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BenHawkins

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Everything posted by BenHawkins

  1. Now you can just switch headlights on it is easy to overlook how important lighting up tables must have been. Owners are advised to arrange for a vehicle to have regular periods in the shed. Some more driving instructions
  2. Although I have not done particularly well at finding parts for this project I have just managed to find one of the instruction manuals for "T" Type as described in the Thornycroft Monthly Circular. Page 1 would have given the revision date. It is unfortunately missing but is probably one of the least useful pages in the book. Page 3 gives the chassis dimensions and maximum permitted body dimensions. Examples of the three lighter weight chassis are given on page 4&5 And one of CP&Co BT vans is shown on page 6. It always seems to be the same picture of van 250 that appears in the adverts.
  3. I don't believe they are. I didn't even know they existed until we found some on the shelf in the archive.
  4. There was a lubrication diagram. The monthly circular also confirms there was an instruction book and a copy sent to all agents and with every chassis so I should continue to look out for one. Further references confirmed that the T4 engine was also used in large numbers for marine and generator applications.
  5. Another really useful document in the archive was the Thornycroft monthly circular (staff magazine). Here is a better photo of one of the BT chassis for CP&Co And in the background a CP&Co on it's way to war service. The magazine is full of information and gives details that explain one of the holes in the chassis is for the odometer and drive (which is then obvious in the first photo).
  6. During our holiday we spent a day in Winchester looking through the Thornycroft records (the glamorous assistant is very good to me). I thought this table of valve settings might help a few people out so have included it here. Here is a general arrangement drawing of the T4 engine I need for this project (just in case somebody has one under their bench and does not know what it is). And another drawing showing the magneto cabling arrangements. The switch was mounted in the centre of the dash, just below the oil flow indicator (has anyone got a photo showing the detail of these?). There were also drawings of all the gaskets and various other minor parts but we did not find any drawings of the more major components (pistons, cylinders, crank, crankcase etc.)
  7. Thanks Richard, I had seen that and purchased a copy of the catalogue for the generators. At Beaulieu I purchased an Austin pressure gauge to go with the generating set. And a photo of a nice pair of Thornycrofts belonging to J Cooke and Sons (actually I negotiated for this photo to come free with some lamps purchased for my Singer).
  8. Owen, thanks for your thoughts on the ways to prevent the inlet manifold frosting up. In addition to the frost on the outside of the inlet manifold I have had the pedal stick down under the same conditions. I think frost is forming on the inside of the throttle barrel as well. As the carburettor has the passages for water heating it seems like the most sensible first step and of course needs taps to isolate and drain. I run with glycol coolant so hopefully should not risk frost damage to the carburettor body. Yesterday we went for a drive to the local Canal festival. We took a route with plenty of canal bridges which was a good chance to practice my gear changes. We had some excellent company at the festival and plenty of people to chat to in some glorious weather. We loaded up some fruit crates and potato sacks for the trip but I still have to work out how they should be secured. There are no rope hooks visible in either the factory photos or the in service photo. One of the final outstanding items is the tarpaulin for the back. I have put this off as I cannot decide on the colour. Suggestions welcome. There is a slight repair required to the horn after some over-enthusiastic honking by some younger members of the public.
  9. It has been a pleasure to share the project with others. It was useful to see how other people had approached their projects and the help and advice has been invaluable. We have been working through the finishing touches whilst working on other projects. Shortly before the wedding I managed to purchase a bar end of brass just big enough to machine two new king pin covers. I had previously fitted slightly larger (rusty) ones so I could get the lorry on the road. A conclusion from the wedding driving was that there was probably not enough height difference between the carburettor and the petrol tank. The petrol tank is under the seat so around four feet behind the carburettor; the Aster engine was originally fitted to a generator so does not have a heated inlet manifold (as would often be fitted to a lorry of this period) and therefore the carburettor sits quite high. The gradient between the top of the main jet and the bottom of the tank was only around 1:6 so I decided I needed to move the carburettor down. In order to move the carburettor down it also has to move sideways to clear the crankcase flange. I chose to make it 2" long with an offset of 1/4" so I scribed the lines onto a billet of aluminium and roughed it out to size. I tilted the head on my milling machine and used a boring head to open the hole out to size. This has definitely improved hill performance but it will still not quite manage the 1:6 canal bridge on my test route (but the brakes have no problem holding it there) The manifold and carburettor get very cold when running. It was around 15C when I took it for the test drive but frost was forming on the new aluminium adaptor. On the above photo you can see a boss pointing away from the engine; this is to allow for connecting the carburettor to the cooling system. I need to plumb this in to keep the carburettor warm but I am not sure if I will get a performance boost.
