Old Bill

What a lovely job, Nigel. I'm really looking forward to seeing it out and about. From the pics, your working space looks pretty tight and that won't have made it any easier! Well done! Steve

Actually, that's not quite right. The bent and corroded timing arrow salvaged from the rotten scuttle has actually cleaned up very well. When I had another look at the scuttle we have made, I found two holes which we had put in without knowing what they were for. It fitted perfectly. Wonderful! Although the oil gauge is a Dennis and was a great find at Beaulieu, it is not of quite the right pattern as the fitting should be on the bottom rather than the back. I have managed to make it fit reasonably unobtrusively and we will fit the correct gauge if ever we find one. Steve

Oak spokes and ash felloes. The wheelwright made all four for £540 with us providing the hubs and rims. I think we got a bargain. Steve

No, no hub. Cart wheels have hubs with the spokes pressed in. However once guns became common, with their great weight, it was found that the hub could not be made big enough to fit all the spokes needed. To get over that, the spokes wedge against each other and more can be fitted. This is the origin of the 'artillery wheel'. When we acquired the Autocar lorry for which these wheels were made, it had pneumatic tyres on steel disc wheels. However, a close inspection revealed the original spokes, sawn off, behind the discs. It was therefore just a case of stripping the hubs down and getting new wheels fitted. The steel bands were shrunk on in the traditional manner but they were pre-formed to carry beaded edge tyres. Much to our surprise, these were available off of the shelf. The challenge now will be repairing the slightly poorly wheels we have for the Peerless lorries. These are of similar proportion to the ones at the top of this thread. There's nothing like a challenge! Steve

Quote: "Do you have any more photos of these wheels showing the hub and spoke pattern. Any idea of the wood type used? Have to assume he already had the rims and hubs available. The mould also in the photo is interesting. Assume used for the shaping the tyres, and not as a jig for the spokes. " Unfortunately, I took only the one picture. However they appear to be classic artillery wheels with oak spokes and ash felloes. The spokes wedge together in the centre and are clamped by the hub and cover plate. The hub is original for sure but the chain sprocket and rim looked new. Steve

The steel fabrication on the left is the mould that was made for the tyres. Unfortunately, the owner was not about when I saw them so I was not able to enquire further but they had obviously been turned from a proper rubber compound rather than the polyurethane we have used. Most interesting to see. Steve

Wow, thanks Mark! That is the first imtimation I have seen suggesting Middle-Eastern colours. I will keep my eyes open for the book. A copy will turn up on the web in due course, I am sure. The only colour I am absolutely certain about is the khaki green as we have traces of the original on one of our chassis. What a wonderful thing this forum is! Regards, Steve

Thanks Alan. I'm learning a lot from this! Steve

Hi Mark. How very interesting. We have always found the numbering a puzzle and I seem to have added more confusion already! Tim is at Bovington today to see the Holt Caterpillar Gun-tractor but will come back to you this evening, I expect. Do you know anything about the base colours used in the Middle East please? Our next restoration project will be a Peerless three tonner, marked to represent one of those used in Mesopotamia but unfortunately, we have no evidence to suggest what colour it should be. We know that at the beginning of the War the European vehicles were grey with black lettering until the change to khaki-green in 1915. However, we have found no reference at all to the colours used elsewhere. Were they desert sand, grey or even green? We should love to know! Cheers! Steve

Hi Mark. You have raised an interesting question! Tim (aka Great War Truck) another postcard collector, Alan, and I have had a look at them and not reached any firm conclusions although there are some clues. Tim knows far more than me and will undoubtably correct me and reply in detail. However, for the moment, this is what I believe. Numbers starting 'S' are to be found on steam powered vehicles. LC is India and 'L' Palestine. Most wartime vehicles have a simple number which seems to have been allocated to the manufacturer to apply in batches. These appear to be random and I guess were issued with each order. US Army vehicles follow a definate coding system where the initial number '4' indicates a GS vehicle and '8', an ambulance. There are others too. The suffix 'X' indicates taken up from civilian use. I will nudge Tim for a proper answer for you. He is the historian, I just swing a spanner! What is your particular interest by the way? Cheers! Steve

