind is that you could hear one approaching from half a mile away. To get up the hills evidently required as much power as the poxy things could muster, and the exhaust systems were seemingly unsilenced. Horrible, rattly, farty, droning bd cacophony of a racket.

One example (and one only) ought to be preserved for the rest of time just to show what ste you could get away with flogging even into the mid-2000s.

[Digga]

Apparently, you could drift the unladen pickup versions on larger roundabouts in the wet. So I'm told.

[tozey]

This remminds me of our 'General LDV' ha ha ha great vans,

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EyXebDVGna8


Yes they were basic but they had a proper chassis and rear axle! Took ours Le Mans a couple of times and a few trips around Europe, miss the old girl!

[KTF]

An interesting write up about them here: http://autobritannia.net/2015/02/28/forbidden-frui...

Edited by KTF on Thursday 13th August 14:59

[Megabeast]

Buy it for the plate - it says it all - Bovine S***t (BV51HYT)😁

[njw1]

I do like an old van, I've had three (very rusty) mk5 Transits, they all got driven like rally cars and were a lot more fun than they really should have been, I can remember a mate grabbing the jesus handle for dear life once when I got one sideways on a wet roundabout. I expect this LDV would be much the same, it may be slow, noisy and generally crap but I find sometimes the more crap a vehicle is, the more fun it is to hammer about in. For instance, at work we now have mk8 Transits and they are very nice to drive, quiet and quick enough but I still miss the noisy slow old mk5's even though the new vans are far, far superior.