Old Bill

At the moment, I am counting vehicles presented as military of whatever provenance. We can expand to commercials of the period later. Of course then there are those which will be military but which are as yet unrestored such as our Thornycroft. If we include all of these, we reach the best part of 100 vehicles in the UK. Let's stick to Military for the time being! Steve

Try this link! It should take you to the Canadian War Museum Artifact page. http://collections.civilization.ca/public/pages/cmccpublic/emupublic/Display.php?irn=1035821&QueryPage=%2Fpublic%2Fpages%2Fcmccpublic%2Femupublic%2FQuery.php&lang=0 Steve

Well, if you consider Dennis, the total is just one. With Autocars, I think the total is two. That would be ours and also an armoured version used by the Canadian motor machine gun brigade and now preserved in the Canadian War Museum in Ottawa. That is a complete, original vehicle with a provenance. Does anyone have a recent picture? Steve

That's very neat. Thank you for taking the trouble to demonstrate the process. Looking back, I see that my picture is not very clear. The spring is actually a coil of 20swg x 3/8" wide flat strip. I can probably wrap the main coil in the lathe but the eye looks tricky. It wants to be wrapped around a pin but that will only be 1/16" dia max. My best attempt so far will be to bend the top over in the vice and then to keep wrapping and squeezing in the vice jaws. It will have to be done cold and in the annealed state because it will cool too quickly to be done hot unless there is some special jig I could make. There has to be a trick to it as clocks have been made for quite a while! Steve

You make it look too easy! Thanks for the inspiration! Steve

Thanks for that recommendation, Hedd. Thank you chaps for your comments too. I can pull it over compression but not very fast. Too many years driving a desk! The FWD has an impulse and starts well when cold, just by pulling it over the top. Hot starts are a different matter but that's another story! I am currently making up various adaptors to allow me to hang the 'Slick' starter on the spare Simms mag. This is looking promising but I would like a proper Simms if I can. Making the springs is a bit of a challenge as I can't see how to bend the eye so tightly. The eyes are only 1/8" in diameter and are very neatly bent. I did make somthing similar for the FWD spring clips which have similar eyes on the ends and although they are satisfactory, I could not get them tight. Those were made from spring steel in the soft state which I heat treated afterwards in a sand bath heated using my propane torch. I quenched and tempered them in chip fat raided from the fryer. I must state that I didn't put the oil back afterwards though! If you have any thoughts on how to bend the eyes, I should be very pleased to hear them. Steve

Do we know whether the engine is imperial or metric? Steve

Here is another. This is a Locomobile and is probably as 'original' as one can get. It spent many years as accomodation but was untouched beneath a skin of corrugated iron. It now lives in Suffolk.

Hi Al. What a splendid question! It is amazing how many subjects this exercise has turned up! I can't give you a definitive answer unfortunately but this is how it came about. We have two photographs of New Zealand Division Dennis lorries so we picked an ID number a few away from one of them. Then we sent a scan of the picture it to our cartographer friend Andy who very kindly digitised the numbers and laid them out full size for the signwriter. He copied the font exactly but cursed because it was completely non-standard and he had to modify something similar to match it. The signwriter used Andy's print to lay out the numbers on the bonnet but then said 'I don't like that' and did his own thing! The army specified a height for the numbers but not the font so when you look through the old photos they are all sorts of styles. Now the US Army provided stencils so they are all lettered the same way and look very similar to those used in WW2. I'm afraid that doesn't help you much but it does mean that you can't get it wrong! What is your particular interest? Steve

You have beaten me to it! I must say that the Liberty goes well. I was overtaken going up Clayton Hill whilst I was driving an Albion! This Liberty is somewhere in the US and came up for sale on Ebay last year. I don't know anything else about it unfortunately.

That was a nice surprise. It's a small world! I asked Steve what he had left over after he had sold his Thorny. It turned out to be only a single item, a water pump impeller which is now safely on the shelf ready to replace the cracked one Father has found in our engine! Steve

This splendid machine is a French Army De Dion of 1914. It turned up in Brighton a few years ago having been driven over from France!

