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Rubber van wings
Posted: Tue May 27, 2025 8:31 am
by Wes
Hi. Just a thought. Having just been to my first Moggyfest i noticed something. None of the glorious LCV vans had rubber wings. Got me thinking, have they long since rotted away? no one makes new ones?, they are not practical in modern use? Not now road legal? hmmmm!
Re: Rubber van wings
Posted: Tue May 27, 2025 9:19 am
by geoberni
Wes wrote: ↑Tue May 27, 2025 8:31 am
Hi. Just a thought. Having just been to my first Moggyfest i noticed something. None of the glorious LCV vans had rubber wings. Got me thinking, have they long since rotted away? no one makes new ones?, they are not practical in modern use? Not now road legal? hmmmm!
Well that's easily answered.
Rubber wings were unique to GPO Postal and Telephone Engineer vans as a customer requirement when the Vans started production in Oct '53.
Around Jan/Feb '55, they switched to standard metal wings, apart from a small follow-up batch of about 120 vehicles.
So they were only built for around 14 months.
That's a very small number of SII vans compared to the massive number of S3 & S5 vans over the subsequent 15 years or so.
If you do the calculation of allocated chassis numbers, it amounts to about 10,000 vehicles, out of a total production run approaching 327,000.
Re: Rubber van wings
Posted: Tue May 27, 2025 10:17 am
by Wes
Ah OK makes perfect sense
Re: Rubber van wings
Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2025 1:17 pm
by POMMReg
geoberni wrote: ↑Tue May 27, 2025 9:19 am
Wes wrote: ↑Tue May 27, 2025 8:31 am
Hi. Just a thought. Having just been to my first Moggyfest i noticed something. None of the glorious LCV vans had rubber wings. Got me thinking, have they long since rotted away? no one makes new ones?, they are not practical in modern use? Not now road legal? hmmmm!
Well that's easily answered.
Rubber wings were unique to GPO Postal and Telephone Engineer vans as a customer requirement when the Vans started production in Oct '53.
Around Jan/Feb '55, they switched to standard metal wings, apart from a small follow-up batch of about 120 vehicles.
So they were only built for around 14 months.
That's a very small number of SII vans compared to the massive number of S3 & S5 vans over the subsequent 15 years or so.
If you do the calculation of allocated chassis numbers, it amounts to about 10,000 vehicles, out of a total production run approaching 327,000.
The closest total production figure is 327217 - official figure of 326627 is WAY out when known chassis numbers are totted up.
Re: Rubber van wings
Posted: Thu Jun 12, 2025 1:50 pm
by geoberni
POMMReg wrote: ↑Thu Jun 12, 2025 1:17 pm
The closest total production figure is 327217 - official figure of 326627 is WAY out when known chassis numbers are totted up.
That makes the overall percentage of Rubber Wing vehicles even smaller then. Certainly explains why nobody has attempted to reproduce them.
Do you know who produced the Rubber Wings?
Was it subbed out to a company like Dunlop?
Re: Rubber van wings
Posted: Fri Jun 13, 2025 7:27 pm
by Chief
geoberni wrote: ↑Thu Jun 12, 2025 1:50 pm
Was it subbed out to a company like Dunlop?
Interesting bit here:
https://www.theautopian.com/this-amazin ... r-benders/
about them all having dents from the factory.
Also:
https://www.pistonheads.com/gassing/topic.asp?t=1951723
shows that it wasn't unique to just Minors and other vehicle manufacturers had them, maybe they all used the same rubber manufacturer and it may be possible to find the supplier through other vehicle history (if it wasn't in-house).