Out With The Old

I think that this might well be my last post on the WordPress platform as the new site should be up and running in the next few days. In anticipation of the move, the link is aspecialbuildersnotes.com I’m sure followers of my blog will be notified of new posts as they have been previously with WP, though for casual visitors, bear in mind that I tend to post every week and at the latest by Sunday evening.

For several years, the model I made of the Bayliss-Thomas chassis has been sitting on top of a chest of draws in my sitting room. Every time I go to dust, the back wheels fall off and I’ve been meaning to do something about it for, er, several years.

As it’s approaching the Spring-cleaning season and time for me to give everything a quick flick over with the dusting gloves (they make the job so much easier than with an ordinary duster) I resolved to peen over the ends of the axle with the drums in situ and glue the wheels to the hubs.

That all went very well until I turned the model over to fiddle in the rear spring hanger pins. The front axle and steering mechanism turned into an exploded diagram all over the kitchen table. It was a blinkin’ faff getting it all back together again – with less dextrous fingers and lacking the 20/20 vision I had ten years ago, things don’t get any easier. In this regard, I keep looking at the 1:16 scale Albatros D.Va museum quality kit I bought a couple of years ago…. hmm.

The Great Collector’s Talbot hood is coming along. The basic patterns have been cut out and clamped to the frame to make sure that the hood works properly. I’ll trim the patterns to actual size and then tackle the sewing machine. Luckily, there’s a book of instructions – what could possibly go wrong?

The heater matrix palaver has developed into quite a big job. To get all the ducts in line (ha!) I’ve had to add some of the body formers to see where the windscreen is going to lie.

And whilst I was doing that, I thought it would be interesting to create an artist’s impression to check all was well with the overall shape of the Teardrop Special.

This sketch plus a b&w overlay of the picture above …

… created this, and all looks well.

Thinking about the door construction; Prewarcar had this picture in one of their daily articles. It certainly gives a few pointers as to how the professionals did things. My doors will have quite a lot of curvature at the top and winding windows are not going to be possible. I’ve been thinking about sliding panels and ultimately that’s the way forward. The tricky bit is, a. getting the right material – not just any old Perspex, and b. moulding the panels to suit the frame. I shall consult some of my aircraft construction books as I’m pretty sure I’ve seen described the method for blowing canopies somewhere in their pages. Being out of the weather, Plexiglass side windows are much less of a problem than that same material in the windscreen. When over time the side panels become opaque, provision will be made for them to be easily renewed.

Nearly There.

The new website is almost complete. Migrating ten years’ worth of posts, including comments, pictures, and videos, has taken a bit of time. Following a request from a chap whose car was missing the correct example, the other day I was hunting for the carburettor which was with the Hillman when I found it in the shed in Banbury. It’s a Zenith side draft of a particular pattern – the same as the early Austin Heavy 12’s. It took a couple of hours to go through everything – twice, as I was sure it was there even though I couldn’t find it, but what I did find was a host of stuff that I will never use: Lucas electrics, instruments, carbs (not the one I wanted) pedals, and all sorts of interesting ancillary items that would be useful to someone. I’m looking forward to adding a ‘For Sale’ page to the new site.

With the Talbot in the workshop, I dug out the patterns for the hood which came with the car. Before I started cutting material, I thought I would check that the patterns were correct. Usually, these Talbots have a hood made from a leatherette type material. In my experience as an amateur upholsterer, I’ve found that the modern equivalent of leatherette is easily ripped and if the stitching is in any way faulty, this can cause rips to develop. We’ve opted for a black double duck; inherently stronger and I think will look a bit classier.

On the Special, I’ve been struggling with making the heater matrix and its associated pipework dismountable and yet sealed from the fumes from under the bonnet. I may have to create a false firewall aligned with the front of the footwells, the advantage being that that would create a space for some of the electrics – the water pump, steering and ignition modules – whilst further insulating the bonnet from the cockpit.

I’m stuck at how I’m going to attach the fan at the moment. I have a couple of ideas that will work but involve too much complication. A bit more thought should offer up a simpler method than the several rings and doublers I have in mind.

