Phil Marshall’s fabulous restoration of a 1966 Commer included making his own press tools! Peter Simpson tells the story.
With many of the lorry restorations that we feature in Classic & Vintage Commercials, the owner’s inspiration and/or enthusiasm for lorries and road haulage comes from childhood cab rides with a lorry-driving father. In the case of 54 year old Phil Marshall, whose 1966 TS3-engined Commer Maxiload is the subject of this month’s cover story the inspiration, though still parental, was slightly different.
Back in the 1970s, Phil’s mother was a lorry driver and drove a series of Maxiload cattle floats for a firm based near Bressingham in Norfolk. On occasions, she collected a four to seven year old Phil from school in one of the lorries. This, perhaps unsurprisingly, resulted in a certain amount of playground kudos. Mum later moved on to drive an LAD cabbed Albion Chieftain on sugar beet and pea harvest work.
On leaving school Phil did not initially go into lorries. Rather he joined a local architectural practice as an office junior: “I was always quite good at technical drawing.” However after 18 months he knew office work wasn’t for him, so he bought a van and started doing local transport work. This was successful, and in due course became two vans and a second driver.
Started on Volvos
Then, when he turned 21 he financed his own HGV training and after passing his test (on a 1982 Volvo F7 with 40ft flat trailer) went to work for local firm G & G Transport. Here he drove Volvo FL7 and F10s. This was mainly container work between Felixstowe and destinations right across the UK. On Mondays when containers were slack after the weekend, he drove an Eastron tilt. By 1996 however he wanted something that didn’t involve nights out so started driving concrete mixers. The first was a Dodge 13tonner, followed by a Leyland Constructor and finally a nearly-new Renault. This lasted a couple of years after which Phil returned to G & G for a short time as a driver-mechanic, before, in March 1999 setting up the local car and light commercial repair business he still runs today, and which in 2024 celebrates its 25th anniversary.
Lorries, however, continued to play a significant part in his life as for a while he ran an own-account haulage business with his father-in-law, again running containers out of Felixstowe. This, though, was mainly to provide something for father-in-law to do, and ended with his retirememt.
Kentish Lorry
The Maxiload is, of course, intended as a memory-piece of those early cab-rides with mum, and an era of road haulage that’s now passed. This actual lorry was new, with a grain body, to a Kent-based grain and feed merchant. Phil isn’t sure of their exact name. but the initials B T Y on the back of the grain body may provide a clue.
Anyway, that firm seem to have run the lorry for 20 years. It then passed to a farmer, also based in Kent, where it joined a similar Commer on seasonal harvest work, running across fields alongside the combine harvester. This also seems to have lasted about 20 years until around 2007. Then, following the farmer’s death, both lorries were advertised in Classic & Vintage Commercials magazine. Phil saw them at this point but having just bought a house and with a youngish family, wasn’t in a position to buy.
Three years later, however, FKP902D was advertised again because the 2007 buyer, based in Chippenham, hadn’t been able to carry out his planned restoration. The bad news, however, was that it had spent the intervening years parked outside, and had deteriorated. Still, it was the exact-type of lorry Phil wanted, so in late 2010, he headed west with a Volvo FL10 tractor and low-loader. He then returned with a Maxiload on the back.
At about the same time, he also acquired another Maxiload to use as a parts-source. This 1967 lorry had been standing for many years in a field near Dickleburgh in Norfolk and was far too corroded to be restored. It did, though, have a six-speed gearbox with overdrive top. This, clearly, would be better on a preserved lorry that won’t carry a paying load again than the original five-speed. The spares lorry also donated doors plus a spare windscreen and sundry other parts, and siome other parts on it were missing on FKP and could be used as patterns for remanufacture.
Repair don’t replace
When it comes to restoration, Phil is a firm believer in reusing as much original material as possible, and only renewing stuff when there really isn’t any option. Thus the original cab, though extremely rough, has been repaired rather than swapped for a better replacement. And while the lorry now seen on the rally field is clearly different from the one that worked around Kent from 1966 to 2006, the main chassis cab at least is as faithful to original as possible.
Phil knew that the cab was going to be the hardest part of the whole restoration, so he decided to tackle that first; he wanted to get that done while enthusiasm and motivation were still strong! He began by taking it off the chassis and then placing it on a frame that he built to allow it to be wheeled about the workshop; the frame also incorporated a pallet-like facility allowing it to be lifted with a fork-lift.
As already noted, the cab was extremely rusty, but to see just how bad it was, Phil first had it shot-blasted and primed. Rot was then cut right out and replaced with fresh metal repair sections. The measurements for these came from the remains of Phil’s own two cabs, plus the Ipswich Transport Museum who have a Maxiload in their collection to which he was allowed more-or-less unfettered access for measuring and photographic purposes.
Pressed Parts
However, because Phil doesn’t think hand-made panels have the same crispness as pressed ones, he didn’t simply hand-make the repair sections. Rather, with some smaller or more complex parts, he milled and lathe-turned his own press-tools from aluminium blocks and then pressed the parts out using his hydraulic press. This was clearly though a much longer way of doing it, but looking at the lorry now, I reckon it was well worth taking the extra trouble.
