Great War truck

Mark is sending me some photos which i will upload. Just removed engine and gearbox and the big gear was the fire engine pump drive

After that, it was just a case of painting. We use Bondaprimer zinc anti-rust primer, even on MDF as it soaks in very deeply hardening the surface. The first coat leaves a very rough surface but sands back to a nice finish. A second coat really finishes it off and Steve just polishes this back with wire wool to make it easier to get out of the sand. The last part of the job was to make and extractor handle for the moulder. Dad will now take the pattern to the foundry for some grey iron castings. Then we will have the fun of machining them!

Then it was back to the Colchester to bore out the core box. Steve planed the two halves plat and then screwed them together before boring out. The various grooves were all positioned by measurement. before unscrewing the two halves. Next, he turned up and slotted two bosses to represent the gudgeon pin bosses. These were screwed in and then filleted using car body filler. This was cay back to a nice radius using the ‘Dremel’ pencil grinder with a ball-nosed cutter fitted.

Great job you did there Mark. Could you post up some more pictures of it, or if you are not sure how to one of us could do it for you. Thanks Tim Gosling

Steve is busily trying to move house so his workshop hours are severely limited at the moment. However, he has managed to make up the piston pattern. Firstly, he made up some blocks of MDF by gluing layers together, round ones for the main plug and rectangular for the core box. Then it was down to Devon where he set the plug up in Dad’s Colchester lather. This was a straightforward turning job although MDF dust is horrible and he did wear a proper respirator. Next he silver soldered a boss to a plate and let it into the crown of the pattern in order to give a strong point to extract it from the sand. Finally, he turned up a chucking piece which locates on the crown and will give a boss by which the piston can be held for machining.

What a great find. They are still out there then!

Yes, you are quite right. There is indeed an X Type at Milestones. I went to the museum last year and i have just gone through my photos and to my embarassment i didnt take any pictures of it. Anyway, there is lots more information about it here. I hope that you find it interesting. http://www3.hants.gov.uk/thornycroft/lorries/our-lorries/drivng.htm If you need me to go and do an in depth walk around photo shoot of it let me know and i will see what i can do the next time i visit. Tim

As this is fast approaching, does anybody know of any interesting vehicles which will be participating this year? Thanks Tim

well that makes me feel a little better about all the tickets i bought and never won anything. But £750,000! That seems a tad on the high side to me. I knew they had bought the bus, but the lack of engine and gearbox might prove a little problematic. Maybe thats what they need the other £740,000 for? http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-london-22173782 A bus once driven from the streets of London to the battlefields of France to help the World War I effort is to be restored. The B-type bus was one of more than a thousand taken to the trenches of the Western Front. It will be restored to full working order with a £750,000 lottery grant. The buses were commandeered to act as troop transports, ambulances and even mobile pigeon lofts to house carrier pigeons. Civilian drivers and mechanics went with them to the front, often into dangerous territory. The B-type's unique design, using standardised interchangeable components, made it ideal for rigorous wartime use. The project will be undertaken by the London Transport Museum. It will be completed by 2014, to coincide with the centenary of the outbreak of hostilities. Sam Mullins, director of London Transport Museum, said 2014 would be "an occasion for remembrance and a watershed in commemorating both the sacrifice and social impact of these years on London and the UK". "Our project will restore a B-type Battle Bus to its wartime condition, when over one thousand London bus drivers ferried troops to the Western Front and brought the wounded home. "The B-type was the first standardised motorbus for London and, through this project, one of the last known surviving examples will be returned to working order as wartime troop transport.

Ok thanks guys. I am getting there. It is not the fuel tank cap as I cant imagine that ever creating a vaccum again. I have blown through all of the fuel pipes and cleaned the petrol filter. Still no good. Next step is to take the fuel pump to pieces and have a look in there. I will see if i can get a rebuild kit from Dallas autoparts and then set to it. I will let you know how i get on. Thanks for all the good advice so far. Tim

What a stunning looking truck. Why do you think it might be in the UK now? I do hope it is.

That is nice to see. Rob will be very pleased. If it is not the Farral one is it possible that it might be this one that appeared on HMVf a while back: http://hmvf.co.uk/forumvb/showthread.php?22750-Early-Albion&highlight=albion+A10 Needed a bit of work doing to it though.

The second Clutch Cone proved to be very sound after it was given a good cleaning and de-rusting and that also very fortunately, the existing lining on it was fit enough to be used again. It needed just a little tidying up and some of the screws attaching the lining to the rim had to be replaced. All of the other fittings to the cone have also been cleaned, taken back to bare metal and painted so that they are now ready for final assembly. Chris G very kindly provided the new bearings that are required so we are all set to finally put it together. The photographs show a trial fitting but without the bearings inserted at this stage.

