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Liebherr restores 1960s loader prototype

Liebherr has restored one of its first wheel loader prototypes from the 1960s. One of five made, this LSL 1500 is the last surviving and oldest Liebherr wheel loader in existence and the company has invested about 650 working hours in its restoration. The bright yellow loader will now put on display at the Liebherr Bischofshofen factory.

At the beginning of its life, the LSL operated at a gravel factory in the Biberach area before being sent to the Fried-Sped corporate group in Ummendorf in 1980. The LSL 1500 served the logistics specialist for around 20 years. At the beginning of the 2000s, with the shovel loader already around 40 years old, Liebherr took the prototype back and preserved the now decommissioned wheel loader.

In 2019, Liebherr-Werk Bischofshofen GmbH decided to fully restore the LSL 1500, which was really starting to show its age thanks to significant rust and frost damage. The project began in the spring of 2020 at the Liebherr Bischofshofen plant. The wheel loader experts refurbished each individual part of the LSL 1500 down to the very last screw.

In many places, technical skill and improvisational talent were required. “When you start the diesel engine, the operating voltage suddenly switches from 12 to 24 volts. We first had to analyse this process correctly in order to be able to start the wheel loader successfully," explained Andreas Scharler, who ran the repair centre for many years. “It was a splendid moment when we heard the powerful six-cylinder diesel engine running for the first time.”

In the 1950s, Liebherr was already experimenting with wheel loaders, a type of machine still in its infancy and underdeveloped at the time. Liebherr’s first two prototypes, the ‘Elephant’ and ‘Mammoth’ models, still had to cope with increased tyre wear and modest traction. In the early 1960s, Liebherr then managed to create a reliable wheel loader prototype with the LSL 1500, weighing around 10 tonnes and with 108hp. Leibherr produced a pilot series of five units. The LSL 1500 had a rigid frame and hydraulically supported rear wheel steering which was luxurious for the time. The load transmission was achieved by a torque converter and a four-wheel drive, which could optionally be switched off.

The new kinematics provided a dumping height of around 3m and allowed for the loading of construction site vehicles with larger side heights. For poor weather, an all-weather cover with sewn-in transparent windows and heating was available for the operator’s platform, which was still open at that time.

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