rbrtcrowther

A picture of the sort of done cab with the fresh screen..... and then i found out the engine was dying.....Here i am wondering why there is no oil getting to the rockers......It was because it was all honking out of the main bearings which had compleatly failed:embarrassed: And that is where this this blog started with me removing the engine:D And finding HMVF and all the friends on here:iloveyou::thanx:

A couple more pics of work done in the past....... There are some differences between the first contract Scammells and the later ones. One being the Gutters, Most of the later scammells i have seen have very large gutters about 2 or 3 inches deep but mine were very small and of two piece design. I can't remember how they were held together but i riveted them. All the folds were done with a number 5 denbigh fly press with a 18" vee block and wedge from a large folding machine.The hardest fold was the one above the windscreen which was done by passing the piece back and forth. My dad made alot of extra cash after work with this old press making parts for the Austin 7 club such as handbreak leavers and bonnet catches. i still have the tools and many boxes of parts. Also wonderd why most Scammells have a large sheet of steel sticking up above the windscreen, mine just had a aluminium trim strip which i replaced with a lenth of steel about 13mm by8mm and cold bent it the hard way....It looks great and is my favorite part of the cab but nobody ever notices it:embarrassed:

Haven't looked for the rivets yet cos i'm running round flapping trying to make sure i have double checked every part that could go wrong on my first long run:shake: Got butterflies already and i'm not leaving till the morning:cheesy: Just put £120 in the tank and it's only quarter full> I hope it wll take me 50 miles. Wish me luck. Had to laugh this morning when my award came:rofl: Fantastic......Wish me luck:-D

I'll have a look to see if i have any left. They are all left over from my dads stuff. got pots and pots of steel ones.

Think i have a few more pics to come but the cooling fan has broke in the laptop so i'm overheating now. I plan to print out said award and affix to Scammell:-D Thanks again.....

The doors were rotten from the waist down but the window parts inside were ok. I basically removed the skin from the lower part of the door then re fabricated the lower part of the frame. The top of the door was just saveable thankfully , I then reskinned the door bottoms with the 1.6mm sheet which was hellish to crimp round the frame:-( I even found some correct rivets for the job

The window frames were rotten so i knocked some up out of flat steel strap. They don't have the same profile being flat but should last a few years. I just welded tags on the back then slid the glass in on some sealer before fitting them in the scammell. Sorry i keep forgetting to flip the bloomin pictures round:red:

Then i discoverd this..... What a bummer and the engine mounts had collapsed which had ripped the coupling to bits. I had them re rubberd for £20 each....The mould for the press cost £££'s

It went quite well and i sometimes found myself out at silly o clock trying to get another bit fitted

Lets go back in time a bit.....to where it all started.... The cab floor, doors,roof,sides, ect ect were all rotten so i made some new ones. It was my first attempt at sheet metal work and i made the lot out of 1.6mm sheet steel so it might be the heaviest explorer in the world:laugh:

It will be interesring to see how you get on. I drove about 80 miles to remove a pump from one of Bills spare axles only to find it too smashed to bits. Also the axle oil pump in my 1950 Scammell is bigger than the one in his later 1954 explorer.It's a crap idea......the pump should be submerged in the oil like the one in the gearbox so it cant corrode and will always prime up.

That's the funniest thing I've read for a long time i feel truly humbled:bow: I still have a few things to triple check and then inspect again before Saturdays epic run to Llanberis. About 10 or fifteen years since it saw the road proper and it's first run out is to Llanberis.......good god what was i thinking booking in to this event:-X I cant think of a more testing run out. It's next to bloomin Snowdon for gods sake!! I'm going to need all of the 130 horsey powers to get up there:nut: I'm sure coming back down will be much fasterr:cool2:..........Ahh....no...think about the propshaft Robert:sweat: But really i am bricking it.......I'm convinced it's going to conk out at just the wrong moment and i'll end up on the phone to Autohome after 3 days membership......

although I am running an engine driven pump for the axle i would still one day like to refit the propper pump back in the axle. So if anyone has a pump knocking around and the gears to drive it I might be interested.

Yes the crown wheel is bronze and yes i di have fine bronze dust in the oil......Having never had experience of a bronze crown wheel i have no idea if the dusty oil is normal. Upon draining the oil you would do well to spot the dust in it

good idea will do. Is it normal to get a bit of bronze in the oil during normal service and is it likely to bugger the oil pump over time. I could easly fit a bypass filter in the pipework. I was also thinking of fitting an air to oil cooler rather than a bowman water to oil.

