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BenHawkins

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Everything posted by BenHawkins

  1. I finished rebuilding the spindle on the Bridgeport milling machine. Some bar ends of aluminium out of the scrap bin have been machined into fixtures for the radiator sides so I can machine the mating surface flat. I sent a pattern for the radiator filler cap to the foundry along with a box of other patterns and was able to pick the castings up whilst passing on Friday. It didn't take long to machine it to size and knurl the edge. The 1/8" hole in the middle is so it can be rivetted to a chain. When I worked out these radiator caps were just a push fit it made sense that CP&Co only fitted the Commercial Motor Users Association mascots to the Leyland radiators; theses caps are probably not secure enough for a mascot. Despite the poor weather forecast for this weekend we were able to do a bit more towards building the smithy. I need to get that built so I have somewhere to install the fly press and can start punching out radiator gills.
  2. I was able to get the patterns dropped off at the foundry, and collected the castings as part of an essential journey on Friday. Quite pleased with how well they have turned out as they had some of the thinnest walls I have attempted. The large pulley is now finish machined, there are still a few hours of work in the other parts.
  3. I have just purchased a photo of a Dennis WO Subsidy lorry in civilian use. It shows the lorry crossing Conwy suspension bridge which certainly makes for a nice photo. The lorry is operated by Co-Operative Wholesale Society Ltd
  4. We are slowly collecting parts and information for this project. The Thornycroft BT with T4 engine was not made in large numbers and shares very few parts with the post-WWI model (although the three speed gearbox appears to have been kept for a few years before the (very different) four speed gearbox was adopted. I identified this negative on eBay as being the same model so purchased it. According to the Thornycroft records this BT Box van was chassis number 1806 and fitted with engine T4-458. Period photos can be just as useful to restorations as the parts books and drawings.
  5. I am sure manufacturing veteran lorry parts is the perfect way to make a small fortune; I just need a large fortune to start with. The punch tool has arrived safely from Andy. Fortunately I have been given a flypress but I need to set it up somewhere. The weather was good this weekend so we have done a bit more work towards building a Smithy at the bottom of the garden. Hopefully we can get the other walls built and a roof on in the spring. When the weather improves it is nice to roll the lorries out into the yard to work on. Linking up the steering and brakes would make this easier to achieve. The original drag link came with the chassis but it had been shortened as part of the trailer conversion. There was a corroded hole just over 6" from one of the joints where it looked hollow so I cut through there. Annoyingly it was in fact a shallow drilled hole. Which means I have shortened that bit by just under 1/4", I might weld it back on but I am certain the remaining 6" length will be fine. At least I could measure the location of the other joint and cut in a more sensible location. I was then able to clean up the centre drilled hole. The hole centres worked well for the faceplate on my little RandA lathe. These lathes were sold through Gamages for motor repair work in the 1920/30s so it is always nice to use it on the vehicle projects. Still more to take off to get back to 1" diameter so we can silver solder into a new length of seamless tube.
  6. There are a few reasons I put the primer on first: 1. I find the pattern coat does not sand easily, clogging the sandpaper. The primer seems to be better in this respect. 2. Bondaprimer is quite thin and runs into any porosity left in the print. I know I should really run the print again if I can see a poor layer but as my patterns generally only need to be good for one casting it seems adequate. 3. I virtually always have something to prime that I have made in metal so I like to paint everything I can without cleaning the brush. Anyway, they are now in pattern coat and have been given a quick polish with a nylon abrasive pad. I will have to see if I can drop them at the foundry as part of one of the permitted essential journeys.
  7. This week we have printed the parts for the larger pulley patterns on the speedo drive. These latest parts still need some more sanding and painting before the whole lot gets a coat of pattern coat.
  8. The Chinese long series 20mm end mill arrived so I have milled the header tank to length and given it a bit of a clean up with some wet and dry paper. I am not sure how polished the radiator should be. I have done some work on the fittings as well. The overflow pipe needs to be shortened but that will wait until I have fitted the filler cap. The filler cap just pushes into the tapered filler neck and is connected to the overflow pipe with a chain so it does not get lost. I am still trying to purchase 0.25mm tinplate for the gills in sensible quantities. It should cost around £2/kg or around £50 for the whole core. Some negotiation required as I will need to take on many more projects to use up a minimum batch quantity of 350kg.
