WW1 Dennis truck find

[Great War truck]

Barry has very kindly arranged the wire cutting of the spline and the square in the two Couplers and has sent us these photos of them. They will be with us very shortly and we look forward to good session of assembling all of the bits that are now ready for the Dennis over the Easter break when all the team will be back in Devon.

 

 

 

[Great War truck]

Tony made up the "tee" which fits midway on the pipe beteen the Pump and The Inlet Manifold Water Jacket to take the Drain Cock.

 

 

 

 

[Great War truck]

With the arrival this morning of the couplings (Thanks Barry) there remain only two components needed to connect the starting handle to the back axle. These are the intermediate drive shaft between the gearbox and torque tube and the clutch release bearing carrier. We are very fortunate in that we have copies of the original drawings (Thanks Ben). Steve has therefore gone ahead and made the bearing carrier.

 

He started off by roughing out a piece of 40mm mild steel plate using a hacksaw.

 

 

Tony does have a bandsaw but it is 200 miles away! It was then faced and bored in the lathe

 

 

 

and the spigots turned on the ends

 

 

 

The outer face was generated by using the dividing head to turn it underneath a milling cutter for which the mill had to be set at maximum height.

 

 

Then the dividing head was set over at 45° to machine the chamfer.

 

 

By now, it was looking quite nice

 

 

but the next stage was to case harden the back and inner surfaces where they run on the clutch spigot. To do that, it was heated to red hot and then placed into some case hardening compound. The camera flash has hidden the red heat but it was!

 

 

Then it was taken outside again and reheated for a while to allow the carbon to soak into the surface before quenching in water.

 

[Great War truck]

As you can see this left it quite a mess.

 

 

A final clean up and polish and there is another component ready to fit.

 

 

Just the drive shaft now!

[Gordon_M]

if I need one of those, even for one of my most obscure vehicles, I just phone up a dealer with a debit card number and he pops one in the post ...

 

All power to your various elbows, lathes, and milling heads. Want to bet you'll find an original now that you have made one?

 

 

Gordon

[Old Bill]

Want to bet you'll find an original now that you have made one?

 

Yes, that's usually the way! What Tim hasn't mentioned is that I started off with 5.5kg of steel and ended up with a component weighing 825g!

 

Steve

Edited March 27, 2010 by Old Bill

[Enigma]

As allways I am thoroughly impressed with the craftmanship.

Looking forward to the next installment.

[Great War truck]

The Wire-cut parts of the Couplers now received from Barry and offered up to the male parts on the Lorry.

 

 

 

 

 

The fit is very snug - they will go right on but have not pushed them there at this stage as they will be awkward to get off again!

[Minesweeper]

Easter is always a time for a family get together and truck assembly. We have a lot to do this weekend, but have had to delay some parts of the reassembly until next time. We did however undertake a trial fit of the torque tube ball joint which was very succesfull. All very heavy and a little awkward. Cant wait until we do it with the prop shaft and torque tube in place. That will be fun!

 

 

 

Somehow i managed to lose my head:

 

 

 

 

and have a go to see if the prop shaft fits in to the newly made differential coupling:

 

 

It did first time. Proper job.

 

Tim

[Minesweeper]

Plenty of photos to post up tonight, so here are the first lot of us putting the prop shaft back together:

 

Christmas has come early:

 

 

Fitting the bearing into the ball joint:

 

 

Fitting new gasket:

 

 

Bolting up the joint:

 

[Minesweeper]

New leather oil seal being fitted and wired to the end of the torque tube:

 

 

 

The next task was to move the tube into position ready to fit. As you can see it was quite heavy:

 

 

 

 

All lined up and sitting on our lifting table ready to be bolted up:

 

 

 

 

[Minesweeper]

Still doing the same thing, but as i am doing my Emperor impersonation from "Return of the Jedi" i thought i would add another photo:

 

 

Always useful having odd bits of furniture around the shed:

 

 

The next task was to bolt the cross member and the rest of the ball joint on to the end of the tube:

 

 

Then lining up the cross member to its bracket proved problematical. We straightened up the axle by chocking one wheel and jacking the other one forwards:

 

 

Then to move the whole axle forwards, Steve came up with the idea of dragging it into position with ratchet straps secured around the chassis:

 

 

This worked and we had another major component fitted at last (and something less on the floor to trip over).

 

[phil munga]

Great work as always , those wire cut parts look spot on ,

I came up against a brick wall this last week needing some parts machining , due to them been case hardened it was proving dificult to find someone able to do them , in the end found an engineer that did wire cutting and spark erosion , quite amazing the work these machines can do :-)

[Asciidv]

Can we have some more explanation please? Was the rear axle slightly misaligned on the springs? What defines the posiiton relationship between the axle and springs on your lorry? I hope the drive train is going to be complete this Easter!

 

Barry.

[Old Bill]

On all of the other ancient vehicles on which I have worked, the front of the rear springs are pinned directly to the chassis frame so the drive forces and braking forces are transferred from the axle through the springs. On the Dennis, both ends of the springs are mounted on swinging links and these forces are carried into the chassis through the torque tube and the big ball joint in the centre. The position of the axle is controlled by the tube. When we bolted up the tube, it could immediately be seen that the back axle was not quite square to the frame as the ball was off-centre. To correct this, we chocked one wheel and then jacked the other backwards until it came into line and bolted up the ball joint. You can see the sort of forces that the tube resists by the number of bolts securing it to the front of the differential housing.

