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QL Driver

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Posts posted by QL Driver

  1. On the bearing note - the Garrett steam wagon (designed in 1920-1921) runs on Timken bearings on the axles, countershaft and crankshaft. Many are still standard sizes! We’ve never had a moment’s trouble with the bearings - many on the wagon are originals - and I believe it was the case in their working lives, too.

  2. That’s a lovely item! I think the accessories can add so much to a restoration.

    12 hours ago, BenHawkins said:

    The red 12mph speed limit is quite faded and I cannot decide whether to paint it back in.

    Robert Mikesh, in “Restoring Museum Aircraft” refers to having used microcrystalline wax on the paint of the Wright Flyer engine to allow the original finish to be preserved whilst still allowing repainting. Perhaps a thin coating of wax could be used on the dial and then the red repainted over it? If you want to restore the finish you melt the wax off and the original finish is intact underneath.

  3. Progress continues with the Knox - in fact, I (briefly) saw it for the first time in person on Friday 13th. I didn’t have a chance to take any pictures, though. As mentioned it’s an impressively large beast!

    Any photos would be interesting, thank you! I’ll send you a private message with my email address, Rod.

  4. The way that they are made (as I understand it) is that a ring of the approx OD required is rolled, and the band is set concentrically within it. The polyurethane is then poured into the resulting gap and left to cure. The tyre is then put in a lathe and turned to the desired profile.

    Lettering is certainly something that is missing from almost all new tyres (I think the only company that does them with lettering is Coker Tire in Tennessee.  I'll have a chat with my polymers materials engineering friends at work and I'll see if I can find something out about suitable adhesives to bond to a polyurethane. The thing I'm always a bit wary of is that if you use the tyres frequently, then I'd expect that the lettering could start to fall off.

    tyre1.jpg

  5. On 2/26/2020 at 1:43 PM, Scrunt & Farthing said:

    The one out-of-sequence concession I will make is to rubber the tyres and get that cost sunk, soon-as.  Solid tyres are expensive playthings, best paid for when the wife ain't looking.

    It's worth looking at polyurethane tyres as an option. We had some front tyres done by Jobel Engineering in Cornwall for our Garrett wagon. They removed the original rubber from the bands, and cast new tyres for about half the price that rubber tyres were quoted at. They've been very satisfactory on the front of the Garrett with no signs of deterioration - as you no doubt know, undertype wagons are notoriously hard on their front tyres. I believe others here (including the Gosling family) have used them too and have been satisfied.

    I also strongly advocate making sure you get new tyres made on bands, rather than attached directly to the wheels. They look better, and you also have the option to swap tyres much more easily (as they can be pressed on and off).

  6. I like your approach of keeping the Garrett pump; as it's part of the working history of the wagon, I think it would be a shame to revert to "factory new". Have you had a chance to get your wagon together with Mike Brown's ex-DCC Garrett yet?

    As far as the Garrett and Fowler - I'm going to be flying over on Wednesday and hoping to get a good 5-6 days of work in on the wagon and trailer.

    Ed

  7. I don't know what make that lamp is specifically, but I know that the Garrett 6 ton overtype wagons were supplied with a lamp bracket on the cabside (it is still present on the ex-Devon County Council wagon). That lamp is described in the specification as "Offside lamp with Ruby Glass".

  8. Isn’t the construction method here wooden spokes and felloes, with a steel band shrunk onto them, THEN the rubber and steel are pressed onto that?

    Presumably you cut the bands off because you have NOS tyres ready to go on *(in preference to saving them for making new tyres). When Dad cut the bands off the Garrett front wheels 30 years ago, he used the old bands (suitably shortened and with a clamp arrangement) as a press tool for the wheel.

  9. To be honest, my feeling is that so few people would be familiar with hand signals that it’s essentially an irrelevance; the most experience people will have is with bicycles and so duplicating that is a good idea. Of course, the time that signalling left really makes a difference is when changing lanes, and you can just have the mate look out and make eye contact with drivers.

  10. As far as brake lights, I think a vehicle like this is so much slower and has such inferior braking performance that lights are unnecessary.

    For indicators, presumably it’s traditional hand signals only? With our steam wagon the driver will use the “highway code” signals, and additionally the mate will stick his arm out for left turns.

  11. Bob - on most UK commercials, the tyres are standardised sizes, with press on bands.

    The wheel diameters that come to mind for me are:

    670mm, 720mm, 741mm, 771mm, 850mm, 871mm. I'm sure others here know of more.

    I've also come across some Goodyear solid tyres, which are sized by the OD, but are still press on.So it could be that they are press on tyres for standard rims?

    I'd guess you're probably much too light to worry about it, but one thing that does require caution with solids is that the compound (and presumably hardness) needs to be reasonably equivalent to the original ones. Heavily loaded and at "high" speeds (20-25 mph), after 20-30 miles the tyres can get very hot, and I've seen the results of a solid tyre overheating so much that it burst. A huge mess, with molten rubber spraying out and adhering to what it landed on. My guess is that it's related to the tyres being softer than original, which means you get more heating through hysteresis.

  12. Andy,

    I totally understand and don’t disagree. Another way of looking at this is “period of significance” - as a fire engine it was a prominent vehicle, rather than a cobbled together piece of agricultural equipment.

    To share a personal story, the Garrett steam wagon that my family owns worked for about 8 years commercially, was laid up for about 6, and then spent about 35 years sans boiler and engine as a trailer for a sterilising boiler in a nursery. Of course, it’s restored to more or less “as built” condition, but my Dad has wryly observed that it spent most of its working life as a trailer, and that’s almost certainly the only time it actually would have been profitable for its owner!

    Ed

  13. Can I offer the perhaps unpopular suggestion that you could consider keeping the Merc engine, and restoring it as it was late in life? The Merc is a presumably significant part of its survival, and it’s an authentic part of its unique history. Grafting an incorrect Dennis engine in there is making it into something that it never was. We sometimes as restorers have a tendency to want everything as original. My grandfather used to own a Fowler ploughing engine from 1868 that had been fitted with a Burrell cylinder in its working life. When I was young I’d always wanted to see it as original, but in fact it’s much more interesting and a unique survivor as a hybrid.

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