  9. It is less deep than a War Office Subsidy 3 ton vehicle at 18 feet. Still planning the next garage. As there are no events on the horizon I have been trying to finish off as many small jobs as possible on the vehicles. Having bolted the speedometer to the dash a couple of months ago I pondered how best to link it up. My gearbox is from the early 1920s; the only difference from the original being the addition of a speedometer take off. It is quite corroded but probably repairable, however it does not match the speedometer ratio. The original speedometer (if fitted) would have been belt driven so I have started making the patterns for that instead. It consists of a split pully to clamp onto the prop shaft and a hinged arm with spring carrying another pully (not yet made).
  10. Thanks for all the information, I guess I will punch a couple of hundred out by hand and decide if I would prefer to automate it.
  11. Many automotive manufacturers were using the smaller across flats head sizes before it was adopted in the standards. There is a 1924 Commercial Motor article describing this but I have some evidence it was going on as early as 1906.
  12. I have started a conversation with a very knowledgeable solder dipper. He stated that for early radiators the tubes were usually solder tinned so the gills could be threaded on with flux; the assembly was then put in an oven where the solder would fix all the gills to tubes. With that information in place it explains why virtually no solder is visible on the gills of my 1908 Singer radiator. This radiator is the closest in construction (horizontal tube) and age (1908) that I know of. Dipping the whole tube would offer better corrosion protection.
  13. Merry Christmas! Thanks Andy for all your work on this. Tin plate seems like a good idea, my 1914 Dennis radiator showed some signs of tin or lead on the gills (possibly just solder) before I painted it. My 1908 Singer just has plain steel gills suggesting they were not dipped. I once tried a repair on a gilled tube with a propane torch so know that is a bad idea; the thermal mass of the gill is too low so they burn before the tube is heated enough to solder. A hot air gun will almost certainly be fine but I need to try that. The glamorous assistant purchased a White and Poppe catalogue for me. Here is the page for the engine in this project.
  14. I should think so, they look great. Sufficient coffee will also be expensive so I will have to wait until the steel stockholders reopen.
  15. Is bending the tips of the petals as simple as forming a flared hole before starting to cut?
  16. 3/32 but as you spotted I think the original was less.
  17. Thanks for everyone's effort on this. Here is a photo showing the recess on the profile from the underside on the "new gills" Here is the best image I have found of the gills used in 1908. I am only reproducing a very small amount of the photo as I am not certain of the copyright. I could easily convince myself that neither the circular (half toroid) feature or the turned over petals are present; I think both these features are to give consistent spacing (spacing looks fairly inconsistent in the photo).
  18. The glamorous assistant has finished the advent calendar well ahead of time. That is a full set of fasteners for the gearbox so she has moved on to fasteners for other parts. I have done more of the machining on the radiator castings. One lunchtime I picked up the tube plates which came in cheaper than expected; if you base your costings from online retailers, it is often rewarding how much cheaper you can get them from a company on your doorstep. I have to confess it was nice to be able to buy the 1/8BSW screws for the badge off the shelf. Unfortunately the radiator gills have come in a long way over budget. I had a quote for these a few years ago but the company no longer does radiators. The new quote is a significantly higher sum; so high in fact that it is more than the pattern making, castings, tube plates and tubes put together. The gills are made from 0.010" (0.25mm) tin plated steel 15/16" across flats to fit 3/8" diameter tubes; I need around 14,000 of them. The price quoted has made me consider punching them out myself but so far I am unsure how the profile is achieved. 14,000 on the fly press may be more than I can ask of the glamorous assistant; perhaps I should offer to do 7,000.
