Reflections

REPRESENTING ROADLESS

During his remarkable 60-year career in the farm machinery industry, Arthur Battelle, now 96, worked as a tractor driver, contractor, milking machine installer, IH dealer mechanic, Fordson and Ford demonstrator and trouble-shooter, Roadless service guru and salesman, and importer of four-wheel drive conversion kits. In the third of his series of interviews with Simon Henley, he firstly explains why he decided to leave Ford in 1967 and then recalls his subsequent work as a service representative and demonstrator for Ford conversion specialist Roadless Traction.

ARTHUR BATTELLE joined Ford’s UK tractor operation as a temporary demonstrator in 1959. As he recalled in the September 2021 issue, he went on to become heavily involved with the demonstration programme for the new 6X tractors in the mid1960s as well as acting as a roving trouble-shooter, helping dealers to overcome the many early teething issues that arose, particularly during 1965.

During its earlier years, Ford’s UK operation had been fairly autonomous, but by 1964 the Americans were taking much greater control, with the UK company now being managed financially from the USA.

As these management changes occurred, Arthur found himself frequently bumping heads over his hotel expenses, although he conceded the finance department was only doing its job. Another concern, however, was some of the poor decisions that were increasingly being forced upon him due to the influence that was being asserted by the corporate bean counters.

“I loved visiting customers,” he recalled in his book Final Years on the Tractor Seat. “I found the work very satisfying, particularly when it was possible to take action to resolve problems. It was very frustrating when it was not possible to help as much as I thought I would be able to. There were occasions when many problems could have been eradicated easily if I could have obtained some action from the factory, but I was constantly put off with stock excuses such as “It is not my job” or “We do not have a budget” or “We must get authority from America to do that”.

Eventually I became disillusioned with banging my head against a brick wall, and decided that Ford and I should part company.

By this time, Arthur had already entered discussions with Roadless Traction’s sales manager, Ven Dodge, Above: Keeping a close eye on the ploughing during a 1968 demo. The equal-wheel Roadless 115 that Arthur was using with a five-furrow conventional plough at this event was new on the scene, having made its debut at the 1968 Royal Show.

Arthur Battelle using a Roadless Ploughmaster 95 to plough on-land at a demonstration in the autumn of 1967. This was not long after he joined the company as a service representative and demonstrator. Photo courtesy of Stuart Gibbard.

about a position with the Hounslow-based fourwheel drive conversion specialist. In early 1967, following a dispute over the reimbursement of fuel expenses, Arthur politely resigned from Ford and joined Roadless Traction as a service representative and tractor demonstrator.

We now join Arthur, as he discusses his work at Roadless Traction Ltd and reveals some of the challenges he would come to face during his tenure with the company.

CLASSIC TRACTOR (CT): What were your first experiences with Roadless and what did your work involve? ARTHUR BATTELLE (AB): My new service and demonstration role at Roadless covered the whole country, so for the first time in my life I was given a brand new company car, which happened to be a green Ford Cortina estate. For the first two weeks, I worked around the factory, learning about the tractors.

Back in 1955, Roadless had secured a licensing agreement with Selene in Italy, to manufacture fourwheel drive Ford tractors using Selene’s patented transfer box design. The front axle used on all Selene and Roadless four-wheel drive tractor conversions produced at the time was an ex-US Army GMC unit which was commonly available from war surplus vendors in Europe.

Roadless had a contact in Holland, who notified the company when a US Army surplus auction was next scheduled. Normally, the works manager, Charles Skelton, would attend the sale, which might be in Belgium, France or Holland. I even recall him driving all the way to Madrid in Spain to purchase axles.

The axles, which typically cost between £5 and £20 each at the time, were either new or reconditioned units boxed-up in wooden crates. Before I went to work at Roadless, the company had launched a new six-cylinder tractor, the Ploughmaster 90, which was replaced in 1967 by the Ploughmaster 95. Around 25 tractors had been sold when I arrived at the company, and nearly all of them were having problems.

CT: Can you tell us about the problems with the six-cylinder Ploughmasters and explain how you were able to rectify them? AB: Basically, the GMC differential had been designed for low torque/high speed travel (40mph) applications. The diff could just about cope in the lesspowerful four-cylinder tractors, but when it was asked to handle 90hp at low-speed in a six-cylinder tractor pulling a heavy load, the axles started failing.

There were, essentially, two problems: firstly, the high torque loads caused axle shaft breakages, and secondly, because the differentials were turned upside down to gain additional ground clearance, the pinion bearings failed.

By turning over the axle, the pinion bearing was no longer submerged in oil. A solution was discovered by a consulting engineer hired by Roadless, who concluded that the simplest resolution was to drill a hole into the differential casting, onto which a welded tab would be attached. The tab, which was effectively a splash deflector, would act as an oil feed, guiding lubricant onto the bearing.