  10. We have just spent a few days in the Cotswolds which included providing transport for the wedding of some good friends. Getting the bride to the church on time adds a little stress to the drive. But after that trip went so well it was much less concerning to make it to the village social club. The cab, doors and windscreen provided ample weather protection as described in the original sales catalogue (40mph winds and rain). Back to the venue where the sun came out for the photos. The hill performance is slowly improving (and probably my driving also), but there is probably some more tuning to be done.
  11. Dimensional drawing of the T4 engine I need to find.
  12. I only found this drawing after Steve had problems with his. 1920 piston design for M type engines All the old cast iron piston drawings I have seen show the top of the piston a few thousandths smaller to allow for the thermal expansion.
  13. I think the valve caps have been removed at some point and replaced at random. Period literature suggests there should be dual ignition on a 1908 Singer but there is no magneto bracket in the kit of parts. The reliability was certainly a good reason for two ignition systems. It is possible this chassis started life as a taxi. I can see for that type of work that the trembler coil ignition would be quite useful; when waiting for your passenger you can turn both ignition systems off and stop the engine. When you are ready to go it should be possible to switch on the trembler coil; if the engine still has a charge of fuel in the cylinder it will usually start without the need to get out and crank. Switching to magneto then conserves your battery charge. Having put some light oil in each of the bores last night it was possible this afternoon to rotate the flywheel several degrees. I will not turn it any more until I have taken the sump and/or cylinder blocks off.
  14. We had a trip out to East Yorkshire today and collected this 1908 Singer. It is believed to have been converted to a lorry for war work in Aberdeenshire during WWI but we only have documentation going back to 1945 when it entered preservation. I would be interested if anyone could confirm what vehicles like this were used for. A few things were borrowed from it over the years to keep the 1907 Singer car going but most of them have been returned. All the metal work was given a coat of red lead paint and this (along with dry storage) had kept it in remarkably good condition. The mudguards will need quite a lot of welding and reshaping but I am keen to get them serviceable. Mechanically it is almost complete. The engine is an 80x90 four cylinder White and Poppe; this is missing both the ignition systems (trembler and magneto), the fan and the water pipes. The water pump is in a box and requires some repairs and one valve and tappet parts are missing. It is unsurprising that the engine (probably not run for nearly 100 years) is seized but seems to be in reasonable order. I have put a little oil in each bore; hopefully it will make getting the pistons out easier when we get that far. The clutch springs are in a box but the studs probably need replacing. The casting that carries the pedals is broken; it may be repairable. The bronze blocks are missing from the universal joint. The gear selection mechanism is loose but the gears look to be in extremely good order. Some new shackle pins will certainly be needed for the rear suspension but over all I am amazed by how good the condition is.
  15. It has been a good week for the purchasing department. There were a couple of good purchases from eBay including a job lot of Rotherham's of Coventry parts and we found quite a lot at Beaulieu autojumble. There is at least one item for each of the vehicles and quite a lot for stock. The Dennis car hub cap is just for the display case (not quite enough to start a project, yet).
  16. I don't think there was any requirement for headlamps to start with . This one left the factory with only sidelamp brackets but had a headlamp added by the original owner, I don't think my 1908 Dennis ever had any fitted. Period photos often show a single headlamp on early vehicles but most surviving vehicles have now been upgraded to two. Did the subsidy specification require two headlamps? Thanks for all the positive comments!
  17. I booked Friday afternoon off work and went for a drive to the nearest weigh bridge. It is only one and a half miles from home but gave us the opportunity to try another couple of short moderately steep hills (in the form of canal bridges). The bridges are not steep enough for gradient marker signs but we are gaining confidence to take it further afield. If does go better in warm weather; I don't know if that is just the oil being thinner in the transmission and wheel bearings. Anyway, the result was a total mass of 2580kg. 1100kg on the front axle and 1480kg on the hind axle. The petrol tank was half full and there was a supply of oil and tools. Technically it would just go on a car transporter trailer but a serious tow car would be needed.
  18. As mentioned on another thread we are preparing for future projects. There were a few hours spare this afternoon so we got the paint stripper out and started to clean the green paint off the valve caps and distributor drive. Under the green was red paint from its past life in a Liverpool salvage tender.
