Getting ready for a new arrival
Trevor Cuthbert tries to justify chopping in his Cherry Picker for another despite neglecting his current one...
he Defender 130 Tipper has been a little busy again recently on a wide variety of jobs around home and also across the Irish sea, in Wales and England. At home, I have some ground works underway to create a new concrete work area beside the workshop, close to the pedestrian door. This will reduce the amount of Land Rover spannering taking place on the driveway in good weather, with the added bonus of being closer to the tools and parts storage area.
The new ground works initially brought the 130 Tipper into play, to haul away all of the vegetation (much of which was weeds) to the HRC, followed by unwanted soil and rubble. The Land Rover then
Thelped me to move some hard fill to the area, in advance of the concrete guys arriving. The tipping function of the 130 is simply wonderful for this type of work. Normally I would embark on my travels to England in my Discovery 2, which is the most comfortable for long journeys. The latest trip was primarily to deliver a 127 V8 to Liverpool docks – on behalf of my client and friend, Matthew Hedrick – and then onto Doncaster to collect a load from Richards Chassis Ltd. However, at the eleventh hour, a job came up delivering a used D2 chassis for another friend to North Wales. This chassis and the 127 V8 would not fit together on my trailer, but the 130 Tipper came to the rescue. Utilising the special ladder-rack type frame that was made for this type of job last year, the D2 chassis was strapped aboard the 130, keeping the trailer free to carry the 127. Although not quite as comfortable as the Discovery 2, the 130 did an admirable job and clocked up another 700-odd miles on the clock.
On the subject of Defender 130, I have been thinking about my poor old Land Rover Cherry Picker, which hasn’t moved from the barn for about two years. The reason it has been on my mind is because my cousin, David Martin, recently told me that he was thinking of selling his later Td5 Cherry Picker. If I put mine on the market, could I achieve a good enough price to upgrade to David’s without too much additional cost? Typical of any 200Tdi Land Rover – having fitted a fresh battery and let the glow plugs work one cycle of the timer, the engine fired up on the proverbial first turn of the key. With the PTO engaged and the hydraulic pump given a minute or two to wake up, the stabiliser feet were soon locked down and the upper boom raised the basket high in the air! Dry storage is certainly a fine thing for keeping mechanical equipment in good order.
So I have put the Cherry Picker on the market and agreed a price with David for the Td5 replacement machine; now I just need to wait for any serious enquiries. Last year I upgraded my Land Rover Tipper from the 110 that I built a few years back, to the fine 130 built by my friend Dan Dew. But you might ask, why upgrade the Cherry Picker this year when it sees little use? Well I have quite a few jobs lined up for it – tasks that I have been putting off for a while – which I really need to get stuck in to during the early part of 2018. This other Cherry Picker has 20 per cent better reach, which is better suited to some of the tree work and work on the eaves of my house – jobs where the old machine was really on the limit for. This is my excuse and I am sticking to it!