This idea worked, so Roadless quickly started modifying a whole batch of new MkII axles with the new oil feed and a strengthened pinion bearing. The Above: Arthur checking to make sure the furrows are matching up while on-land ploughing with a Roadless Ploughmaster 95 and four-furrow SKH plough at a demo in late 1967. Photo: Mervyn Ford. Above inset: This advert for the Roadless Ploughmaster 75 and 95, and the 115, appeared in the January 1969 issue of Arable Farmer. Left: The GMC front axles fitted to Roadless Ploughmasters were sourced from war surplus sales in Europe. When fitted to four-cylinder models, the axles were mostly reliable, but those installed on six-cylinder variants suffered from axle shaft failure.

modified axles were then delivered to dealers, so they could swap them with the troublesome differential units in their customers’ tractors.

Once removed, I would collect the affected differentials and return them to the factory for upgrading. On the first trip I made, I remember loading six of them into the boot of my new Cortina, which I soon discovered was too much weight and made the car almost undriveable.

CT: Tell us about your demonstration work at Roadless Traction. AB: After the initial battle to replace the failing differentials, I started to focus on demo work. However, after only a few big demonstrations I was replaced by Bruce Keech, who I had previously worked with at Ford, and promoted to service manager. From this point onwards, a lot of my time would involve solving GMC front axle issues on Ploughmaster 90 and 95 models.

CT: You mentioned earlier that one of the problems was axle shaft breakages. What was the cause of this? AB: The cause of the problem was that the shafts simply were not strong enough. Even though Roadless started using special axle shafts manufactured in Germany, tractors which were used for draught work on heavy ground were still experiencing some problems.

Above: Arthur’s former colleague Mervyn Ford at the wheel of a Roadless 115. Mervyn joined Roadless Traction as a demonstrator in 1969. His role with the company would soon extend to working closely with Arthur on servicerelated issues. The two men remain close friends today. Above right: The Ploughmaster 90, pictured, introduced in 1965, was superseded by the Ploughmaster 95 in 1967. Both models unfortunately experienced problems with the war-surplus GMC front axles, recalls Arthur.

It took me a while, but I eventually worked out how to prevent axle shaft breakages by carefully setting the tyre pressures. The first tractor I was able achieve this with was a four-wheel drive Roadless IH 634 that was being used for ploughing.

I discovered that over-inflated rear tyres caused the back wheels to spin excessively. Because the rear tyres were not gripping, the front tyres, which typically rotate about one per cent faster than the rear wheels, were left to do all the work. With the added load, particularly if the tractor was carrying front ballast weight, the axle shafts would break under the strain.

By carefully experimenting with tyre pressures, I worked out that with the plough raised out of the ground, the optimum rear tyre pressure on the IH 634 was 11psi. This provided enough grip at the rear to allow the front wheels to slightly spin, so they were assisting the rear wheels instead of actually pulling the tractor and the plough along.

After working this out, I helped a lot of farmers and their drivers to set up their tractors. Once we had established the best combination of tyre pressures for a particular tractor and plough, I would paint the pressures on the plough headstock with model aircraft paint, so they wouldn’t be forgotten.

CT: Roadless tractors were sold with a 12-month warranty, but the Ford skid units used to build them were only covered for six months. How did the Roadless warranty system work?

AB: The skid units did have a six-month warranty, but Ford accepted warranty claims on the tractors for 12 months. Because most Roadless tractors were sold by Ford dealers, a customer with an engine problem could take the tractor back to his dealer. Mechanical issues with the four-wheel drive system were covered by Roadless Traction.

The warranty procedure became more complicated when Ford decided it would no longer handle warranty claims on its skid units directly. Roadless would have to process warranty claims on its behalf, then reclaim the money from Ford.

The task of processing warranty paperwork fell into my lap. I would take the paperwork home and process it in the spare room of our home. The problem was that Roadless had no official warranty protocol in place. With so much additional paperwork to process, I decided to develop a proper warranty scheme.

With help from my wife, Betty, I set up task times for each operation and established mileage tariffs to cover dealer journeys to and from a customer’s farm. Each job was assigned a code number which related to the task, so that every single repair had a standardised rate.

The time allotted to each task was based on the ability of an experienced engineer. Based on my own experience, I knew, for example, it didn’t take 12 hours to replace an axle shaft, but that’s what some dealers would request payment for.

If a task typically took me one hour, then I would set a task rate of 1.5 hours, so there was a little bit of room for error. By standardising the warranty system, all the dealers received the same compensation and the whole warranty process was simplified. I could never have achieved this without the organisational skills of my wife, Betty, who would almost take complete control of the Roadless warranty programme in future years.

