Old Bill

Thanks chaps, that is great. I have never seen such a tool before but now I know what I am looking for. It comes of only ever working with rod or cable brakes! Steve :thumbsup:

Hi Marcel. Good to see you making progress. It is all very familiar! That does seem like very little oil up to the level of the pipe. The Dennis holds 22 litres! Do you think it might be there to prevent the tap from becoming blocked with sludge? It would make testing the oil level very difficult because you would have to let a lot drain out before you could be sure of the level. The idea of automatically grounding the magneto when the oil is low is neat but I bet that the drivers soon disconnected it! What a pity that you have to take the cams off. Good luck with them. Steve :-)

Front Axle Do you have a plan for the axle? Will you try to fit something old and similar or do you intend to make one up? I know you could if you have to but it will be a heavy job! If you are looking for an alternative, how long should it be and how far is it between the spring seats? Steve

Front Axle Hi Dan. Do you have a front axle yet or do you know what it should look like? Will the wheels have plain or rolling bearings? Steve

This cropped up on page 16 of the Thornycroft thread. To be kind to it, I would suggest that it was built to a price. Steve

Yes please! We love to see regular updates and no detail is too small. There is always something to learn in this game! Steve :thumbsup:

Thanks for that NOS. I had not seen that one about. The quality of film props is quite variable it seems. Whilst watching 'King Kong' (!) I saw a Thornycroft AA gun lorry in the background, trained on the top of the Empire State Building. It looked very good but as I believe that it was a Peter Jackson film, I was not surprised. Steve :-D

Dip Sticks! All of this fooling around with an oil level float has prompted the thought of who invented the dip stick? It is such a simple device that its use seems obvious. However, the two Autocars have pet cocks on the side of the crank case and the FWD has pet cocks and also a float with a rod indicator coming through the top. The Dennis has this very sophisticated indicating arrangement and yet a dip stick would seem to be a much cheaper and more reliable system. I have been chatting with another old lorry friend who has a 1924 Albion with a pet cock and a 1929 Albion with a dipstick arrangement bolted to the side of the crank case with a cast-in boss for the pet cock but not drilled. We now hold the view that the dip stick came into use in the mid 1920s but does anyone know better? Now there is a pub bar discussion point! Steve :-)

Thanks Richard. You are very kind. Thanks Tom too. Finding a spinner is quite a task. I will have a go myself first though, should I need to. Nothing like a challenge! Thanks Alec. Glad you are enjoying it. Steve

Hi Dan. Finding a chain-drive box will be very hard. However, you could use the back axle from an Austin 20 car mounted under the chassis with sprockets on the hubs. This will take the power OK as it is before the final reduction. I believe that exactly this solution has been applied to a veteran Commer with a slightly later Commer box driving the axle with a short shaft. If you are going to go to the trouble of making up a Halley style casing then that would be wonderful and I guess that you could fit the Austin bits inside. Gears could then come from any lorry up to 1940 as they would sound right. You are getting really adventurous now! Steve

Looks good. You are very fortunate! Steve

Yes, breaking that brake ring is very annoying but can't be helped. Nothing we can't fix! The other ring has a very old crack in it as well. Fortunately, our chassis still has two wheels on it so we will have to play mix-and-match when the time comes. My immediate thought to replace it, if we have to, would be to have one cast in malleable iron but we will cross that bridge when we get there. My immediate concern is to get the axle locked away under cover in case our anvil thieves return. Tyres will be interesting. The army had twin 880-120 tyres fitted but these have a single wide tyre. On the Dennis, we used the original 880-120 rims but had polyurethane tyres moulded on. We will do the same here unless a set of original Dunlops surfaces. One never knows! Steve

Whenever I have seen an ancient engine recovered by somebody, it always has the head off or the plugs out. Why is that? Surely used plugs can't have had any value? Or am I missing something? I think you have a challenge there! Steve

Oh I see! Thank you. Steve :thumbsup:

Very neat! How did you prevent the ring from spinning in the jig when you began to machine it? Steve

That is curious! My initial thought was that it is to set the end float in the bearings but then I understood that you cannot get at it when assembled! What stops the collar from rotating? Is it that screw in the face on the lower left of your photo? Are they plain bearings or rollers? Steve

What a super job! Core boxes are the difficult bit but you have done a very nice job indeed. Yes please, I would very much like to have two castings if I may. Ours have proven porous and it would be a good time to replace them when we do the radiator, if not sooner. Good show! Steve :-)

