Old Bill

Hello Vintary! I'm sure we can find something for you. What is your particular interest? Is it Quads in general or very specifically one used in Ireland? Are you a modeller or do you have a connection somewhere along the line? You never know what might turn up on this forum! Cheers! Steve

Adrian, Ben and Phil. Thank you very much for your very kind offers. 1/2" downwards seems to be obtainable if one looks hard enough. It is the very large (by our standards anyway!) sizes which are so difficult. I must admit that I hadn't thought of India but the trouble is, I don't want to buy 1000 of the things! Silencer nuts must be very prone to coming loose because they are in a vibrating environment, go through thermal cycles and can't be done up very tight without crushing the casing! I think we will have to assess ours very carefully when it is finally assembled. I have seen them with lock nuts on both ends which might be a solution. Cross that bridge when we get there! Steve :thumbsup:

We have managed to salvage a few grover washers for under nuts and so on but generally replace them with standard spring washers. I'm not prepared to go turning up and heat treating special spring washers so you have found the place where I draw the line! We will probably put ordinary spring washers on the silencer. However, the Thackery washers seem to be most often used as an anti-rattle device and that is what we are looking for for the remaining brake rigging and to go on the ball joints of the track rod to support the rod. Quantities needed are minute so it is not worth having any made up specially and I don't really want to make up the tooling to make them ourselves. Someone out there will have two of each size under their bench, I am sure! Steve

I don't think they had springs but they would certainly need something. They were probably just spring washers or, knowing Dennis now, Thackery washers. I will have to have another look at the drawing. On the subject of Thackery washers, does anyone know where we can get a few, 7/8", 1" and 1 1/4" bore? They are the very devil to find in these large sizes and we have only managed so far by salvaging originals. Unfortunately, our stock has run out and we need just a few more. Dennis used them to prevent rattle in the track rod and also the brake linkage, as shown here. Any suggestions please chaps? Steve

Liberty Bs as far as the eye can see. What a wonderful pic! Must be the dump at Rouen after the war. No doubt Tim will tell us! Steve

Every part tells a story! Thanks! Steve

Wonderful colour scheme! :-D What is the history of that cab? Steve

The clutch lining is the original, as fitted by Dennis! As the engine was used to drive a fire pump, the clutch saw very little use and the lining is like new. It is some sort of woven composite material, possibly asbestos. This will be the first lined cone clutch that I have set up and used so it will be a bit of a learning experience. I have driven a veteran car, owned by the students of my college, which has a metal-metal cone clutch and that was fine, with care. Our Autocars have flat plate clutches which can grab. The manual instructs that if this happens, the plate and linings should be oiled. I was somewhat disbelieving but the oil works very well indeed and they don't slip under load. Perhaps you could try oiling yours? Good luck! Steve

There doesn't look to be much round clearance but there would, of course, be a tyre as well which would give it another 2". I am guessing that they stuck with wooden wheels simply from familiarity. The classic cart or carriage wheels transmit no torque, as you say, and are constructed by forcing spokes (often oak in the UK) into an elm nave or hub. The number of spokes which can be fitted to a wheel in this manner is limited and it was found that guns gave this type of wheel more punishment than it could stand. To get over this, the 'artillery wheel' was invented in which there are so many spokes that their ends wedge against each other and the hub is formed by sandwiching them between iron plates bolted together. This type of wheel can carry torque and is invariably the type used on motor vehicles. The picture shows this construction. Early British military vehicles almost invariably had steel wheels but American imports very commonly carried wooden wheels. I must admit that I don't know why but has always struck me as strange as the more 'modern' British style wheels were mounted on plain bronze bearings but the 'old fashioned' American type had rolling bearings. Our Autocars of 1917 actually have tapered roller bearings. If someone can shine some light on this peculiarity, I should be very pleased to hear it. Steve

