restoration Another Matador

[67burwood]

I decided to split the springs on my Fordson wot6 as I couldn’t stand the harsh suspension anymore, each leaf was cleaned with a wire cup on the grinder before being greased individually and reassembled, due to the low mileage being done I think it’s highly unlikely any road dirt will cause a problem, plus it’s less likely to seize up through lack of use. Filthy dirty job but the ride has massively improved. 
 

[Jimh]

It's going to be a bit heavy on cleaning photos for a while so if images of things that are made very clean offends then you may wish to look away now. However, let's start with something causing aggro. The bearing on the rear output shaft of the transfer box is not in a happy place so is going to have to go. Lock up the box then remove this nut it says in the manual. Unfortunately this needs a 2 3/8" AF socket which we don't have. Now we need to wait for one to arrive. £15 for an impact socket - how do they do it for the money? I appreciate that it is unlikely to be the highest quality but it is going to be butchered and will only ever be used to remove/refit this nut so it is hardly a big deal. 

 

And speaking of things that have caused a lot of gyp here is a clutch brake disc which is no longer on its hub. Why? Well the clutch brake needed to come off to replace the seal behind it and it jolly well would not shift. Not for long ;leavers, hammers or 1" impact guns and yes, we know it is on a left handed thread. The problem is that damaging the shaft would be very, very troublesome so the only way out is to machine the hub off the shaft. Annoying but not as annoying as trying to find a new input shaft. The disc is fine and can be reused. 

 

That does leave you with the problem of replacing the hub so someone had the fun job of making a new one. Messing around with this took up a silly amount of time just to replace one seal(which was knackered, fortunately). Full disclosure: it took longer than it should because someone (not me) had brain fade when they were cutting the tread and did it right handed so had to start again. Practice makes perfect and all that. 

 

More things that were very tight. The back axle has refused to behave and has fought being taken to bits all the way. These nuts here were very tight indeed. They butt up to the hub bearing and have a very broad face which means when they are tightened they hang on grimly. It took the impact gun together with two people on a long pipe to break them free. 

 

It appears that 4 1/2" AF is still a standard size for rear hub nuts so there are plenty of people selling big sockets for the job. Not shown are the marks left by the biggest pair of Stilsons we have which we used to hand onto the boss of the socket while the impact was hammering away on it. Also not shown is the bent handle of the Stilsons because we had to lean on them very heavily indeed. Note Wera 1/2" ratchet. I cannot recommend these ratchets highly enough. They are absolutely lovely things and don't cost the earth.

 

The back plates for the read drums have suffered from the salt

 

And are a bit lace like so I'll have a bash at making some new ones. They could be patched up but it would probably burn more gas that starting again. 

 

One of the rear brake shaft bearings and levers. As with everything else on the back axle this took some effort to get them apart. The reason they are in a pile with a chalk mark round them is they were still stinking hot at the time and I didn't want to get anything muddled up. The bushes in the bearing blocks are knackered and need replaced. Everything else should be OK with the exception of...

 

The shafts themselves which as you can probably tell have been repaired at some point. The inboard bearing surfaces are pretty grim so these will have to get sent away for metal spraying. That's why the funny yellow marks are on them so we could get a quote from a photograph. 

 

Also visible in that photo is the clutch release bearing shaft which might have survived but if we are going over to Glasgow to drop the brake shafts off we may as well do this too. 

 

The front axle has been much easier to work with because is was further away from the salt and closer to the oil leaks. This is the axle pretty much stripped down if not yet clean. I gave it a rudimentary clean before taking the diff unit out so there wasn't too much muck around but it needs more work yet. Of more importance is the swivel bearings which are knackered and the replacement of the oil seals for the drive shafts. Fortunately they are all standard bearings so things aren't too bad. 

 

The swivels are mostly fine (apart from being full of grease) and don't need too much work. This is the offside one and although it may not look it (because it is filthy) the hub bearings are fine. The nearside ones are wrecked because someone who didn't know what they were doing tightened the hub nut up bar tight. 

 

The hubs are mostly a clean up job although we'll get new seals for them. Why there are two seals used I have no idea. 

 

The front brake shoes look like they were replaced late in its working life so they don't need anything done to them other than clean they up.

 

This is the casting which takes the track rod end and also incorporates the lock stop bolts. It sounds petty but these look a bit manky because the hex has rotted off them. We'll make new ones because things like this annoy me and keep annoying me every time I see them. The hour or so to turn new ones up (especially if it isn't me who has to do it) is a price worth paying. 

 

As an aside this is the lower swivel pin. It is not a casting but a forging so they obviously expected these to be working very hard. These axles must have cost a fortune. 

 

I wonder how much forging and machining time was involved in making these joints. They are an impressive bit of work. However, even if you aren't impressed by that aspect at least be a bit impressed how clean it is. Have I mentioned that I hate grease?

 

As long as there isn't much grease around there is something very restful about cleaning stuff. Pick something up, take it to bits, get it spotless and reassemble it all the time pondering how and why they made it the way they did. Then pick another bit up and keep going until the table is full of clean front axle bits. This is the drag link assembly complete with nice clean track rod ends. 

 

Although we have a small blast cabinet which is good for fiddly bits I prefer the wire brush and picking route because I just do even though it is filthy and you spend the next day looking like you have mascara on. You also get lots of wire stuck in your overalls and go through these things at quite a rate. 

 

More clean/new things next time.

[Jimh]

Best have another update before they get too long and dull.

First up are some wheels that are now free of their tyres after quite the struggle involving big hammers, crowbars and a 10 ton body jack. The tyres are well past their prime but we managed to salvage the tube and flaps. Three of the four came off but the fourth really was not up for moving so it god cut off. It takes a lot of effort to get through the beads of those things.