Below left: The front axle on the equal-wheel Roadless 115 was designed by the company’s chief engineer Vic Crockford. Tractors built after September 1970, including this one, being driven here by Roadless demonstrator Mervyn Ford, were fitted with safety cabs built by Alexander Duncan of Aberdeen. Photo courtesy of Stuart Gibbard. Below: This early advertisement for the Roadless 115, published in the August 1968 issue of Agricultural Machinery Journal, was timed to coincide with the tractor’s launch at the Royal Show in July of that year.

Left and below: The Roadless 94T, based on the turbocharged Ford 7000, was regarded by Arthur as the best four-cylinder model produced by Roadless Traction, thanks to its power and tractive performance.

CT: Tell us about your involvement with the equal-wheel Roadless 115. AB: The Roadless 115 was the company’s first equalwheel tractor and it had been designed in-house by Roadless’ chief designer Vic Crockford. I had seen the prototype 115 working and was impressed by its performance.

The original front axle design featured a Kramer differential and Bray reduction hubs, although Bray was unable to supply us with enough hub units. Roadless considered using Selene reduction gears, but these were not strong enough, so the company developed its own reduction units.

Mervyn Ford, standing, with his friend and mentor Arthur Battelle. Their working relationship began in 1969 and continued until Arthur’s retirement in 1984.

I was heavily involved with the introduction of the 115, which was launched in July 1968 at the Royal Show. The 115 was an excellent draught tractor, however, it was a little too heavy for working on banks and steep slopes. A well-driven Ploughmaster 95 would beat the 115 ploughing uphill. I always maintained the 115 was at least half-a-ton overweight.

CT: How did your role within the company develop during this time? AB: By now I was travelling all over the UK performing service and warranty work. However, my role in Scotland was extended to also include sales, so I was working very long hours. In 1969, Bruce Keech went to work for County Commercial Cars. His replacement was a young man called Mervyn Ford, who had already achieved notoriety as a demonstrator for Massey Ferguson. Although Ven Dodge had hired Mervyn as a demonstrator for Roadless – and he was excellent at his job – Mervyn was also a very capable mechanic and would take over some of my workload as a service representative.

In those days, I was sometimes travelling 1500 miles a week. My work also took me to France, where I ventured on numerous occasions to visit French dealers who had imported or wanted to sell Roadless tractors, performing demonstrations and helping existing customers to set up their tractors correctly.

I was also involved in several engineering projects in France, which included fitting a prototype Roadless axle to a Ford 8000. Fitting the axle, which had been designed by Vic Crockford and had not actually been approved by Ford, required some modification to the steering arms and cab, but it proved there was potential for using the axle on this size of tractor. Unfortunately, this was the only 8000 we fitted with a Roadless axle.

Later, Mervyn and I would be sent to France to fit a Roadless planetary axle with a diff-lock to a Ford 7000. I continued visiting France throughout the 1970s, and I made some very good friends there. CT: What sort of problems did Roadless encounter following the introduction of safety cab regulations in 1970? AB: Roadless approached Alexander Duncan in Aberdeen to supply safety cabs for its tractors. The Duncan cabs were robust and served the purpose well, however, they had a severe interior noise problem which was becoming a growing concern for Roadless.

To find a solution, I drove up to Aberdeen to see Alex Duncan, who made me very welcome and invited me to stay at his house. The evening started with a five-mile walk to a local pub where we consumed several pints of strong ale before returning to the house for supper and some malt whisky.

Our conversation focussed on the noise issue, and I explained to Alex how I had overcome the issue of vibration and noise in the home-made cab I had designed for my David Brown tractor as a young man. I should point out it was very quiet. We spent a long time that evening working out how to modify the Duncan cab, and Alex was determined to trial my proposed ideas.

The next morning, he arranged for us to visit his factory so we could discuss the proposed design changes with his fabricator, who immediately went to work. Within a very short time, the fabricator had welded up a prototype version of the cab, inside which there was an insulated floor called a barrier mat.

This was the prototype of the Duncan Super Deluxe cab, which was wider and introduced a thick rubber barrier mat over the gearbox. It was both significantly quieter and roomier.

Unfortunately, because County offered an additional wing-mounted fuel tank on its tractors, Ven Dodge insisted the Duncan Super Deluxe cab on Roadless models should feature fuel tanks integrated into the wings. These would prove to be a nightmare, as not only did they make the cab narrower, the wing tanks also leaked and soaked the interior cladding with diesel. There was a similar problem on later Lambourn Q-cabs, which created just as many problems.

Next month

IN OUR NEXT INTERVIEW with Arthur, he recalls his introduction to the Schindler four-wheel drive axle, his final days at Roadless Traction and how he went on to establish his own company, Farm Tractor Drives in the 1970s.