Yes, we break things too often as well. The hardest judgement is when one decides to sacrifice one original part to save another. I really hate destroying things! Engine performance is not often quoted in detail. The British 'Subsidy' lorries all develop a nominal 40hp from about 6.5l displacement. The FWD develops 54bhp at 1400rpm from 6.5l but the Autocars 18bhp at 2000rpm from 2.6l. The FWD weighs nearly four tons and will do about 14mph. The Autocar is only two and will do 26mph which is getting really exciting! The Peerless lorry, which I have never seen run, is supposed to do 18mph at 985rpm. That has to be about the slowest lorry engine ever! Stalling is not too much of a problem because they all have such big flywheels. The downside of this is that gear changes are very slow as the engine revolutions take so long to change and one has often stopped before getting the next gear! I think the British Army expected their drivers to do 100 miles per day for six days each week. The most I have done is 96 and that took 8 1/2 hours. I slept very well that night and the weather had been good that day. I have done 60 miles in continuous heavy rain and that was a bit miserable. The Autocar has no weather protection at all and I was really looking forward to stopping. These old lorries all tend to be pretty heavy and require a degree of brute strength to control, particularly at low speeds. One American road repair foreman is quoted as saying something like 'You need to be a 200 pound man with the strength of a gorilla to drive one but I wouldn't change mine for the world!' He was talking about his FWDs and I completely understand what he meant! Steve

Yes, crow bars, big hammers, cold chisels, propane torch and hack-saw. Getting it all to bits without doing any more damage is the hardest part! Oil seals are not really an issue because there aren't any! Well, not many anyway. At the half-shaft inner ends there is a leather washer and the gear change shafts are sealed with a gland which traps a coil of graphited yarn. Those are about it though. It is not called a 'total loss' system for nothing! Bolts are an issue as it is very important to us to use the right thread type. The Dennis uses BSF threaded bolts which we can get. Whitworth are more difficult but we have a friendly specialist bolt supplier who contacts his friends to see what he can find for us. Also, our friends keep rummaging in their garages for tins of mixed bolts which all come in very useful although they are invariably rusty and need a good clean. One point is that the more modern bolts from after about 1930, have writing on the heads which makes them look wrong. We always put them in the lathe and machine them off before using them. We are not so picky about the thread type in the coach bolts used in the body. However, they must have square nuts to look right. Square nuts really are a problem so we have been importing them from the US as hand luggage every time one of us goes over to see the relatives. Airport security men often look surprised when we pass through! The silly things we do for fun...... Steve

Wow, Cedric! What fantastic information! It just shows how much knowledge and information can be brought together by this forum! Thank you for sharing that with us. It is another corner of military history about which I knew nothing but am very pleased to hear. Steve

Just make it up as we go along! Seriously though, we just follow good engineering practice. We were very fortunate with the FWD that the manual was so comprehensive that it gave dimensions for such things as the carburettor jets so we had something to go on. The British lorries are much less well documented and occasionally we get it wrong. At least we can learn and have another go. Steve

These lorries have four speed and reverse boxes, all of the crash variety. Changing speeds takes practice but there is great joy to be had in a quiet change! The straight-cut gears have a very distinctive sound to them so one can instantly recognise a genuine veteran lorry on the road. I expect the Dennis will be flat out at 20mph but it has a governor which should be set to 14. Whilst we will replace the linkage, I think I will leave the butterfly out of the inlet manifold as having a governor is just one more thing to catch you out, driving in modern traffic. 12mph, the legal top speed for a solid-tyred commercial vehicle, sounds slow but doesn't feel it as the lorry is quite happy. The great advantage is that one is never stuck in the middle of a queue of traffic, being generally at the front! Steve

