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WW1 Peerless lorry restoration


Great War truck

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The Shackles and bolts for the back of the front springs have now been recovered from the "spares department" and mainly cleaned - and all look reasonable for re-use. They will want further cleaning and the Molasses dip is calling!
 
The front of the front springs is secured directly to the front of the chassis and longer bolts or pins are required for that. The pictures of our whole Peerless show that. Those bolts do also have to secure the front Tow Hooks, Unfortunately we do not have long enough bolts amongst our collection of "spares" so they will to be made. The Spares Book describes them as "Front Spring Bolts long for Tow Hooks"!

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So now our thoughts move onto the rear Springs and Hangers. They are very similar to the front ones - though understandably quite a bit heavier - and again we are fortunate to have a number of the bits in the "Spares Department" once more. Generally the front of the rears is similar to the rear of the fronts (says Pat!) but the shackles at the rear of the rears are linked together by a cross tie - described in the Parts Book as a "Rear Spring Shackle link". We are fortunate again here that we have one - very heavily rusted and whoever recovered it by cutting the chassis from whence it came, took out the whole assembly, parts of the chassis rails as well! We would like to think that the actual long rod - some 50 inches long will fight again as it is threaded at the ends and it would be difficult to put such a long piece of steel rod in our set up to thread the ends on a new one. The ends have been protected so they may be OK!

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13 minutes ago, Gordon_M said:

It looks like it functions like a cross between a torsion bar and the worlds slowest anti-roll bar.  🤔 plus it would add greatly to the rigidity of the rear end.

My thoughts exactly, just trying to work out what pivots about what.

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1 hour ago, radiomike7 said:

My thoughts exactly, just trying to work out what pivots about what.

If it was free to pivot in the chassis brackets it would be fine.  Trapping or restricting it wouldn't work - the first time something bottomed out it would shear.  I'd guess both sides would pivot freely - it would help the high-speed cornering too. 🤐

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2 hours ago, Gordon_M said:

If it was free to pivot in the chassis brackets it would be fine.  Trapping or restricting it wouldn't work - the first time something bottomed out it would shear.  

Not if the shackles pivot on the rod, no doubt GWT will put us right soon.

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Hi Chaps.

 

We have been fortunate to have a day when we were all in the same place at the same time!

The cross bar is pinned into the castings and the shackles pivot freely on it. It does seem a very odd way to do things. The only reason I can see is that the vertical spring force no longer tend to twist the chassis rails inwards. It takes a lot of metal to achieve that, though. Any further thoughts would be appreciated.

Steve  :) 

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We will need some wings made at some stage. Steve has a very battered and rotten one up with him which he intends to use as a pattern for drawings. I thought that we had a better one in the spare parts caravan and got it out. Hopefully having both will give Steve enough information to draw out the front wings  and get them made.

Back wings might be less of a problem as although we do not have an original they are fairly uniform in shape.  

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26 minutes ago, radiomike7 said:

Is the groove around the front hubs designed as a slinging flange?

I don't think so.  Those hubs would have metal and wood centres and the load of sighing them there might be problematic.  If I'm seeing that right, the spoked wheels are just acting to retain the lifting ropes, which go through the wheel spokes and presumably under the axles.  If you were lifting from the outer grooves on the hubs it would be near impossible to keep all four in place long enough to get a safe lift.

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Yes, you are quite right Gordon. I have a photo somewhere of it all having gone horribly wrong and the Peerless hanging by its rear wheels only.

We had a rare family gathering on Saturday which allowed us to progress a bit more on the Peerless engine. Main objective was to get the crank shaft out. So first we had to flip the engine over which even with a chain block was a little bit exciting.

When we had turned it over we found all of the nuts which secure the journals were just finger tight, so we were wondering what the previous owner who had taken it apart was planning. He is the same guy who smashed two pistons so maybe he didn’t plan on running it again. The bolts at the front were partially obstructed by bolts securing the clutch so these had to be removed first. Everything was found to be in super condition which was very pleasing.

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Dad has been busy painting things. Despite all the chassis that we have owned we only seem to have two pairs of these shackles (the second pair being on the complete chassis) and these are quite worn. Nothing insurmountable though. I do think that we might already have another pair on the chassis in the back of the garage. It is a bit buried at the moment but I will try and take a look at it when I am down next.  

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Here is a photo of the shackles and bolts for the front axle of our International truck project. The holes were very badly elongated, and we chose to bore them out until true, press in solid plugs, then drill them at the correct centres again. We think it will work. You can see the eccentricity of the inserted plugs quite readily in the photo.

Ian 

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Edited by IAN_B
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2 hours ago, IAN_B said:

Here is a photo of the shackles and bolts for the front axle of our International truck project. The holes were very badly elongated, and we chose to bore them out until true, press in solid plugs, then drill them at the correct centres again. We think it will work. You can see the eccentricity of the inserted plugs quite readily in the photo.

Ian 

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A nice neat job!

Tony

 

 

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