andypugh

Some elements of the New Imperial look the same (tank shifter and oiler, extra right-side pulley, probably for a brake rather than drive) but the magneto drive setup is all wrong: https://images.app.goo.gl/r9tTr4mtewaKaRBc9

Are the starting handle dogs incorporated into the pulley on the Bovington example? It's hard to be sure. 
In any case, I feel that having them as a separate part, in steel, is probably a better idea. 

They are actually a bit of a game to machine, as ideally the included angle < 90 degrees between the drive flank and the ramp. I have a setup that can do it, if you want to decline the challenge 😉 

6 hours ago, mammoth said:

"Bar oil" used for chainsaws would be the go. Is designed to get into the links and hang on  when things are whirring.

Chainsaw oil is also meant to be delivered from a reservoir, though. It's not all that tenacious. 
It is used as a cheaper alternative by some motorcyclists who have chain oilers (like the Scottoiler) 

But for the drive chains on a truck I think it would make sense to use motorcycle chain lube products, as this is actually _exactly_ the same application. 

Here is a review of 55 of them: https://www.bennetts.co.uk/bikesocial/reviews/products/motorcycle-maintenance-and-servicing/best-motorcycle-chain-lube

Inrerestingly, hot-melt chain wax has just been rediscovered by the cycling crowd, and is now the hot new thing that they rave about. Unfortunately the stuff aimed at such cyclists is very expensive. 

Linkyfe equivalents exist, such as https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/361926663197 but enough to soak your chains would be expensive. Do you know Dr Fish, the "God of Grease" ? He might have advice on a hot-melt grease that is used industrially. 

40 minutes ago, Alastair said:

As to dash board it was originally the board in front of you on a carriage that prevented pebbles and suchlike, having been kicked up by the horses, from hitting you.

It prevents your face from becoming pebble-dashed. 🙂

The cab roof is set very low, maybe they were sleeping in there? 

16 minutes ago, CornishMade said:

1982 and 1984 dad did the London to Brighton in it and finished twice, first time only casualty was the tank for the carbide lamps came off, second time no issues and the Dennis fire engine in our class said we clocked 22miles per hour down hill on the straight.

If that was our Dennis Fire Engine then you should take any reading from our speedometer with a pinch of salt. 
Though it generally under-reads....

1982 and 1984 are a bit before my time, my first Brighton run on LP8389 was in 1986 but I have done nearly every one since. 

16 minutes ago, CornishMade said:

1982 and 1984 dad did the London to Brighton in it and finished twice, first time only casualty was the tank for the carbide lamps came off, second time no issues and the Dennis fire engine in our class said we clocked 22miles per hour down hill on the straight.

If that was our Dennis Fire Engine then you should take any reading from our speedometer with a pinch of salt. 
Though it generally under-reads....

1982 and 1984 are a bit before my time, my first Brighton run on LP8389 was in 1986 but I have done nearly every one since. 

Cutting old window glass is always much harder than cutting new stuff. I can imagine that the same is true of glass tube. You might have found brand-new tube rather easier. 

You can buy glass tube on Amazon, amongst other places.

I was talking to someone earlier who has a large maple tree that was felled a couple of years ago. He reckoned that would make some decent planks. 

32 minutes ago, flandersflyer said:

Then let em settle for a bit in a dry corner before planing, thicknessing and matching...

The planks I got from worldofwood had been sticked and air drying for a while. They haven't moved much since being installed as windowsills (very thick walls need very deep windowsills) 

16 hours ago, Asciidv said:

Even though they might of had plywood back in the day, I still think using it would be a bit of a cheat no matter how well executed it was done.

From Wikipedia " One can thus presume that rotary lathe plywood manufacturing was an established process in France in the 1860s. Plywood was introduced into the United States in 1865[7] and industrial production there started shortly after. In 1928, the first standard-sized 4 ft by 8 ft (1.22 m by 2.44 m) plywood sheets were introduced in the United States for use as a general building material.[4]"

It seems quite likely that some manufacturers might have used plywood as a convenient (or even high-tech) material for the bulkhead when others were still using glued boards. 

There is probably a lot of Ash being felled at the moment, if you want wide boards. I got some 20" wide oak boards (via an ebay ad) from https://www.worldofwoodsuffolk.com/ a couple of years ago. I don't think that getting wide boards is difficult if you are able to process them yourself. It's getting then in a sawn, planed state that is less easy, and possibly is best approached in as two steps: 1) Find the wood 2) Bribe the owner of a wide planer/thicknesser. 

