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Without any doubt the best foundry for our kind of work in the North East is the William Lane Foundry in Middlesbrough. There is a lovely video of what they do on their website. https://www.williamlanefoundry.uk/ They have cast Thornycroft radiator tanks and if you catch them at a time when they are pouring the metal that you need they might even produce your casting whilst you wait.

A tremendous achievement! I hope you have another project lined up?

Were you lucky enough to find a gear ring that fitted or did you make a new one. The teeth in the pictures look freshly cut and I guess it was just shrunk on. What was the outside diameter of the flywheel and how many thou undersize was the ring? It looks a super job!

I have usually found that the old style Nestle brass clip just does not grip the hose tight enough. So I compromise on authenticity and use a modern wideband clamp sold on ebay for 'turbo' applications. I fit them with wing nuts and paint them black to give a token old appearance. The most important thing though is that they keep the water where it should be! The picture shows the clamp in the natural stainless steel finish.

I hope all the 'woodworking' hasn't put off the grand ride out for the Thornycroft proposed for this holiday period? Although I can imagine your reluctance if the weather is anything like where we are - cold, windy, wet and miserable. Good luck, Barry.

Take a deep breath, bite the bullet and do it properly! Grind off the rivets, unsolder, clean it out and put everything back again as it should be! In you heart you know it's the only thing to do.

Ben, is there a reason for the expanded aluminium mesh behind the radiator core? The sign writing looks super. Have you had an extended drive of it to see how the engine pulls?

Not ever having done this, how long do you leave the water in for before you think it is safe to attack the tank? A day, two days? No matter how hard you try to clean parts in the fuel supply chain they always seem to smell of petrol. How does smell equate to petrol vapour? Can you purge a tank with Argon and then go for it straight away? How about using a 'wet and dry' vacuum cleaner to suck the vapour out (with the petrol tap open) or will the cleaner go bang instead?

Lucas had a standard universal bracket for bulb horns of this type. Unfortunately this picture does not show it too well, but the brass stalk has an adjustable 2 axis swivel clamp. On the end of the stalk there is always a Lucas King of the Road badge. The horn in the above picture does not appear make use of the mounting boss which is rivetted to the horn body and as such is non-standard..........and just looking on ebay there is a perfect example of the standard bracket! (Should we allow Steve to make the split clamps from brass bar or should we insist he forms them from sheet metal?).

Does anyone have any further details on this? Barry.

What fantastic tyres!!! They look as if they have been properly molded in steel or aluminium dies. Can you tell me more about the process and how you persuaded the company to make you just a few? I am assuming that you didn't have hundreds made to spread the cost? Do you know if they are willing to repeat the process with different molds? Dare I ask to the nearest $10,000 how much they were? The last tyre in your top picture (the one propped up against the pile of modern tyres ) seems to have a join mark. What is this? I find it hard to imagine why there has not been a greater response in admiration for you persevering and getting your lorry such an amazing set of tyres. Best wishes, Barry from the North East of England.

Mammoth , Stick with the Mercedes engine, it will be far easier for you.........and let me have this Dennis engine!🤗🤗🤗 What a find! I wonder whether it is just a teaser or whether it could change hands? Best wishes, Barry.

Andy, I think it looks like a soldered up brass header tank but built as a replica of a cast aluminium top tank. Very unusual and unique! Barry.

Steven, This is my 1913 Dennis. The points of interest is that it does not use the White and Poppe engine with the four separate cylinders but a two block engine with thermo-syphon cooling. The fire fighting pump is not the larger size found on the later 'N' types but a smaller Gwynne. The standard piston primer is contained in the rear locker, but it is just single unit and not paired up as on the 'N' Types. The radiator cap mascot has no relevance to the discussion, but what a super mascot for a Dennis! (The brochure extract is my actual machine as it was originally supplied to the John Dickinson works fire brigade. You will notice that there has been a change of radiator and wheels). Barry.