I mentioned that I would be making available to read, ‘A Standard Pilot’s Notes’, the slim volume that tells the tale of the creation and subsequent operation of my Avro 504k. I thought that I should perhaps recheck the manuscript for spelling before pressing the ‘go’ button. For this, Word has a review facility which I find very useful – every blog entry is checked at least for spelling, though sometimes things slip through the net. A facility I’d not noticed before was ‘Inclusiveness’, and in the case illustrated, ‘unmarried person’ was suggested in place of ‘bachelor’ – illustrating perfectly the shortcomings of algorithms. The sharp-eyed will notice that I was alerted to another thirty-six potential literary blunders with negative social connotations that I should consider correcting, among them the apparently now racist and ethnic slur, ‘injun country’. How did we get here?

Spring Is Sprung.

Cherry blossom, a welcome sight in the yard this week…

… signalling that warmer weather is on its way, Yahoo!

I’ve added diagonals and some side bars to the scuttle and even without bolting the frame to the chassis, it’s very rigid. I had to cast about for a piece of thinnish ply for the dash and remembered that the shelf under my welding table would do the trick – it was originally the board that I used in the back of my Mercedes estate, so this will be its third life.

A handy sized pallet was around the corner which I chopped up for a replacement.

I then turned my attention to the bits that will be attached to the scuttle. The cockpit heater matrix needed a box and plans were available for the patterns to fold up. Naturally, this would take two attempts, the first missing a tab and also 5mm short on one side.

I made up a couple of bars to go in the vice making the folding of these reasonably complex boxes, trouble free – provided I worked out the order of folding before getting too carried away.

Loosely assembled, the second prototype all fitted together as expected. The holes for the pipes were originally round but needed some adjustment as they somehow contrived to be somewhere other than where they should have been.

This is the back of the box and faces the bulkhead for the fan to draw heat through to the cabin…

… via an aluminium tube rivetted together with my air rivet gun – every home should have one; it saves struggling with those awful hand rivet pliers.

The air intake will be rivetted to the front of the box and an oval tube attached to the top will, with a rubber seal, sit up against the underside of the scuttle panel to draw in fresh air. There’s a lot going on in and on the scuttle: wipers, washers, windscreen frame, electrics, pedals, hydraulics, steering, door shuts and dashboard. It might be the most complicated part of the build.

The simplicity of this wiper arrangement caught my eye whilst at The Great Collector’s the other day. I shall try and replicate this for the Hillman Special as it’s a nightmare in the rain. Even when it’s misty you often need to stretch over the top of the windscreen with a cloth to see where you’re going. The Bedford lorry is now running very sweetly, and the AC fuel pump is keeping up with demand. Unfortunately, the clutch plate is seized solid to the flywheel so we couldn’t take it out for a spin.

The little 6-cyl Talbot has come to me for a new hood. I have the patterns from the old one which is a bonus.

Whilst Counsel and I were waiting for the Talbot to warm up, I looked again at the Donnet. It’s all there and would make an excellent contender for the oily rag run. The thing on the roof is not a camping accessory, it’s the body of the Cushman Package Kar Special, made from a drop tank. With all these projects, I’d better spring into action.

10 Years.

On February 19th 2012, I published the first entry in this blog. This note will be the 577th offering, rounding up over the decade to a weekly entry of around 530 words and 8 photos. At 306,559 words in total, I’m snapping at the heels of Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina, though I have no illusions about the literary content of A Special Builder’s Notes. Another interesting stat is that there are 4884 photos to gawp at and the most viewed picture – by a long chalk – is A.V. Roe’s illustration of the ‘Standard Pilot’ – from where I derived the title for my flying memoir.