Right, 6 cylinders, but 4 exhausts. That was what was confusing me. 

The engine in the "Captured English motor tug for large guns that got stuck in the water" looks interesting, almost like 4 separate engines in a row. (I am familiar with single-cast cylinders, this looks to be wider spaced than that) 

I guess it's a 15 ton Holt, but the engine looks different to other photos I can see online. 

Found on YouTube. 

I think this might have been a solution to Steve's bearing removal epic. It appears to be a lot more precise than one might guess. I suppose it's like arc welding, in that it only happens where you strike the arc, and you can stop the arc at any time.

23 minutes ago, rewdco said:

It's actually Hazebrouck town square...

https://goo.gl/maps/nF7weBWW8GvsbXSJ6

How did you work that out? 

50 minutes ago, Foden7536 said:

The correct dovetail cutter was available off the shelf from MSC, so tooling wise this wasn’t an issue. 

Sorry, I was going a bit off piste and hijacking your thread to reply to mammoth's requirement for a similar shaft machined from solid. 
I have since concluded that making a suitable cutter isn't as hard as I thought. You could CNC wire-erode replaceable blades from HSS or carbide, and fit them into a holder. Like this: 

https://a360.co/3ClcKKi

9 hours ago, mammoth said:

The reason I asked about the keys is that I have the same repair issue ahead of me with my Ruston Proctor traction. For sliding gears manufacturers generally used either square shafts or with up to eight keys machined from the solid.

I have been thinking about how to machine this from solid, and can think of at least two ways. 

1) Use a form cutter on a horizontal milling machine. This is probably how it would have been done in the day, but making the tool for a one-off would be a lot of effort.

2) CNC with a rotary axis, much like I used here: The key to making it work is a coordinated movement of the tool at right-angles to the shaft axis as the work rotates so that the shoulder of the tool is in the right place when it gets to the key flank. 
I suspect that my machine is too short to make one, I can only machine parts up to 356mm long. 

3) Amongst the ways that I can think of are....
The shaft could be wire-eroded in sections (I doubt that any wire eroders can do the whole shaft in one)  and joined by Hirth couplings and a draw-bolt down the middle. As the torsional strength of a shaft is almost all in the outside, the presence of a drawbolt would have little effect. 

I don't know off-hand how strong a Hirth joint is relative to a solid shaft (I would guess at about half as strong) but they work well enough to be used in racing crankshafts

That's quite a gear ratio on that fan. The White and Poppe engines seem to have a 1:1 ratio. 

2 hours ago, Doc said:

 

I would probably make them like this today; I'm not sure if Peerless would be in a position to do this 100 years ago.

Doc.

Wikipedia:

Some applications and patents connected with friction welding date back to the turn of the 20th century,^[3] and rotary friction welding is the oldest of these methods.^[4] W. Richter patented the method of linear friction welding (LFW) process in 1924^[5] in England and 1929^[5] in the Weimar Republic, however, the description of the process was vague^[4] and H. Klopstock patented the same process in the Soviet Union in 1924.^[5]The first description and experiments related to rotary friction welding took place in the Soviet Union in 1956,^[3][5] 

2 hours ago, Old Bill said:

He did say that getting it out of the sand was a bit tricky!🙂

3D printed patterns typically need a fair bit of filling and painting to be usable. I am surprised it came out at all. 

Dennis did that "Two keyways at 90 degrees" thing too. It's deeply misguided 🙂

The issue is that the two keyways define an axis, and the taper defines another axis, and they are not likely to be exactly the same. So the two elements "fight" each other. Or less anthropomorphically,  such an arrangement is kinematically redundant. 

With the N-type we have taken to using only one key. Partly as 100 years of kinematic redundancy and subsequent repairs has resulted in a rather inexact keyway positioning. 

6 minutes ago, nz2 said:

Those tyres still look usable  having no rust heave noticeable between the tyre and steel band.  

Do you mean the tyres, or just the bands? I would have said that tyres were somewhat past their best. 

4 hours ago, Old Bill said:

I had previously spent a couple of evenings filing them out and they were probably only a penny stampings originally! The bent-over tag locates in the keyway in the casting.

That's definitely a job that I would have farmed-out to the local laser cutter (or an online one) 

14 hours ago, Old Bill said:

That will have its own challenges as it has to be lifted up from underneath

It doesn't have to be done that way. You could  turn the chassis upside down and lower the gearbox onto it.