OK. it makes sense to start with the easiest one first so i will take a look at the fuel filter. I thought, and i may be totally wrong on this but as i can see that the bowl on the fuel pump is full would a leaky fuel filter seal prevent the fuel from rising from the pump bowl? Thanks Tim

We had some nice weather last weekend so i thought i would take the Jeep out for a spin. Battery totally dead and even after charging it there was still not enough juice to turn the engine over. So I bought a new battery. However, the next sunny day the jeep still refuses to start. It turns over nicely and I get a spark ok, so the problem must be the fuel. Took off the pipes going into and out of the fuel pump and blew through them (all fine). However, when i took them off only a trickle of petrol came out of them. It was suggested that I took the top off the carb and put my hand over it to force the carb to suck the petrol up into it. This worked a treat and the engine then burst into life only to stop 5 seconds later as i presume that all of the petrol it had sucked up had gone. The problem must therfore be the fuel pump. This must be a later one as it has a glass bowl and so i can see the petrol in it, but i cant see that it is sucking in new petrol. It does not have a priming lever however. is it worth taking it apart and cleaning it or should i just buy a replacement? if i do take it apart is there anything i need to know. Replacing it looks to be an awkward job and i am not looking forwards to it. Any thoughts please? Thanks Tim

It is looking great. I had not seen it for a few months and it is really coming along. Steve is going up again soon so I will ask him to take some more photos of it.

It would be nice to say that it was an unbiased view of us and our hobby, but as i have no idea what they are saying who can tell. I did notice that they seemed to dwell a lot on shots of kids in Uniform, kids with guns, kids in SS Uniform, pretty girls, pretty girls in SS uniform, an Elvis impersonator, mud wrestling and a female Elvis impersonating mud wrestler in SS uniform. So there we go, no doubt an unbiased view of us and our hobby there then. We do it because we can and we certainly wouldnt be allowed to do it if Hitler had won the war. I hope they made that clear to the German TV audience but somehow i expect they forgot to mention it.

Yes, very interesting. Thanks for explaining that David.

We had thought that the curtain was secured by having an over-length rod at the edge which was first pushed upward into the top eye and dropped down into the bottom. As you can see this doesn’t work as the canvas is not flexible enough to do this and this was a bit of a surprise! We went back through our photographs to see if we could find any clues as to how it was done and eventually found this one. It appears that the top corner is secured with a spring in the style of a bonnet catch and that the bar is bent over at the top into a hook. In spite of a lot of searches, this was the only photograph that we found but it was enough. Steve went and reworked the end rod starting with the hook at the top. A search through stores found a bonnet catch and a quick turning exercise produced the catch. Another trip to Devon and the parts were fitted. We are very pleased with the results and it remains only to touch up the paintwork. That is one more job done on the road to completion!

Mother has been grumbling about the smell of canvas in Steve’s bedroom so we decided that the safest place for the side curtain would be on the lorry. Martin at Allied Forces had made up the curtain when he did the cab and main canvas but we simply ran out of time before Brighton to finish it off and fit it. It has been sitting in Steve’s room ever since. Steve stapled the canvas to a batten, wrapped it around and then drilled through from the holes in the scuttle to allow coach bolts to secure it. He had already made up the end bar so this was inserted and the door held up. Once the curtain could be held up. Steve fitted a screw eye as the bottom mounting and two leather straps around the batten to secure it when not in use. The straps had been in stock for some years and although exactly the right size, were pale blue. Steve tried soaking them in wood dye to make them brown, but the colour change was limited and the leather cracked when they were bent. These remain to be replaced.

Steve put the steering worm in the press and at about eight tons, it gave a mighty bang and the bearing let go. It is nice to have the right tool for the job!

I have known of the existence of a Leyland at Duxford for years, but have never seen a picture of it. Steve turned this one up a few days ago: Where abouts on the site is it now? The museum was quite interested in WW1 stuff some years ago but seems to have lost their enthusiasm. A real shame when they have such a nice original body to go on it. The lorry to the left is Richards FWD which now resides in the land warfare hall. Have any of the Duxford people seen this Leyland?

And after a preliminary quick wash in paraffin. Notice the big “silver” spots on the steering nut shell. They are of white metal and the whole of the big thread inside the shell is white metal. Goodness knows how this is done but there are “ silver spots” like this on the four sides of the shell. Presumably the white metal is poured in through these holes and the outside of the casing is then cleaned up afterwards. But how is the thread inside made? More parts after the preliminary “wash”! One half of the casing after a quick preliminary clean – the job remains to be completed satisfactorily. The worm after a quick clean – the bend in it is quite obvious – and finally the white metal thread inside the casing. The last bearing is proving stubborn to remove – and that is now taking a trip to Leicester for the benefit of the Press!

After more hitting and levering, one of the sides eventually lifted off, revealing a nice oily and greasy interior. It was a job that had to be done very carefully as the body castings are quite thin and could easily be broken. Again, so far, so good but still some way to go. Removing the second half of the outer cover again proved to be very difficult as it had to be removed over the end of the swinging lever shaft. A gentle heat did no good and eventually we got it out by supporting it on the anvil and the swage block and then hitting it with a good hammer. That did the trick. These two pictures show some of the bits after removal and before cleaning. Everything well covered in lubricants – so hopefully well protected against corrosion.

The first two of these four pictures show the body of the steering box after its appendages had been removed. The remaining two show the bottom of the inner steering tube with the end piece very firmly attached. After some more severe heat on the steering tube – there was no danger of cracking the cast iron at this stage with the two bits “stucked together” – and after a bit of a beating. they came apart. It was at this stage, we began to realise the the worm was bent as it was very apparent that the shaft part it was sticking out of its case at an angle – and not truly. Again, as far as we know, the whole steering column was left sticking out of the floor of the Shepherd’s Hut unprotected, so we guess that it could easily have been knocked or leaned on over the years to distort it like this. We continued to try to get the box apart and had to replace the drop arm and the adjusting plug to be able to “lean” on it to try to get it to move.