Doh.....good thinking.....got loads of that at work....Now to snuffle some away unnoticed:angel:....or i could just ask:)

I wish it was jet powered it's bloody woeful with the old Meadows, i ain't gonna win any races and the skin on the rice pudding certainly isn't worried:red: Any thoughts on thinning the flushing oil down with diesel or paraffin or shal i just heat the oil in a can to thin it......:undecided:

I think i will change the oil again but i am going to flush it through with some hot straight 90 first. I'll jack it up and run it in top gear for a few mins to try to wash it out. Then hopefully when i refill with the 140 it should stay clean. i really don't fancy pulling the diff out or trying to strip it and find bearings ect. If this diff is on the way out thats it.

And just for Andy.....a video if said spin out:D:DSomething went wrong...Got the hang of the gearbox now....just have to wait an age for the old meadows to spool up or down then move gearstick with finger and thumb. It takes less effort than my land rover

Just took it for another spin out and even with this hot weather nothing got hotter than i would expect. When i got back home after plodding up the huge hill to the house in 4th all the way at almost full throttle, the rear diff oil was about the same temperature as a hot bath..... You can feel the oil feed pipes from the engine driven oil pump viberating as the oil passes through the two pipes to the diff. (one pipe feeds the worm jets and the other is connected to the old feed from the pump so it lubricates the rear bearings. That pipe is restricted with a kink so most oil goes to the jets) i left the scammell ticking over for about 5 mins and the oil passing through the pipes cooled right down to luke warm, so some cooling is going on down the lenth of the two pipes to and from the engine. Just a wild thought.....the Scammell came from Grimsby and its rather flat there and it had done lots of towing.......It now lives in north wales where we have some pretty good hills, In fact i can do about a mile down hill holding it back on the brakes at 30 mph on my little test run. Could the bronze dust be from over run on the worm? I'm tempted to change the oil just so i can keep an eye on it. Looking at the prop flange there is about 3 quarters of an inch freeplay measured at the propshaft bolts( about 2mins on a clock face) There is no end float at all. Bronze dust in the oil???? to worry or not to worry? The old oil i drained out was dirty brown with slight dust but i must have been in there for 20 odd years also the oil pump was in bits so god knows how long it had run without it. The oil cooler / heater was disconnected and frost damaged. your thoughts please...........Mr gritineye:D

A bit more advice needed please.... I changed the oil in my back diff a while back and drained some thick brown oil out. I refilled with a straight 140 oil and have done about 20 odd miles in it since. I have just checked the level and its spot on however there is a slight trace of bronze dust seen in the oil when i blow on the oil in the filler neck. I am running an engine driven oil pump that is bigger than the old axle pump and have not been far enough to get the oil hot, the axle is only ever slighty warm after about 7 miles of very hilly hard work on my test run route. Is it normal to show slight bronze dust in the oil or am i panicing about nothing. should i change it again? Help i have a 55 mile round trip planned next weekend and now i'm panicing. I havent got round to sorting the oil cooler yet but there is 30 foot of pipe running under the chassis to a pump on the engine. Other people don't run with a cooler but i was planning on fitting one soon but i havent got it hot yet.......

Don't panic it's really simple....this is what i do when i buy another car. Phone up my insurance people and say i need to collect my new car they will then give me cover for the new car for two weeks while i sell the old car. I think the AA will give you a months cover for about £25...dead easy and lets you keep the other one taxed insured and ready to sell. I have also never bought a car with tax on it in my life. always had to take the bit of the log book to the post office. Got pulled and but when i explained i had just bought it on the saturday and had the bill of sail and the log book in the car the copper was happy and let me carry on.....

I still really confused about all this....I the 16 years i've been driving i have never needed to have a vehicle taxed but not insured.....I have forgot to tax some of them one or twice but never failed to insure one cos the nice insurance people send reminders out. If the insurance runs out just renew the insurance or sorn it.......If the tax runs out just renew the tax or sorn it....I can't understand the issues it's simple surely to god...:banghead: Oh and make sure you check with your insurance company before you drive someone else's vehicle as one of my past insurance companies insisted the the vehicle i was going to drive was insured by its owner for him to drive. We were going to collect my mates 101 and i was going to drive it back on my insurance to save money but a quick check with my insurers and they said the 101 must have insurance cover on it for my cover to count. So he insured it as he is much older and i drove it home on my policy. Sounds stupid but thats what happened worth checking with you insurers.

No the drill is ok , i bought that from B and Q about 6 years ago, 1500 watt motor for £25 thinking it will last a year or two and it just keeps on working. I had to fettle the end of the biggest drill bit to get it to cut with the small amount of pressure i could put on the drill. I think the imprint of the rear diff drive flange in my shoulder has just about gone now:)

If it still has the gardener engine fitted i would have thought a set of shells would be pretty easy to get hold of. Gardener engines are pretty common and are rather long lived so i would be looking deeply into the reason why the bearings have failed