A lot of water has passed under the bridge since 2012. The Model A Ford, the Bayliss Thomas and the Hillman 14 tourer are all distant memories. ‘Sunita’, my first Special based on a 1938 Austin Ruby chassis, has now twice changed hands…

… and my flying days are long gone. The Avro was last reported as a pile of bits at the back of the film director Peter Jackson’s hangar, having suffered an engine failure after take-off in New Zealand). My Evans VP1 was destroyed following an aerial collision in Montenegro, but happily my old Jodel is still going strong somewhere in Yorkshire. The Pietonpol Aircamper I started to build back in the early 90’s had its first flight last year, though there’s still no news of the almost complete Currie Wot project that I also sold on around that time.

All good things come to an end and WordPress as a platform for me as a diarist, is also on the way out. The way the new and ‘improved’ WordPress works is not helpful and despite an enormous pushback from the platform’s users, the concessions made by the ‘Happiness Team’ have continued to strangle the classic format in a way that makes it unworkable. I think I said some time ago that I would be creating a website of my own, one that would allow me to continue my blog unhindered by the complications that in the name of progress, now prevail with WordPress.

Here’s a look at the new site. The format is much the same in style – I find it easy on the eye and I like the continuity. A page will be included that links directly to A Standard Pilot’s Notes which for those interested, you will be able to read online. At the time of publishing in 1996, it received generous reviews from the aviation press around the world, one reviewer suggesting that “an aviation library would be incomplete without it”. It’s a romp through the highs and lows of building and operating an Avro 504k on the airshow circuit. There’ll also be archives and in time, a ‘For Sale’ page on which I’ll advertise the clutter I’ve accumulated over the last – I don’t know how long.

I’ll be posting a link to the new site as soon as I can – there are some finishing touches to address – and there should be no interruption to normal service. Thanks everyone for your support and comments; here’s to the next 10 years.

Cheers!

Measurable Progress.

Now that the scuttle supports had been tacked together and their fit established, it was time to tack them to the frame and get the bolt holes drilled in the chassis.

I was alert enough to beforehand give the hidden faces a quick coat of paint although not alert enough to have welded a captive nut on the inside of the handbrake bracket – you win some….

I also had to move the steering mechanism and its respective drillings about an inch inboard so that the double universal joint to the actual column was less awkwardly placed. The ancient metal shear that I picked up locally, proved invaluable in cutting out the circular patch. The patch for the hole I’d cut for the sprocket and chain clutch arrangement was equally easy to shape.

Next up was the hole for the cabin heater and demister fan. I had to think about this, and it took me a few minutes to remember I had a plasma cutter to make short shrift of the job.

As usual, all was going splendidly until the torch decided to go off at a tangent to the template. At present, the body of the fan is too close to the cross tube and will make the outlet difficult to fit. I can correct this.

A test fit of the scuttle showed that welding in the support boxes hadn’t distorted the tubing. The pilot holes for the scuttle attachment bolts were drilled a couple of weeks ago – I need only weld captive nuts on the inside of the boxes. This will allow the bolts to be withdrawn from inboard the chassis rails.

For the diagonal bracing, I’ve borrowed The Other Wright Brother’s tube notcher.

As with all inexpensive tools (my cheap slip rolls for instance) there’s room for improvement. Hole saws wander about enough on their own without the encouragement of sloppy bushings, so to avoid disaster further down the line, I’ve turned up new ones and made them twice the length. The originals looked like they’d been roughly sawn from a piece of brass tube.

The Bedford KD I mentioned last week is now running very sweetly with the installation of a new condenser. There’s one noisy tappet and…

… a broken spring in the AC fuel pump. Surprisingly, the diaphragm is sound, which is good as replacements seem difficult to find. I think I have a pump in store from which I can steal a spring.

On the way back from lunch at the Wymondham Station Bistro – highly recommended for excellent food and service – I called in to Very Learned Counsel who had on his lift this monster of a car, a straight 8 Bentley. I think it began life as a saloon which, with its massively long chassis, might have suited it better visually than its current tourer configuration.

We have a murmuration of Starlings in the Poplar trees on the farm. Their aerial displays are a joy to watch though….

… walking through the yard carries with it measurable risk.

Never Paint…

… if you can avoid it.