This is the Imperial War Museum's Thornycroft J type AA Gun lorry. It served in France and later went on show at the Crystal Palace when the museum was based there. Later, to save space, it was returned to Thornycrofts who stored it for many years. Later, they moved it out into the yard to deter the Hun during the Second War. Sometime after, its engine was removed and sold and then it was sold in its entirety to Tom Redburn who fitted it with a Commer engine. At some point, the IWM bought it back and it was completely overhauled and rebuilt with the correct engine by Richard Peskett.

Now, a Pierce Arrow. This one served with the French Army during the war and was later purchased by its regular driver. Now owned by Grundon, it was rebuilt by Richard Peskett into a British Army configuration.

This 1917 Hallford three-tonner has been built up from parts obtained from a variety of sources and carries a new body. It resides near Milton Keynes.

This is our Autocar UF21 of 1917. This is an entirely original chassis (well, as original as a 94 year old vehicle can be!) with a new military body of a style used in East Africa. This lorry operated in France, probably as a water tanker.

Let's try to make this a photographic list. I will tell a little of what I know about each vehicle and you can put them in your own categories. Most of these pictures, we have taken ourselves but one or two have been sent to us. I am pretty sure I won't offend anyone with my choices but if I inadvertently post something you would rather I didn't, please let me know and I will take them down instantly. Right, lets get the ball rolling. To start off, here is one that some of you will know. It is our Dennis Subsidy 'A' class of which the chassis is 1918. It has been built up from almost all original Dennis parts from a variety of sources and carries a brand new replica body built to original drawings. It has no individual provenance but is as close to original specification as we can make it.

Yes, we do have a manual but it is not as good as the US Army ones. Still very helpful though. Over the years, I have managed to photograph all of the survivors to some extent so we are reasonably well off for data. Also, at the time I bought the remains, I lived in Southsea, just along from Eastney bus depot where the Portsmouth Corporation kept their J-type bus. I used to wander along of an evening and spend a couple of hours sketching and measuring. I did that for weeks and have quite a folder of information. Now all we have to do is find the time to get on and do it. Must finish the Dennis first though! Steve

Proper job! Have a good trip! Steve

Diane Carney makes plates for miniature steam locomotives mainly but has done quite a few for us over the years. Her work is superb and she is always pleased to look at any job. She either works to our artwork or produces it for us. The artwork for these plates was produced by another good friend, Andy, who makes maps and charts for a living. Fortunately, we have a photograph of the missing plate so he used that to produce a pdf file after creating it with 'Coreldraw'. He emailed the file to me and I sent it to Diane on disc. A lot of this hobby is knowing who to ask! Steve :-)

That's a nice picture. I think that it appears to have been a portee as the window in the rear of the cab looks as if it should accommodate a gun barrel. A very useful picture should you wish to build one! Steve

As Father says, we need categories to answer this one. Tim (AKA 'Great War Truck') and I have made a list of all (well, as many as we can trace!) of the surviving solid tyred commercial vehicles up to 1918 which exist or are rumoured to exist in the UK. Off the top of my head, there are of the order of 100. They can be sub-divided into military and civilian vehicles and sorted by current state. For example, there is a very nice McCurd van painted in Tate Sugars livery. This has always been a civilian vehicle but McCurd did make some for the military. Our Dennis is restored as a Subsidy 'A' class lorry as close to military spec as we can get it. However, it has been built up from bits and was never a single vehicle with a definite provenance. We have enough bits to put together a Thornycroft J type but at the moment, it is only a pile of bits with undefined history. We plan to make it a military lorry but do you count it at the moment? To our knowledge, there are about fourteen military lorries from the Great War in this country which are in military guise or which are to be rebuilt as such. There are also a number which have seen service with the military but which are now in civilian livery. I think, perhaps, we need to more closely define the question! Just my two penn'orth. Steve

Has it been out on the road in recent years? Steve

Hi Barry. I could make up a coil and battery in a box to clip on to the plugs when we want to start. However, two questions occur to me. The first is if I clip to the same plug as is being driven by the mag, will the HT given by the coil and battery upset the magneto? The second is how do you disconnect it once the engine is running wthout giving yourself a belt?! (The second, I can resolve, one way or another!) Steve

Hi Alastair. I am so pleased that you have started your project. Getting started can be hard but if you really want to do it you will succeed! Good luck with it! Steve