Yes, quite right. These lorries should have a tank on the dash with a hand pump so that you can give a squirt every couple of miles. Excess oil just seems to find its way out! Our lorries are both missing the tank and, although I started to make the patterns and core boxes to cast new ones, I never finished the job. Something to do when I get a bored moment! Steve

The oil consumption has puzzled us for some time and caused me some concern when I realised that we were only getting sixteen miles to the pint! I was reassured when I found that the army trials in 1914 achieved even greater consumption and their lorry was new! Mind you, it still costs a lot and a drip tray is an essential piece of kit. It seems that most of the oil comes out of the breather and I believe that this is exacerbated by the twin cylinder engine. In a 'four' two pistons are going up whilst two are coming down and the net crankcase volume change is very small thus moving only a little air in and out. In a twin, the crankcase volume changes by the whole capacity of the engine every revolution so there is a tremendous gale through the breather all the time. This picks up the oil mist and spreads it over everything. Our breather had been modified, to little effect and when looking at old photographs, it can be seen that Autocar moved the breather around on the engine over the years so they obviously recognised the problem as well. We have decided to live with the problem and just count our blessings in that nothing is likely to rust! Steve

In photo seven above, you can see the gear change detent casting. The square rods slide back and forth with a plunger on a spring pushing into notches in them. The squares were completely corroded so we had to cut them off. I am pleased to be able to report that Father has managed to remove the remainder of the square shafts. One was successfully pressed through using a large vice and a lot of heat. The other had to be drilled out a bit at a time. Another afternoons work! Steve

First one looks German to me, possibly an Adler. Second looks American with the badge possibly Chevrolet shaped. Could be a Dodge which were a lot more common. Third, something German. Wouldn't like to hazard a guess. Nice pics! Steve

Hi Richard. I counted the Duxford J as one of the 23 as I haven't seen it out and about since the Brighton run in '84 or 85. It is a nice wagon though although the interactive information panel next to it does show a Peerless AA lorry! I don't have any French contacts, unfortunately, so my info is just what I have seen. There is certainly a restored Nash Quad which comes out and a group of Frenchmen drove a 1914 De Dion three-tonner from Nantes over for the Brighton run a few years back. We have picked up photos of various ancient lorries either at shows or derelict over there but I'm afraid I cannot point you at any specifically. The survivors all seem to be French or American built. I guess the British stuff mostly came back to the UK. I should be most interested to see what you find. Have a nice trip! Steve

Thanks for your kind comments again Chaps. Just wait and see what it looks like after we have run it. They don't call the lubrication system 'total loss' for nothing! The question of how many is a very interesting one. As far as the Dennis is concerned, there is our 'bitsa' and another which is a fairly original vehicle heavily rebuilt to a civilian operating standard. There is also one other of, we think, 1919 vintage in unrestored civilian guise. I think abut 5000 were built in total but Tim will give some more precise figures later. In terms of how many vehicles in total, it is rumoured that the War Department had bought 120,000 by the end of the War. Of that 120,000, we believe that there are of the order of 83 survivors in this country. Of those 83, 34 are in military guise or are to be restored as such. Of the 34, there are 23 in working order and of those 23, 14 have been out and about in the last ten years. These are those: Autocar UF21 1917 DS8904 British G/S Gosling Daimler Y British G/S Harris Foden C (Steam) 1917 WD Roads Brandt Ford T US G/S Aran Ford T UK Machine gun car Groombridge FWD B 1918 DS8575 US G/S Gosling Hallford 4 Ton XA8987 British G/S Weatherhead Liberty B 1918 US G/S Dodd Locomobile 1914 British G/S Webb Nash Quad British G/S Moores Pierce-Arrow R British G/S Grundon Saurer 1914 French G/S Webb Thornycroft J 1916 British G/S Hampshire Museums Thornycroft J British G/S Turner This list omits cars and motor cycles of which there are a handful. It represents a pretty small survival rate although there are still quite a few in France if you are keen to get hold of one. I should be very pleased to hear of any more. Cheers! Steve