I hate painting. It almost always ends in disaster. With the frame I was asked to make came two tins of Hammerite. Ha! I do know something and that’s to avoid at all costs applying Hammerite with a brush. I popped down to the farm shop and bought a tin of tractor paint – the same stuff I used successfully on the Hillman’s block. What could go wrong? Just about everything. Sticky, draggy, nasty stuff whose sole purpose was to ruin my day. And so it did. In the middle of the night, I thought that applying a second coat with a roller would do the trick. Well, had the paint not reacted with the roller and spontaneously melted itself to the frame, it might have done. I resorted to the paintbrush, slapped on a good thick coat and now there’s runs. It was also below 8°, so it’s bloomed as well. Great.

To complete the Special Builders Breakfast Club badge, I cast about for a suitable saw. I remember Pa had a Vibrosaw – an electromagnetically driven thingummyjig which I thought The Other Wright Brother now possessed. Apparently not, but he would lend me his scroll saw. For delicate tracery, this was entirely unsuitable – at least in the hands of an amateur. What an animal! If not bolted down, it could get across the workshop quicker than I might. The week was not going well.

In an effort to get back on track, I bored a hole in the new downpipe and added the Lambda boss which had arrived in the post. I had to drill the blanking cap for locking wire – something I’m surprised the manufacturer doesn’t do.

The Great Collector is custodian to a 1950 Bedford KD lorry that, in the vernacular, was ‘failing to proceed’. I picked out my handy Newnes Motor Repair notes and found a few pointers on the Commercial Vehicles (Petrol) page. The information didn’t go back far enough but the engine in one guise or another seems to have been carried through to the ‘T’ Series Forward Control models.

The engine was a KM type; a 6-cylinder pushrod job with a Zenith carb. Nice and simple.

The fuel tank was half full of stale nastiness, so I disconnected the line to the carb, took the glass bowl off the AC pump to stop it from sucking, and with what I had to hand in the field, rigged up a feed. After fiddling about with the electrics, we got the engine to fire but I suspected the condenser was shot – a few sparks then nothing, rinse and repeat. A new one is on order.

Another interesting addition to Awkward and Leon’s stable is this Douglas T35. There are one or two things that might see the purists clutching at their pearls (the Triumph Twin tank) but as Awkward rightly pointed out, if it were all present and correct, its history would have effectively come to an end. Special Builders like to continue to paint the picture.

I’ll Hang Onto That.

During the winter when I wake up in the morning, I listen first for the wind.

That’s because my pre-breakfast job is to empty the ash from the day before’s fire. The wood burner usually stays in overnight – it’s been going since the beginning of January – so I tease out all the ash that I can, leaving only red-hot embers from which the new day’s fire develops. If it’s windy outside, as soon as I open the back door, the ash blows everywhere – all over me and back into the house.

Replacing the steel panels on the scuttle with diagonal bracing left me with two small sheets of metal, one of them from which I was able to fashion a cover and handle for the fire’s ash tray. This is something I’ve been meaning to do for several years. It works very well – no more ash disposal woes – and demonstrates the value of the come-in-handy pile.

My daily walks continue to set me up for the day’s projects. I was lucky to catch these Leverets running past me – they seemed oblivious of my presence – as did the two herds of Roe deer that pass the day nibbling at the shoots as the fields green up. A Peregrine Falcon was sitting in the field not fifty yards from me, also looking forward to a spot of breakfast to pass by.

A frame for a testing device started the week off on a positive note and I think I’m finally getting the hang of my MIG welder. MIG is a bit like flying a Tiger Moth – anyone can do it, but doing it well takes practice.

I’ve resolved to extractum digitum and get the engine finished ready for running. The scuttle has also to be finalised and the steering added so that the chassis will at last be mobile under its own power. I had to make four studs for a blanking plate at the rear of the cylinder head. They’re 26tpi BSF. Fortunately, I have the tap and die though it was something of a mystery as to why the brass nuts I made up wouldn’t fit.

I got there in the end with a bit of brute force and ignorance. The centre nut is just in case – though in case of what, I’m also not so sure.