  19. Barry, the end mill only needs to cut just over 3". I have a 14mm end mill that will cut more than that; it has a 12mm shank and I use it with my Diemaster mill but it is not stiff enough for this job (and I don't have a 12mm R8 collet for the Bridgeport I am borrowing). There is no rush to complete the task so I will wait for the long series 20mm end mill to arrive. I can get on with machining the other casting, ordering tube plate material and other projects so there is no risk of thumb twiddling over the Christmas break. For the bolts we just mark a line on the blank with a marker pen and wind the tool out when we get that far, finishing off with a die nut. For the 1914 Dennis we mostly used modern off the shelf BSW & BSF bolts and just machined the numbers off the heads but we are a bit more pedantic with the earlier vehicles where even a BSF bolt looks out of place.
  20. I collected the completed castings from the foundry. The header tank design meant the foundry got to spend a couple of hours getting the core sand out through the small holes. I couldn't wait to get on with them so did some of the rough machining. The casting was supported on some 3D printed blocks to keep it vertical, they also fitted into the slots in the table to keep it straight. I have ordered a more appropriate cutter to finish off the ends but it will probably not arrive this year. I have blasted and painted the first batch of nuts and bolts made by the glamorous assistant. Nearly all the gearbox fasteners are complete so we need to come up with a few more items to add to the list.
  21. One week of immersion didn't seem to be enough time to free off the carburettor, but after three weeks and with the assistance of some heat the outer throttle was persuaded out of the body. A day later I managed to remove the inner throttle from the outer throttle. When reassembled none of the parts rotate freely so I will need to spend a couple of hours with some micrometre blue and a scraper to undo the damage done by the mechanic with a chisel. The car project I have been working on is nearing completion so with a couple of hours to fill I decided to machine the castings that connect the water jackets of the four cylinder blocks. One of the broken and corroded originals is in the background. I came up with an alternative craft advent calendar; the glamorous assistant is coming out to the workshop after dinner and making the old Whitworth (BS190) type fasteners for the gearbox. She has made 16 off 5/16 nuts so far so we are a bit ahead of the plan; I might even be able to increase the scope of works at this rate! No Christmas parties to get in the way this year so all the evenings are available.
  22. The radiator patterns still need a little bit of tidying up so I am unlikely to get them to the foundry this week. For two of our other projects I am trying to make some sense of the numbers on White and Poppe carburettors. They are variable jet carburettors; when the throttle opens the variable jet is also simultaneously opened. However, the handbook suggests the size of the regulating jet and how far it is offset from the axis was varied by the manufacturer to suit the particular engine requirements. Each float bowl lid is marked with the serial number and a series of numbers along the lines of 30.450/500 (1/32). The 30 refers to the diameter of the throttle bore but I am not yet certain of how the rest of the numbering system works. The carburettors are also handed to make finding a replacement more difficult. The carburettor that came with my engine was quite grubby and does not want to come apart. The throttle barrel has signs of having been chiselled out in the past (quite a bad sign) so I decided to immerse it in WD40 for a week before giving it another go. I didn't have enough WD40 so I topped it up with heating oil.
  23. The glamorous assistant kept an eye on the printer whilst I was at work this week as she continues to work from home. I am lucky to work in a manufacturing environment so have managed to continue to travel the short distance to work each day and have not yet exhausted the projects at home. I milled the slot in the MDF backing panel for the overflow pipe connection and cut a 44mm diameter hole to accept the 3D printed piece for the water inlet. That should pretty much finish the core box if the paint polishes smooth enough once it has dried (just the pattern coat to go).
  24. I have these lamp brackets, the sidelamp bracket is quite similar to those in photos but only uses two bolts to mount to the bulkhead. My chassis is not drilled for headlamp brackets. These hand controls don't quite match the parts book either but could certainly be used if nothing else turns up.
  25. The core box is coming along pretty well, the front half is basically complete. The two bosses thicken up the casting so I shouldn't break through when drilling and tapping the casting for the name plate. The back half will be slightly more complicated as it needs to allow for the overflow and water inlet port. The printing does not always go to plan; in this example the nozzle had a blockage and as a result subsequent layers were under-extruded. Most of my prints are around 12 hours and I think my failure rate is less than 5% or about every 240 hours of printing. So far I have not printed any pattern structure that I could not have made in wood but the printer can be going whilst I am earning a living or working on other projects. The glamorous assistant is working from home at the moment, so can switch it off when things go wrong.
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