This clutch is a cone clutch which was a very common arrangement in the early years of the last century. You should be able to make it out in the pictures of me assembling the centre into the main casting. The idea is that there is a wedging action because of the fine angle and this reduces the strength of the spring necessary to keep both halves together. The down side is that these clutches can be very difficult to slip as they tend to 'grab' and a smooth pull-away can be a real challenge! The clutch is released by pulling it backwards via a thrust bearing behind the nut that you can see in the centre. I have a piece of steel on order at the moment from which to make the bearing carrier. The rest of the linkage to the pedal is in stock but I will wait until we have the couplings and prop shaft connected before fitting it. The other point of note is that this clutch has a 'clutch brake' in the form of two spring-loaded pads mounted on either side. These are provided to help up-changes as the rotating masses are so huge that otherwise, by the time the mainshaft has slowed enough to be able to engage a higher gear, the whole vehicle has stopped! When changing up, you press the clutch pedal to the floor which pulls the cone right back until it touches the brake pads and is slowed down thus enabling a faster change. When changing down the box, you only press the pedal half way so that the clutch disengages but isn't braked.You then blip the engine to accelerate the shaft, half press the pedal again and, with a bit of luck, the speeds match and the gear can be engaged. It works very well but does take some practice when you have been used to synchromesh! Steve

That's a nice solution, Barry and looks just right for a fire engine. Perhaps a bit over the top for an army lorry! You are right about the limited tension one can apply with the type I have made. The Dennis hoses have stretched over the spigots nicely so I think they will be OK. In the past, when the hose has been a bit slack, I have used Jubilee clips for a month or two until the joint has settled down and then replaced them with brass clips so that they look right. The Devil is in the Details! Steve

We have accumulated quite a few hose clips of various types over the years but none of them have brass fasteners. I have seen veteran cars with entirely brass clips but, of course, appearance is more important with a car. It is possible to get entirely brass clips new but they are about £5- a time and when a vehicle set is twenty, I begrudge the money. I saw this design somewhere and thought that it would suit what we do so I sketched it and make them up as required. I can't say that they are definitively right but as long as they don't look wrong then I am content. Steve

Yes, there is always something to learn or that one hasn't thought of! I put this one down to the fact that I live 200 miles from the lorry so I can't just look at it whilst doing something else. I therefore didn't spot it until too late! I will make a complete new pattern as someone is sure to want to use this one if I scrap it. I have been busy today and Tim will have quite a few pictures to post when he returns from foreign climes. These last few days have been very good for the project as I have been able to spend quite a lot of time just looking at it and getting my thoughts straight. I have also found a couple of bits that I didn't know we had which is always a bonus! Steve

Fortunately, we have not had this one cast yet as it is from the second batch of patterns. I could just index it round to point in the right direction but then the carburettor heating flange would be angled downwards. It would all work but it would bug me for evermore. I think a new pattern is going to be the best way out. At least I know how to do it this time! Steve

Whilst pottering in the shed, yesterday, I took the opportunity to hold one of my new water pump patterns where the casting should go. As you can see, in spite of all of my agonising on how to make it, it is completely wrong! :??? This suction elbow should line up with the radiator outlet but misses by a mile. Now I think about it, it is obvious what has gone wrong. All subsidy lorries have the radiator mounted above the chassis (a requirement of the scheme) but the lorry whose pump we have copied is just post-war and would have had the radiator mounted much lower, hence the direction of the elbow. Will just have to make another. Never mind! Steve

You have me worried now! I know I have seen this badge but cannot lay my hands on a picture for the moment. I think I have seen it with the words 'Guy Motors' inside the 'G'. As soon as I find some more evidence I will come back. Of course, it could be a 'Gilford'! Steve

As far as spark plugs are concerned, I have always asked Tim Green of the Green Spark Plug Co what he recommends. He stocks everything one could want so I buy them from him too. The Champion 7s came from him and are NOS. Very rare that we find spares like that! Steve

You are dead right! I have just Googled 'Jubilee clip' and found that it was invented in 1921 by ex Royal Navy Commander, Lumley Robinson. Never thought to try that before! Steve

The bottom one does look like a Guy but I'm afraid I don't know the marque in sufficient detail to determine the model. Does it appear to have two radiators, one behind the other? I have never seen that done before! The first lorry in the first picture looks like a Leyland to me. The Y-Type had the same size wheels front and rear (850mm) whereas the Leyland had the standard Subsidy arrangement of 720mm at the front and 881mm at the rear. The mixture of spoked and disc wheels is not unusual as there seems to have been a wheel shortage during the war with most companies taking whatever they could get. Wheels were mixed and matched a lot more than one might expect as the whole wheel had to be taken to a tyre press to change the tyre. As this would take at least a day, depending on how close the nearest type press was, the motor transport companies always had a float of spares in order to keep the vehicles on the road.