Whilst I was working at the back of the engine, I noticed that rust has started to appear on the exhaust manifold studs. I shall have to address that before it gets much worse. It’s been cold in the workshop this year as I’ve switched off the storage heater which historically has cost a fortune to run over the winter months.

The problems with the erratic running of The Great Collector’s Sunbeam have at last been resolved. A quick trip to the magneto people confirmed that ignition wasn’t the problem, so it could be only fuel or valves. The head had reportedly been attended to in the last twelve months so that left fuel. As the Claudel Hobson carb is for all practical purposes, not really adjustable and the mixture was too weak, by resetting the choke disc to richen the mixture for smooth running was our only option.

The car now runs well with a good turn of speed, though caution is advised as there are no front brakes.

I’ve been meaning to create a Special Builder’s Breakfast Club badge for several years and with the popularisation of laser and waterjet cutting, I imagined that the process would be simple. Create the design, scan it, and produce the .dxf file to do the donkey work. Regrettably, it’s not that simple. To produce the .dxf file, a 3D prototype has to be produced for scanning and the only way to do this is by hand. The Other Wright Brother has a vibro saw which I hope will be able to get through the work. The late lamented Abrafiles would have done the trick perfectly, but an ordinary fret saw would make heavy weather of it.

Learned Counsel has been having a clear out and dropped off an interesting box of stuff that’s worth hanging onto. You never know.

Lost & Found.

The new position for the oil filler neck on the cam cover of the MS engine was determined and I set up the cover in the mill ready for the nail-biting hole cutting operation. It’s the sort of game that usually goes wrong on me as the material jumps out of the clamps and the cutter chaws its way through the bit I need to preserve.

I was greatly relieved that by taking it very slowly, even at an angle of 25°, the pilot drill stayed steady, and the body of the cutter followed through without fuss. All was well with the world – except that I’d put the hole in the wrong place and a cam bearing pillar was now partially obstructing the filler neck. Some things never change.

I also decided that I didn’t much care for the flip-top ‘Monaco’ filler cap that threaded onto the top of the neck. I trimmed off the threads in the lathe and drilled the neck with three holes: two for the original cap’s clips and one further down the neck for the cap’s retaining chain.

George did the honours with the welding. The rivets that the cap engages with to hold it in place were cut to length using a tool that I remembered I had from my aircraft building days.

An old pair of pliers is drilled to accommodate assorted sizes of rivet and eyeballing the length required using the hinge centreline as reference, closing the pliers snips off the surplus. It’s possible to neatly shave off as little as 1/32″ with this method. Beats trying to cut one down with a saw.

The handbrake arrangement is now more secure in its housing having substituted the bolts and spacers for a length of 1″x1″ square tube. The bottom of the lever where the cable is retained was cut off and repositioned to give a straighter run. You may recall that I’d last week devised a complicated system to clamp the cable to the lever when, looking at it now I realise that I can open out the bottom drilling, drill a hole in a bolt, pass the cable through that hole and clamp it up with a nut. The advantage of this will be the ease of adjustment as the cable stretches.

The Great Collector’s Sunbeam continues to run roughly. Going through the simple stuff first, we renewed the plug leads and caps. Then took the magneto off and discovered a gap of at least .050″ at the points. Reducing this to .015″ was effective and we were able to set the vernier coupling back to its original position – not without having got it all 180° out first (as usual). The new sparkly plug thingies lit up in proper order, but the strobe showed the ignition was not consistently on the mark. A new distributor cap, points cap, and rotor arm is on order – they all have seen better days.

A mystery sporting moped of unknown origin has recently emerged from the estate of Messrs Awkward & Co. Quite a find.

Pipework.

The week began with Counsel and I going to a fellow enthusiast’s garage where an Alvis Firefly was proving irksome.

This example was a coil ignition model – which always makes things simpler – but was refusing to start. A young lad who knew a thing or two about engines had been defeated by the Firefly’s reluctance in this regard. In conversation, we learnt that the car had been started only once in the last two years, thus pointing the finger at long out-of-date fuel for starters – so to speak.