Ben, where did this bit of red come from? The belt pulleys seem quite some way out on an unsupported shaft. For a moment I thought that you might have mounted an auxiliary bearing on the fan bracket to give extra support. When you tensioned the belts did the pulley shaft flex at all? Are we going to see pictures here of the adventure that the lorry had a few days ago! Barry.

Ed, I would just pull off each plug cap in turn and listen for a change in engine note to see if I was missing on a cylinder. Is a 'Cylinder balance Power Check' anything more sophisticated? On my early Dennis's charging a cylinder beforehand and then returning up to a couple of hours later is like you say a real 'party piece'. The Dennis's have trembler coils so we have plenty of sparks to set alight the remaining mixture. Barry.

This was in the era when the F1 rules permitted either 3 litre normally aspirated engines or 1.5 litre turbo engines. The turbo engines ran with tremendous boost so although they started off with only 500 BHP by the end of the development they were producing close to 900BHP. The BMW engine programme was run on a shoestring with them making do with whatever they had available. Stress relieved old blocks were therefore essential to the campaign. However, we are talking about a Thornycroft here, so hone out the bores, skim the pistons, perhaps increase the ring gaps too and enjoy happy motoring with 50 trouble free horses.

Yes, later models were not fitted with the trembler coil. This is how it can be started without B.E.N. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivN1FNsrCsI

I don't know if I know how to do that........ Here is a video of another starting system called B.E.N. https://youtu.be/KwZL-JDnBuY

I was intrigued by the last post from Ed. I have a 1913 Merryweather fire engine where starting is quite difficult, due to the engine size and compression. In the U.K. starter/generators are called DynaStarts. The advantage being is that the belt drive is permanently engaged and once you have used the 'Start' part of the unit the 'Dyna' part charges your battery. For the Thorny and my size of engine (10 litres) you need quite a big DynaStart. There is a man on ebay specialising in Dynastarters for our type of application and typically sells 10 sets a year. The best belt to use is a 'Polyvee' belt, which you see wrapped around serpentine like on all the Front End Auxiliary Drives on large car engines. These are like 4 or more tiny vee belts all joined together side by side. A pulley ratio of 6:1 will give a torque of 60 ft lbs at the crank. How does that compare with Steve giving the hand crank a good swing? Probably about the same? Anyway, I think I am going to give it a try. The seller will accept everything back if it doesn't work and give an 80% refund which seems quite fair. The great advantage of this type of unit is that you don't have to fit a starter gear ring to the flywheel or do any machining at all. With luck the DynaStarter can just be clamped onto chassis rails without any hole drilling, so the system can be removed without leaving any traces behind if you wish to go back to complete originality.

60 miles to Brighton and then crawling through traffic the last few miles to the sea front on may be a roasting hot day would send shivers down my spine if I knew my engine was likely to seize. Like Gordon has just said I think it would be far safer to pull off the barrels first thing tomorrow morning and take a look. With a hone you could ease out each cylinder a thou or two in minutes compared with hours of running at tickover. You could have the barrels back on by lunch time confident that you will be eating ice creams on the sea front next Sunday!

Steve, did I miss the bit where you dynamically balanced the prop shaft up to 1000rpm before fitting? My local Fire Brigade workshops were fixated on prop shaft balancing but to me it always seemed unnecessary compared with the other rotating masses which could be out of balance.

Ben, are you going to use a sheet metal shrinker to take the ripples out of the turned over lip on the roof or do you have some other plan? I have been looking at one of these for years and could never decide whether they are any good or not. Does anyone here have any experiences of using one of these?

When I have made up oil pipes for pressure gauges I have always just soft soldered the nipples on and not silver solder like what Ben has just used. On this era of vehicle ( pre-WW1 ) was there a preferred method? Looking forward to hear the engine start. Engine starts seem to be coming thick and fast now!

Well, there is Ben, Me and you, so we only need 17 more to make the numbers up!