  19. We decided the London to Brighton run was too optimistic for 2019. Clayton hill has a 13.6% maximum gradient and we were unable to get up the 17% gradient nearest our house. There have been lots of things to concentrate on so we have been catching up on other projects and making preparations for future projects. Some progress has been made on the Dennis though, the universal joint gaiter has nicer looking clamps. I got fed up with starting handle blisters from the split wooden sleeve so have turned up a new one in brass. Generally both this and the Morris car are starting first time (and I sometimes remember to put on a glove) so I have been blister free for several months. And we have added a crude choke return spring. A couple of the previously unexplained stops turn out to have been the choke being sucked closed; once the engine stopped the flap would drop open again so it was difficult to spot the cause until the occasion where we managed to keep the engine going long enough to spot it. This weekend we have probably driven another ten miles or so, starting with a simple circuit locally with many of my visiting relatives taking short rides. We still can't manage the 17% incline from a standing start but with the improved reliability we took a drive into the town up an incline of around 11% with no trouble at all. We still have fine silt coming out in the petrol filter but there is not enough to be a problem now if we clean it out every ten miles. I imagine this service interval will increase as we use it more. The Claudel Hobson has a 1.1mm jet so is fairly immune to fine particulates but the Zenith I have rebuilt has a much smaller orifice in the slow running device and may be more susceptible to blockages so we will persist with the Claudel until the fuel is coming through a little cleaner. One of the Zenith carbs I found had the float weights retained with small nails; these had rusted solid in into the weights and it was impossible to extract them. I was not is a rush to recover these components so we immersed them in a solution of Aluminium Ammonium Sulphate for around four months; there was no damage to any of the brass and just a small amount of black sediment to remove from the holes. Thought this trick might be useful to other people with ferrous parts rusted into brass as drilling out is rarely satisfactory.
  20. Wow, it has been a year since the chassis arrived and I have only really managed to do research! I decided to have a scrub at the side of the chassis to see if I could find the chassis number in this location. No luck, but after rubbing through the top layer of greyish paint the Carter Paterson red is exposed. I like the idea of restoring this one as a commandeered lorry made into a mobile workshop. So when I saw this Austin lighting set I had to add it to the collection (I do like T head engines with separate cylinders). It needs quite a lot of work as the water jackets are split, it has the wrong carb and has been converted to coil ignition. The dynamo is just as bad; seized, missing the rotor windings, commutator and brushes. Quite a lot of research to be done on this one too. So it is a compound wound, 1200RPM 110Vdc 27A 3kW generator connected to what appears to be two cylinders from a 10HP 4 cylinder Austin built in 1914. Now I need to try to work out how the armature should be wound, I guess I should start by looking at the one in Duxford. Does anyone have any photos or information?
  21. I forgot to say that I have finished making the missing jets, covers, screws etc. for the Zenith carb. I will try to drive a few more miles with the Claudel before fitting this one.
  22. We have continued to tinker over the past month despite the cold conditions. Another job off the list was fitting the door pocket covers. We had some friends over a couple of weeks ago and they helped us fit a ceiling in the garage. This should reduce the risk of anything from the loft space falling on the vehicles and now I have added some insulation it is also possible to get it several degrees hotter than outside. This was useful when sewing up the gaiter for the rear universal joint as it had to be sewn in-situ. I need to trim the leather at the front and find some more appropriate pipe clips. We used up all of the first batch of petrol. Draining it out the tank several times and passing it through a filter collected plenty of sediment but by the time we were down to the last gallon it was quite a brown colour.
  23. I look forward to reading about the progress on this project and will have to look in this location for a number on my Thornycroft chassis.
  24. The Morris is a bit of a distraction but I am trying to maintain some progress on the Dennis. We had another day of driving it around as the weather was good and there was no salt on the roads. 311218trimmed.mp4 After running around for a while we emptied the petrol filter bowl into a jam jar. The one on the left is new clean petrol and on the right shows particulates and a little water. No stoppages today which is a definite improvement but I think I will continue to flush the contaminated fuel through a filter each week and burn all this brown fuel off before putting fresh fuel in. I have been making the covers for the door pockets. Starting with the leather off cuts from the seat cushions I used a cardboard template to mark out the leather and started to stitch the edges. After stitching the whole way around I treated them with some leather balm.
  25. Sorry for the lack of updates. This has mainly been due to concentrating on other projects such as clearing some space in the garage and workshop so we can move on to the next projects. I have flushed the same couple of gallons of petrol through the system on numerous occasions and the level of particulates has greatly reduced. We have bought ourselves a Christmas present (one of the reasons we needed to tidy). It is a 1913 Morris car and said to have been laid up from WWI until 1970 (when restored) and had occasional use since. I can't imagine any were used in WWI so we have little excuse for posting it!
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