The ‘fuel’ in the float bowl had the potency and taste of water – the product of storing a car with a fuel tank mostly empty. Water, being heavier than petrol, sinks to the bottom of the tank and is the first thing to be sucked into the system after a prolonged period idle. Once decent petrol was pulled through, the engine started and it was just a question of altering the timing which had been fiddled with in the previous attempts to get things going, and all was well.

The 45° bends arrived, and I was able to cobble together the beginnings of an exhaust that missed the water pipe. As luck would have it, the downpipe would also miss the torsion bar and the chassis member before turning through 90° and making its way to the back of the car.

A suitable opening in the engine bay floor panel to accommodate the downpipe was a bit of a fiddle to cut and swage but will pay dividends for when vital nuts and so forth are dropped, as they’ll all end up in the same place in the dirt.

Next up was the oil filler neck. Having lost its original position when the cam cover was altered, it seemed sensible to place the new pipe on the same side as the dipstick. And, as I had an unconnected aluminium welding job for George to do, it was a good plan to get all this done at once.

Cardboard engineering sorted out the cut line – making sure the cap was screwed down and facing the right way before drawing around the shape – and I’ll hold the body in the machine vice with the aid of a couple of ‘V’ blocks to gently mill out the contour. I’m always nervous of this sort of operation because all too often things jump out of the vice and are damaged beyond repair.

Learned Counsel came up with a good wheeze to crimp this old handbrake cable (oil and grease soaked over time) into the new fitting. Turn up a bronze sleeve; split a suitably sized nut in half and then crush the lot in the vice. The threads of the two halves of the nut will transfer their impression to the sleeve and ensure a good grip on the cable.

Courtesy: prewarcar.com

And talking of pipes, perhaps I’ve been a bit hasty on the Special’s exhaust configuration? This looks nice.

Angles Of Dangle.

Having made the cardboard templates, it only remained to cut the metal. Despite having the templates, when bends are involved and a brake press is not at your disposal, every bit of help is welcome.

When I bought the tube bending machine, I thought it wise to invest in this inexpensive angle finder. It’s proved to be indispensable. I even bought another one for The Other Wright Brother who is rebuilding all the sash windows in his slightly wonky house. Here again, it has proved to be a great boon.

With the boxes cut to shape and trimmed to fit, I remembered that I needed to make provision for the handbrake. The original outer cable was too long to put the lever on the propshaft tunnel, and I didn’t want to try and shorten it.

The outer cable comfortably wound its way to the back of the offside box and the lever would sit just in front of the door next to the forward side wall – reminiscent of the ‘Auntie’ Rovers (and a hundred other examples).

More cardboard engineering produced the kind of bracket which I least like making, but for which there was no practical alternative.

I keep promising myself I will make a fandango to solve my bracket-making woes but haven’t got around to it yet. After a bit of a struggle, the bracket was acceptable (I even thought to drill the mounting holes in the spine before the folding began) and I was able to drill the ½” hole for the spindle with a suitable bit of wood jammed inbetween the wings to make sure the hole arrived at the same place on the other side.

The spacers correct the measurement where my ruler contrived to mislead me from the outset. I’ll most probably replace those with a piece of 1″ square tube welded to the box and the bracket welded to that. For maintenance purposes, the sill section will have a removable panel and the spindle bolt will have a captive nut mounted on the blind side of the bracket. The hole just below the fish shape is a pilot for one of the chassis bolts. I might have to put in a pulley for the cable to run in as the cable clamp is not in the best place. Alternatively (and the easier route) I could cut and reposition the end of the lever to bring the clamp to the horizontal, giving the cable a straighter run.

Making the removable outer panel waterproof might be a bit of an ask, but I’ll make sure there’s adequate drainage for post-ford crossings. Come to think of it, I will need to pay particular attention to waterproofing the removable panel behind the pedals that it transpired I needn’t have made.

To the Norfolk workshop where the replica Jaguars are finished, and I noticed these very lightweight bonnet hinges. Food for thought.

The postman has delivered the two 45° stainless steel bends that I need to make up the joggle to get the exhaust past the block’s lower waterpipe. Another job for my invaluable angle finder.