 

Unfortunately the drive train won't be completed this Easter as we are still missing the intermediate drive shaft between the back of the gearbox and the ball joint. I have found the part number for this shaft from the parts book and then had a look on the Surrey History Centre website in their drawing list where I found that they have the original drawing still. Ben very kindly went down and copied it for us but the drawing shows two different lengths! I couldn't order one until we had worked out which one we need. Part of yesterdays exercise was to measure the installation to decide which one it should be. I will order up the shaft this week from Charles Leek and Sons in Staffordshire as they made such a nice job of the half-shaft for us. Then we will have all of the bits from starting handle to wheels and we really will be getting close!

 

Steve

Edited April 7, 2010 by Old Bill
Company name correction

[Great War truck]

With the Easter Break coming to an end and with Steve already having returned to Leicester, we can reflect on most of our objectives for the weekend having been achieved. We had hoped to complete the Universal Coupling assembly between engine and gearbox with all the bits for it having been made and ready - but what we thought was a 2" Thrust Bearing turned out to be the metric equivalent - so we were thwarted with that one. (ChrisG - expect to hear from Tim for a correct one!)

 

Yesterday afternoon and most of today was taken up with fitting the Water Pump. First of all, the mounting was fixed to the engine and then the pump body to that.

 

The delivery pipe was offered up to the pump and engine to see how it looked. This was just a piece of copper pipe with a bend at 90 degrees put into by the Supplier but purposely left over length on both ends so that it could be tailored to its position.

 

The inlet elbow on the pump lined up with the bottom of the radiator first time with no problem and was joined up with a piece of rubber pipe.

 

 

 

 

[Great War truck]

The delivery elbow for the water pump was unfortunately made at too great an angle and if left as it was, it would have aimed the big copper pipe off course. To correct this, the pipe on the elbow was cut just above the bolting flange. The two rough-cut ends of this were fly cut at correcting angles and the two parts of the elbow were then brazed together again. This corrected the problem. After dressing it off, the joint is scarcely visible.

 

A further dry run fitting the pipe showed that the assembly lined up correctly.

 

 

 

 

[Great War truck]

The elbows were then soft soldered to the pipe and the completed assembly bolted to the engine

 

 

 

[Great War truck]

I have not made any posts for a few days as i have been otherwise distracted with gardening. Well, when i say gardening I really mean hacking back the undergrowth to get to what I know is underneath.

 

We parked the Thornycroft chassis (with Peerless on top) behind the shed about 15 years ago. Covered it over with tarpaulins and left it. Over the next few years we stacked stuff under it and in front of it and ocassionally put another tarpaulin on top. Some years ago we looked after the remains of another Dennis (a 1920's dustcart) for some friends who never came back for it. As we were looking for some throttle linkage and because the undergrowth was getting a little out of hand we thought it time to dig it all out and see what we have.

 

We spent a couple of days getting the brambles out of the way. Then today it was time to take off the tarpaulins. I did this cautiously as we once found an adder (a poisnous snake, although not very) near by and was cautious in case the family had made this thier home.

 

 

In the open air again after 15 years of storage:

 

 

Found the Peerless fuel tank, we will need that soon - well maybe in a few years:

 

 

Dennis wheel hubs - getting close:

 

 

Dennis rad top tank - loveley, but no good to us:

 

 

 

The Dennis pile (part of):

 

 

Not sure what this is, but it was in the Dennis pile:

 

Edited April 9, 2010 by Great War truck

[Great War truck]

I pulled out the Dennis parts (except for the axles) and started snapping.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Lots of interesting bits and pieces, but it all looks to small for ours.

 

I will have a final look around tomorrow then cover it all over again. At least it all looks a lot tidier now and will make it easier to get the Thorny out once we have finished the Dennis. Except of course, for the 14 spare axles that are stacked in front of it. But we will worry about that when the time comes.

[Asciidv]

Tony,

 

Does this last photograph show a distributor lurking amongst the decay? Is it complete or is it just the cap? It is far too precious to stay there!

 

Barry

[Great War truck]

Barry

 

Steve spotted it as well and wants to have a look at it? I will go and dig it out before putting the Thornycroft back to bed.

 

Tim

Edited April 10, 2010 by Great War truck

[FridgeFreezer]

I can't help but feel the spares pile may benefit from a spray of coccoon metal protectant, a friend introduced me to it, it's used to stop steel stock & parts from rusting in the yard at factories. It's a sort of spray-on wax.

[Minesweeper]

Many thanks for that information - something that we have never heard of!

 

I think that probably most of our "spares" are already heavily rusted and that there would be no real benefit in doing anything further to them. However, something to bear in mind for the future - and thanks again!

 

Tony

[FridgeFreezer]

No problem - I agree it's not going to make things any less rusty but it will soak in nicely to a rough rusty surface and hopefully help preserve them for when you next lift the tarp in another 15 years.

 

It's also quite good for lighting the wood burner, mind your eyebrows though!