We are very pleased to have this one. Now I can get back to practising again! One thing puzzles me though. It has two hardie-holes. Why would you want a second one? Is this anvil meant for a special purpose? Steve :confused:

Quite right. Mind you, it has still taken us 22 years! Steve

Yes, they just connect the blocks at the bottom to let the coolant through. Even just with two cylinders in each casting, they are spectacular pieces of foundry work for manual sand casting. Before we obtained this engine, I was looking at making the patterns for them myself so that we could make them up but I never did quite work out how it was done. Fingers are crossed that I never have to do it! Steve :-)

Hi Richard. If you have a float that you could spare, that would be fantastic! The centre distance on the rods is 1 1/4" and they are 1/4" diameter. Looking more closely at this float, it has obviously cracked and been caulked in the past. I guess it is just suffering from being old brass. I will have a go at drilling a couple of holes in it and washing out the oil with thinners before patching them with some shim and a soldering iron. It is quite an intriguing piece of work really. Just how did they make them? When I shortened the one we had in stock to suit the petrol tank, I simply put the rod in the vice and twisted it a bit more with a tap wrench. It had to rotate 180° from bottom to top and it worked out quite well in the end. Another challenge! Steve :-)

Proper job! Steve :-)

Hi Allan. Welcome aboard! That is a very typical pic of the period, covered with blokes making it quite tricky! The clues are in the hubcaps and spring hangers but I can't quite see the detail. I have tried blowing it up but still can't see. Please may we have a more detailed scan of these areas? No doubt 'Runflat' and 'Great War Truck' will know! Cheers! Steve

On 23rd November, 1917, Lieutenant Alfred King Tripe, my cousin, was killed in action at the Battle of Cambrai. Alfred, commissioned as a Lieutenant, joined the Tank Corps where he was assigned to ‘E’ Battalion and went to France on July 1st 1917. After familiarisation training, they moved to the forward area at the end of July. Their tank park was at Oosthoek Wood. Here Alfred was put in command of a Mk IV tank, E3 known as Eclipse II. He had a crew of seven: Corporal Murray, L/Corporal Lewis, Privates Jacques, Innes, Johnson, Hilling and Davies. In November the whole Tank Corps was pitched into battle. This was the Battle of Cambrai. The battle began at 0600 on 20 November. It opened with a carefully prepared and predicted, but unregistered, fire barrage by 1,003 guns on key German defences, followed by smoke and a creeping barrage at 300 yards ahead to cover the first advances. Despite efforts to preserve secrecy, the German forces had received sufficient intelligence to be on moderate alert. An attack on Havrincourt was anticipated, as was the use of tanks. Initially there was considerable success in most areas, and it seemed as if a great victory was within reach; the Hindenburg Line had been successfully penetrated with advances of up to 8 km achieved. Of the tanks 180 were out of action after the first day, although only 65 had been destroyed. Of the remainder 71 had suffered mechanical failure and 43 had been 'ditched'. The British had suffered around 4,000 casualties and had taken 4,200 prisoners, a casualty rate half that of Third Ypres (Passchendaele), and a greater advance in six hours than in three months there. ‘E’ Battalion were left with 11 servicable tanks out of the 42 that had started the battle. E3 was one of them, part of No. 3 section under the command of Captain Roberts. On November 23rd, all 11 were ordered into battle again with the objective of taking the ‘Round Trench’ on the plain of Moeuvres. Just before noon, E3 took a direct hit and all the crew were either killed or mortally wounded with the exception of Private Davies. Afterwards, he gave his account of what happened: “Hit at 11:45 by a shell that passed through the rear of the tank and exploded on the left side practically level with the front of the engine setting the camouflage net on fire.” Alfred Tripe, who was sitting at the point of the explosion, died instantly. His remains were not found and he has no grave but is remembered on the Cambrai memorial in Louverval and on a war memorial for GWR employees in Chester station. The photograph shows ‘Eclipse II’ after the battle.

Don't worry about a bit of rust at the edges lifting the rubber. Our Dennis fronts were just the same. The rust dropped out very quickly but they are showing no signs of serious damage. When we stripped the rubber from the rear tyre bands they had rusted in each side by about half an inch but the majority of the width was still very well attached indeed and proved very hard to separate! Steve :-)