by Nick Drew | Fri 13 Jan 2017
Memory of the month the way things were (Part Eight)
Around 1968 Whites received the contract to build a new stretch of road to avoid a notorious section of the A3022 Paignton to Brixham road at Quarry Bend, as the name suggests it was all rock from the word go. A colleague and I on two Cat D9s were detailed to rip out the rock, no blasting would be allowed due to close proximity of many houses. We would start at 06.00 and my D9 with a donkey engine start used to make a terrific noise when starting due to there being no silencer just a straight pipe from the manifold as manufactured, this echoed down the valley across the roofs of all these houses and then there was the clanking and squeaking of the tracks plus the exhausts, we expected immediate complaints but none seemed to materialise that we heard of.
The rock was limestone but we gradually made inroads into it, the batter was being tided up by a big Poclain swing shovel aided by a new invention, a pneumatic hammer the forerunner of the now ubiquitous hydraulic hammers of today but of course the operator had to pull around a large four wheel compressor with him, and the attendant air hose making it a bit of a pain to manoeuvre and work but certainly made life easier.
The material was being loaded away by Cat 977 and IH 250 shovels, one day they did a rather silly thing as there was a large rock that could only be lifted by both shovels together, they picked it up ok and a scow end tipper backed in under it, unfortunately as they tried to lower it in, it slipped and hit the side of the lorry ripping the butt completely off the chassis on to the ground doing considerable damage to tipping gear and springs etc, I don’t know how that was explained.
One day we were all sitting in the sun near the site entrance having snack when an elderly couple heading for Paignton were passing the site, suddenly the back wheel of the car flew off and went whizzing down the site, sparks flying the car came to a halt on site, we rushed over to them and the couple were quite shaken up. The brake drum was worn right through and it transpired that they just had new tyres fitted in Brixham and the wheel nuts were not tightened up, luckily no one was hurt. Following two weeks holiday I returned to site and on starting the D9 it was immediately obvious there was a very serious engine problem, it ran but not on all cylinders and my guess was that the cylinder heads were cracked. On checking the water again the level had dropped away and was no longer visible when it had been when doing my initial check, this type of damage occurs when the engine is shut down from full throttle and not allowed a cool down period to allow the massive heat in the top of a turbo charged engine to dissipate via the cooling system, I always allowed at least ten minutes, so yet again my machine suffered at the hands of a some drongo.
Photo: Courtesy of VannattaBros.Com
On ringing the yard and explaining the problem the Caterpillar agent in Exeter was contacted and a fitter sent, together we stripped the heads off, and of course it was peeing down with rain, the damage was plain to see, the pots full of water and cracks between all of the ports. I expected new heads would be fitted but Les White wanted to try metal locking them, personally I couldn’t see how this could possible work as there would be no access to the water ways within the head, but very early next morning off to Avonmouth I go on the old A38 making sure I was there by 07.00 for when the company opened, they reckoned they could do it so I left the heads there. A couple of days later I picked up the finished heads and the surface looked good but I was still unconvinced, next day we refitted them (still raining) but even before we could start up the pots had filled with water again so a complete failure I’m afraid. New heads were obtained from a long way away and the whole strip down performed again, I changed the engine oil as well and she was running smoothly again. The Co-Operator