Nuffield and Leyland Tractor Club

John Cannon’s restored Leyland Narrow 154

John’s award winning tractor at the ‘Tractor World’ show Malvern

John Cannon has restored several Leyland tractors over the past 10 years. However, his fascination with the narrow 154 came about when he bought an original sales brochure for the Leyland 154, in the centre fold was a picture of a very narrow tractor next to a standard width 154. He already had a BMC Mini, a Nuffield 4/25, a standard Leyland 154 and a Leyland 302 in his collection. It seemed that the next logical step was to place wanted ads in all the major tractor magazines. He had many calls from people that had standard size tractors but no narrow models.

Then he had a lucky break. By chance the Leyland and Nuffield club magazine had come and on the back cover was a yellow narrow tractor being driven by its owner, Lars Christensen in Denmark! He contacted Lars and asked if his tractor was for sale. Unfortunately the answer was no!

Leyland had made about one hundred of these narrow 154s. They were cut down to the narrow width by Beans Engineering, who were at that time owned by the Leyland Group. They were originally built for vineyard use but very few were sold. The bulk of them went to Denmark, Sweden and Norway to be used as municipal tractors for pavement snow clearing clearance.

The Leyland 154 in its original clothes from Denmark

John asked Lars to look out for a narrow 154 for sale in Denmark. A few months went by, then the news that he wanted came through. He had found one near Esbjerg. John contacted the owner and after pictures were sent and many emails exchanged a deal was done. Soon he was picking his latest toy up from Harwich docks.

It looked very out of scale with quite a large cab and balloon tyres on the front. It had a drop box on the PTO to allow the PTO to go under the tractor to the front end to power a rotating brush.

Salt had done a lot more damage than the pictures show. The tractor had no drawbar or lift arms. Everything underneath was rusted away and the bolt holes for the drawbar were rusted beyond repair.

Rear end of 154 with cranked link arms

John already had a spare 154 that he had bought for spares. He used the diff and gear box from the donor tractor and the shortened axles from his narrow one. Nine inches had been cut from the middle of each of these axles. This gave John a big problem to overcome. The casting bolt holes for the lower lift arms were missing and the three bolt holes for the wing brackets were under the fuel tank! So where the wings and link arms would normally fit was missing.  After much fabrication they were finally fitted.

Close up of link arm brackets

John heated the lift arms and cranked them as per the picture in the sales brochure (the standard model lift arms are straight).

Another problem to overcome was the hydraulic control lever, on the standard tractor it fits to a bracket on the offside wing but on the narrow version there’s no room to fit it there, so the lever is turned downwards and is under the fuel tank. The control lever is extended upwards and only just fits between the tank and offside wing.

John shot blasted the rusted parts with the fuel tank ending up looking like it had been shot with a shotgun. There were holes everywhere! He decided to make a new tank from the spares tractor. This was not easy; he used tape to mark the end that needed to be cut off. With a steady hand and using a small air driven disc cutter he set to and cut the end of the tank off, he then welded a flat plate to re-make the tank as per Beans’ modification.

The back end was now complete! Very unconventional, as it may seem a strange way to restore a tractor – from the backend forward, but John figured he could get the engine running only once the peculiarities of the backend was completed.

Leyland 154 engine with serviced injection pump 

The engine had been running when it came from Denmark but was smoky. He took the head off to find the bores very worn. A local engineer bored it out to +0.030”, new pistons were sourced and big end bearings fitted, the head was skimmed and new valve stem seals fitted. John had a spare injector pump that had been serviced, he fitted that along with serviced injectors, but he couldn’t get it to run smoothly. After weeks of trying, John got the original pump serviced and put that back on; the engine now ran much better.

Modified head lamp position and steering arrangement, the position of the head lamps can be seen in one of the pictures above

Due to the steering arrangement the headlights are refitted higher up the bonnet.

The paint work was next. When John sprays he still likes to see the casting joints. There seems to be a current fad to cover everything in high build primer. He didn’t like that; if you need to change any parts the whole paint job could be ruined. On the other hand John does like to see the panels well done.

The rear wheels have had extra spacers welded to move the centre further out than standard. It was quite crude welding and it was decided to leave this rather than smoothing the weld with the grinder so you can see how they were originally. John found the front wheels at Nettley Marsh steam show, in the auto jumble. They had implement tyres on and were rusty but he could see the potential although they were only three stud fixing. As the centre hole was the right size he welded up the stud holes and re drilled the centre to four stud.

This restoration was done with a spec sheet and photos from the sales brochure because there’s no information available from when this tractor was made. It has taken John the best part of 2 years to complete the restoration.

To John’s knowledge this could be the only narrow 154 with the dropped front axle and twelve inch front wheels in the UK.