I have been taking the opportunity to catch up with some of those little jobs which hang around whilst something more interesting is going on. The first one I have tackled is to fit hose clips to the few pipes we have installed. Now, I could use the classic worm-drive 'Jubilee Clips' but I don't think they had been invented during the Great War or at least, they weren't common so I have had to make up our own. This is a pity as the worm drive clip was a most marvellous invention! Anyway, ones starts with a strip of brass. This is marked out and bent over at the ends. The ends are drilled and then bent in the reverse direction. Finally, the strip is pulled around a piece of bar to make the clip. A simple nut and screw secures it onto the pipe. They are not too difficult to make, just time consuming. They also can't adjust to a very wide range of hose diameters so I generally make them to fit the job in hand. I have also straightened/rebent the water pipe for carburettor heating. It still has a kink but I don't think this will matter much as with modern fuel volatility, it will never be used. There's another tick in the box on the way to starting the engine!

Yes, I take it that the clutch release movement is taken by the bronze blocks sliding in their grooves rather than the couplings sliding on the shafts. I think the springs just keep the propshaft centred and prevent it from rattling. The large thrust race is attached to the end of the crankshaft and supports a spider which holds the three clutch springs which in turn keep the clutch engaged. This race is always under load but not rolling except when gear changing. The smaller race is only under load when the clutch is disengaged as it pulls against the clutch springs to release the cone. It, however, rotates all of the time that the engine is running. The water pump still needed a clutch, of course, and the engine came with a centre, release bearing and short drive shaft. The parts are the wrong pattern for the lorry although we could probably have made them work. However, we decided that as we would have to make bits to use the wrong parts, we might as well go the whole hog and make the right parts. All more work but we are determined that nobody will be able to tell us that we have done it wrong! Steve

These clutch bits are not very obvious at the moment so here is a section of the clutch-to-gearbox arrangement copied from 'The Automobile Engineer' of September 1917. (It is amazing what you can find if you know where to look!) Left to right, you can see the flywheel with the cone clutch inside it. In the middle of that, with the spiral groove, is the clutch centre that we have had made. To the right is the small thrust race that Father found on the shelf followed by the nut that I made a while back. The end of the clutch centre is square and on it is a top-hat shaped piece of steel. This, Father will rough out shortly and then we can have the square hole cut by wire erosion again. Bolted to that are the two pieces that Father has posted above. These form a universal joint as there are two bronze blocks on the end of a cross-pin which engage in the slots you can see above. Got that?! The cross-pin goes through the end of a very short prop shaft that we have yet to make. I want to fit all the other pieces into place in order to check the length before we do! The whole of that joint is held together by the discs with the V-groove which Father made and posted a fortnight ago. There is another complete joint on the right hand end where the whole lot joins the gearbox. This one has a five toothed spline this time, rather than a square. Goodness knows why! Steve

The Saurer is 1914 vintage and ex-French Army. I saw it on Brighton sea front a year or two back and very nice it is too. I believe it lives Kidderminster way. The Ambulances have got me. My initial thought was 'Renault' but the badges don't look right. 'Runflat' will know for sure! Steve

The Locomobile is owned by the same chap who loaned us the Dennis water pump to copy. A very nice chap. His father recovered it after it had been sheeted over and turned into a home. An old gentleman lived in it for many years over which period he had completely disguised it. When he died, it was pulled out and found to be all but complete save the radiator which is now a copy. I don't supose there are many more out there like it!

It looks like the inlet manifold has been cobbled up out of the original one, turned through 90° although I can't see why they might have done that. Do you plan to make up a new one to the correct pattern? Do you need any sketches or drawings? If so, I can help! Steve