 

Here is a tray filled with new or reconditioned pieces of the compressor unloader/governor block. This had been bypassed at some point and a modern unit bodged into the system. None of the seals were in the best way and irritatingly that bronze cylinder you see  had a seal sitting under it. Annoyingly the original cylinder was supposed to just slip out but resisted all attempts to free it so it was machined out. That meant making a new one which wasn’t that big a deal because the old one was worn anyway. New seals were made by the local hydraulic place.

 

And this is a selection of new gaskets for the block. We get these cut by Dobsons Gaskets to our templates and their work is top hole. Dobsons are well worth using for gaskets including all types of metal clad ones. Their prices are good too (as long as you get enough work together to cover the minimum carriage fee) even if their customer service is a little on the brusque side.

 

The reassembled valve block sitting on my office floor where it is dry because we won’t need it for a bit.

 

On the drawing board is a the rebuilt foot valve. This was in bit of a mess and took a fair amount of effort to bring it back to life. The T square is just sitting there because we were using it for another job. The drawing board is not that old fashioned.

 

The auxiliary gearbox is now back together and just needs its final clean before painting. It wasn’t in too bad a way inside but the front and rear output shaft bearings had given up the ghost. Extracting the rear bearing was bit of a struggling (it was also interesting to see that the lubrication of this bearing seemed a little odd) but it relented eventually.

All the nuts were replaced because the salt had ravaged them to the point of non-existence. On top of that all the seals have been changed and the drive which had been bodged in for the gritter spreader has been capped off. The speedo drive was also rebuilt.

 

New vent made for the top because the old one had rotted into a little clump of scale. I know the nuts are annoying. You just can’t get BSF nuts of the right profile new and we really were not up for having them made. It’s hard/expensive enough to buy BSW/BSF stuff these days as it is.

 

Winch drive shaft together with the mounting showing new nuts and new oil seal. Also, clean.

 

That’s the transfer box pretty much done barring the felt seal for the operating levers (forgot to add it to the Dobson’s order) and we need to find a winch engagement lever because the old one had been gas axed off.

This shows how much damage the salt has done. I think we are going to have to find some of these. As for the pins they need replacing anyway because they appear to have been changed at some point with ones that are far too short. They were just hanging on by the skin of their teeth. They certainly aren’t AEC ones.

 

The pile of bits on the floor has got much smaller which means the front axle must be progressing.

 

A clean and shiny front axle casing. I don’t know what these cost to build but it must have been a lot. For those not in the know they are made in three pieces and pressed together. Quite the little job to get that assembled in the right place. I don’t want to speak to soon but we seem to be getting close to the end of the “grease” phase of the job.

 

No some new bits. First the metal clad oil seals for the hubs. We have no idea why but they use a pair of seals in series. Why? These seals are pretty big and they don’t exactly give them away.

 

And some bearings. The smaller ones are the top and bottom taper rollers for the swivels which were borked on both sides. The larger ones are the taper rollers for the nearside hub which were wrecked because someone had tightened the hub nut bar tight. The offside ones were just fine.

 

New drive shaft oil seals. Metal clad as per original. The drive shaft support bearings are good and just needed cleaned. Note salt ravaged pile of bits at rear.

 

More from Dobsons. This time the felt seals for the swivel covers.

 

And here are the swivel covers in primer ready to go back on.

 

Meanwhile apprentice No6 has been busy being thrashed until he understands what clean is. This is the offside front hub after he had spent the day on it.

 

And the nearside hub which is still being worked on. The wheel nuts and studs were all just fine and only needed run down with a tap/die to clean them up. Just as well because there are few jobs more soul destroying than making wheel studs. There are just soooo many of them.

 

Spare the rod, spoil the job.

 

The last thing I was doing was cleaning up the diff housing which is a right fiddly thing. I’m still working on this which is why it’s dusty. It is just such a faff doing things like this because you have to remove each nut and washer then double nut the stud (stop sniggering) to remove the stud, clean everything up then reassemble. Repeat to fade. The most irritating thing is that all the split pins are seized in and need drilled out. Twang, there goes yet another 3/32^nd drill.

 

Cleaner than a clean thing that’s had an extra clean because it wanted a clean bill of health. There are a lot of split pins on these wagons. AEC really liked things to be secure.

 

The other set of brake shoes ready to go back in.

 

And the last track rod end finished. Fortunately these just needed dismantled and cleaned. Everything was fine otherwise. The track rod itself had a pretty sizeable bend in it which took some effort to tweak back into shape.

 

So that is the front axle about ready to reassemble and then we can turn the attention to the rear one which is in a somewhat worse way.

Also about ready to go back together is the gearbox. There is still the irritating job of renewing the split spherical bronze bushes in the selector linkage. We’ve not quite decided how this is going to get done. We were tending to having new ones cast. Now the clutch brake has been sorted out there isn’t much more needed on this.

 

And finally we needed to do some work on the Super so the chassis got shove to the side. It’s going to be interesting getting this to live again. I don’t know whether I see it because I know it is there but I’m pretty sure you can make out the sag in the frame. Eeek.

Note also that the trolley was being repaired rather than was crashed.

 

That should do for now. More in about a month.

[john1950]

Very meticulous work. I also hate working with grease but it is a necessary evil.

[Scammell4199]

Fantastic job. Picking up plenty of pointers for when we start on my matador soon. Thanks. 

[Adrian Dwyer]

Very much enjoying the commentary, craftsmanship and stoicism.  The finished item is going to be a corker!