Areas that needed repair included the entire cab rear lower section, the door bottoms and tops. The latter had been damaged by fitment of various aftermarket mirror brackets over the years. As usual, the windscreen surround was bad, in fact much of it came out with the screen. Putting the screen back in after repair was a rather anxious time. The size has to be spot on, and just a few millimetres out can stop if from fitting. The roof was also holed and damaged where a sheet rack had been fitted. This needed significant repair, though unusually, the roof gutters were pretty good.
Elsewhere on the cab, both front wings were bad and needed new edge sections welding in, and the steps, unfortunately had to be renewed. He was offered a set of replacement glassfibre wings, but wanted to retain original metal. All in all, the cab repairs took around 18 months, with Phil teaching himself to TIG-weld while doing it. By the end he was, unsurprisingly, pretty good at it!
The chassis
With the cab finished, attention turned to the chassis. The main issue here was significant corrosion between the main chassis and both side flitch plates. The plates had to come off for thorough cleaning/derusting, blasting and then painting. To prevent a similar problem in future, copious quantities of Waxoyl went in between the two; Phil is a great believer in Waxoyl, and reckons around four gallons were used overall.
Most of the remaining chassis structure was in good order, and cleaned up well. The springs, however, needed work. Midland Spring Services of Birmingham refurbished them to as-new standard including new leaves as required and retempering; Phil recommends them without hesitation. The Eaton two-speed rear axle was good and needed nothing more than new brake shoes. The front axle beam was also in good order. The brakes were fully refurbished with new cam bushes. The brake chambers were also renewed. Finding the fronts were no problem, but replacements for the Type 30 chambers n the back proved elusive. Phil tried fitting Type 24s, but these didn’t produce enough effort. Eventually, Dave True of Tamworth managed to locate a pair of good secondhand Type 30 chambers. Once blasted and painted were fitted and all was well.
Talking of painting, Phil is also keen to mention that as the chassis was coming together his daughter Jasmine went underneath and etch-primed and painted, by hand, every one of the many nuts and bolts underneath, including those now holding the flitch plates on. Phil also made a point of using original-type UNF fastenings throughout. Seven new Michelin tyres were sourced and fitted to the original split-rim wheels which had been blasted and painted.
New body built
From the start of the project, Phil knew that the original grain body wasn’t going to be part of the finished lorry. It wasn’t in great shape, and Phil didn’t think it looked that nice. More significantly, his medium-term objective is to find or build a demountable cattle float body of the type Mum drove. He therefore designed and built his own aluminium-framed flat body. The metal for this came from Service Metals, while the keruing wood bed was sourced from KMR of Hadleigh, Suffolk.
Mechanical Maladies
As already noted, the gearbox was swapped for a six-speed overdrive unit from the spares lorry. This needed new bearings but little else. The TS3 engine, however, was another story. When the lorry arrived, Phil did start it up, and it ran, but was extremely smoky and clearly in poor health. Phil turned for advice to fellow local TS3 Commer owner Bernie Baily (whose lorries we have featured several times). Bernie put him in touch with Frank Rout who was willing to sell him two engines. Onr of these was rebuilt, the other has been kept for spares. Sourcing parts for the rebuild required tenacity and persistence, with some stuff including bearing shells coming from New Zealand.
A new set of oil pump gears was also needed. Fortunately the factory workshop manual contains all the specifications, and from these Pritchard Gears of Wednesbury (who Phil describes as ‘lovely people’) were able to make replacements. Phil obtained two sets as his long-term aim is to rebuild and refi the original engine; the main thing holding this up is lack of a set of standard-size cylinder liners. He also rebuilt the supercharger himself – no easy task as assembly must be spot-on. Apparently the first time he did this it was “a bit noisy” but the second time it was just about perfect. A recent check has confirmed that all’s well with no rotor contact whatsoever. A rebuilt clutch was supplied by Cam Parts of Claydon.
Bernie Baily again came to Phil’s aid when it came to the starter motor by arranging an overhaul. Very unusually for a 1966 lorry, the Maxiload came with an alternator rather than a dynamo, though the control circuity is external and a tad complex. This, too, was rebuilt, and the wiring loom removed and repaired as required, though it didn’t need that much doing.
The cab interior has been fully refurbished. Phil did some of this himself, and as with the metalwork, he remade several of the rubber parts using moulds that he had made himself. Seats and door cards were, however, refurbished by Aldridge Trim who “did a good job and delivered on the exact day they’d quoted.” The headlining was made and fitted by local trimmer Howard Sands.
The paintwork was done by B & R Coachworks of Claydon; Phil chose two-pack paint for durability. The finish is now a few years old, and has mellowed nicely into a good, slightly used look. Phil did the signwriting himself however, and practised the exact style and wording that he wanted several times on an old van that was being scrapped. It then took him three days to do the same on the lorry, and is pleased with the result, though he is keen to point out that “what you see is the only signwriting I can do.”
By 2018, the lorry was almost ready for the road. There was, though, a paperwork issue. Because the lorry had been off the road for so long and seemed to have been used on some kind of agricultural restricted use, there was no trace on the DVLA record of it ever having been MoT’d or plated. Phil’s wife Sally emailed DVLA extensively to sort this out, and eventually was successful. The lorry did, howerver, have to be re-plated to ensure the correct data had been uploaded. The Commer has since been retested annually without issue and just one advisory. That was in 2021 for stiff driver’s seat adjustment which has since been rectified.
And that is basically the story so far. Since restoration, Phil’s Commer has been a familiar sight at events around East Anglia. And being a TS3, it sounds every bit as good as it looks!
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