It was in the Simpson Desert, in 1966, I think, possibly the previous year. We had sent a truck (a 6x6 Zeligson water truck, but with a load bed on top of the tank) into Alice for supplies. Remember this was before ubiquitous communications. Our camp had SSB HF radio to our Alice Springs office, but the truck had no communications.
About a week after they went to town, we called Alice to ask when they were returning - and were somewhat surprised by the response "They left four days ago; oops! Did we forget to tell you?"
A search party was quickly mustered and sent on its way. They found the missing truck in the middle of the road about a hundred miles from camp. The driver and his assistant were remarkably cheerful - they had plenty of supplies, after all, the truck was carrying several weeks supply of food for 25. Including a dozen cartons of stubbies. At least it did include......
They were "stretching out their supply of drinking water".
The truck had been disabled when the neck of the LH swivel ball had broken, followed by the half-axle. The mechanic, who was obviously part of the rescue party, welded the break, and reinforced the job by making a buttress of 1/2" plate top and bottom between the ball and the mounting flange. He later did this mod to the other side.
We had several of these Zeligsons. They were Korean War vintage Diamond T 4 ton truck, remanufactured to new standard by Zeligson in Tucson Oklahoma, uprated to 12 tons and fitted with 20x20 single sand tyres. The engine was the largest six cylinder IH petrol engine, 504 cui if I remember correctly. They had power steering and air brakes. And gave endless trouble, I suspect mostly due to the poorly thought out increase in GVM. My final experience with them was when returning to Brisbane - coming down Minden range it distributed a number of key bits of its engine over the road, including a sumpful of oil. Knowing the engine was well worn after two years in the desert, the governor had been screwed down to 1800rpm. It may have been over-revved using engine braking.
John
JDNSW
1986 110 County 3.9 diesel
1970 2a 109 2.25 petrol
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