Antiquarian Horologist Brittany Cox | Gifts of Time

Turner 950S Sports Car work.

 We have had a variety of work over the last few weeks including wiring of a Dnepr sidecar, Triumph 2000, Jaguar and attend to brakes on the Standard Vanguard featured in previous blog posts. Most of the period has been on the Turner and Triumph Gloria as you can see (there will be more photos to follow as they are wrestled from a failing iphone!).

Turner 950S

Standard Vanguard Servo (Non Standard)

RESURRECTION - Rescue of a VW 1955 panelvan - Forest find !

Winter Work ..... Please click to open

 The Wolseley Hornet engine is now ready for fitting, but we have been doing a few little detail jobs:

We had expected to have a new propshaft, and on inspection this is indeed the case. Considering the power and expected use of this car, we will not be using this original item. The wear is considerable, but it would be salvageable for a more mundane Hornet with a little less sting in it's tail!

Coolant Catch Tank bracket and strap fabrication and mounting to the side of the engine.

Here we attempted to modify for a modern oil filter cartridge. Unfortunately the various small, 'off the shelf', filter elements are too big for the original housing. The original cast aluminium housing has quite small internal dimensions, even cutting the filter down would give too great a restriction. In the absence of an original gauze, we reverted to making a nylon frame and modern gauze. The club supply a modern conversion, but this is more suited to the engines with an MG style filter. This may be the way to go in the future but we will have to make new pipes and brackets to mount such a unit.

We now have two older projects back in progress. A mid '30s Triumph Gloria Vitesse which came to us as an unfinished, but very well mechanically restored car. The second is a Turner 950s from about 1959. This car arrived in a poor and incomplete condition from the USA. Over the previous period we have most of the chassis repair work complete and we now have some brackets and fittings to make. The suspension has generally been completed on the bench. Here we are finishing the hubs and some steering items before refitting to the car. You will see the backplates drilled for competition work in the US, we will probably convert to disc brakes at some point, however we will use the original items initially so that we can have a rolling chassis fairly soon. In many ways it is nice to retain some of the original items with their historical modifications that tell a story. 

The body and tub are being rebuilt and hopefully we will coincide with a rolling chassis ready to place the body straight on.

Turner 950s

Turner Preparation

Triumph Gloria Vitesse

New interior capping fitting up and sunroof preparation.

Finally, here is a glimpse of a smaller task that we are looking at at the moment.

Full details will be given later, subject to the owners go-ahead...

Zen and The Art of Model Making - The Story of Philip Reed

David Hart over zijn mooie verzameling

NSA Sprint Smeatharpe, UK. Late 80's early 90's. Part 1

Wolseley cont'd and Christmas spirit..... click here to open.

 Making ready to run the engine, oil pressure tested and supercharger belts on to enable a proper check of the pulleys for the first time. The build stand restricted the access to the engine front pulley before and so we were unable to do a final test fit and align faces. Now we are ready to assemble the front cover complete with the front engine mount. 

Here we are modifying the frame to now properly locate the front of the engine via the front mounting. As is often the case with very "clean" sided cast engine blocks of the period, there are very few places to mount a conventional build stand.

Last month, we had carried out a very temporary overview by cranking the engine over with the pulleys attached. But, this was with limited engine support only allowing a limited amount of trial pulley alignment and to check the operation of my new oversize dynamo pulley. It also gave us an opportunity to prepare a special woodruff key to overcome the fact that during nitride treatment, the keyway in the crankshaft had closed by several thousandths of an inch along with the flywheel bolt location holes in the rear crank flange (see previous posts re these issues). Here we are just giving a final dress to our previously made "stepped" key before fitting to the front engine pulley and crank.

Of course even on this home stretch, there are always small problems. The carburettor piston had a very dull piston closure sound when lifted and dropped as if the needle was catching the jet. Thinking it would be a simple case of releasing and centralising the jet block, I was a little unsure why the block seemed to bind (from experience they normally slide into position very easily). Removal of the jet block revealed the problem; the two small soft jet glands sit in small brass cupped washers onto which the pressure spring bears. Except, on this unit the washers were missing and the soft glands were distorted and bound up inside the spring, stopping any form of side adjustment. Not wanting to delay even further, luckily we had another SU on the back of the bench enabling me to "borrow" the washer as well as borrow a replacement fibre vent washer for the top nut of the float chamber as this washer was also missing.

Whilst in this area, I had made a new banjo for the fuel feed, the unit is quite large and bulky for this application which has limited room. By making a slimmer unit of a slightly altered shape, we have quite a nice arrangement. 

But.....(there is always a but when you change a design!) I hadn't quite made it deep enough by about 010" resulting in a fuel weep. To correct this I machined an extra thick aluminium washer to suit. I will make some spares of these non std washers for the car's toolbox. 

As I mentioned, this last phase has been the first opportunity to wholly test fit the front pulley and the front housing. Unfortunately, I made the 5/16" pin that passes through and retains the bottom of the chain tensioner, a little too long. Again I was not keen to remove the tensioner at this point and so I trimmed it to length with a junior hacksaw and dress with a file in position. Lots of judicious  packing of rag and a strong vacuum cleaner keeping the swarf out of harms way.

     

We had spent a surprising amount of time setting the valve clearances for a final time before the run. It is important to make sure they are secure when complete to avoid any risk of migration. Whilst I am sure it would be ok, I don't wish to risk any blowback into the charged manifold from an unseated inlet valve.

It is getting late evening here in the workshop and there have been a few late nights to get this engine finished. However, that has not stopped the Christmas spirit coming over from the kitchen and a Christmas tree bedecked front room as you can see by the non health and safety addition on my bench... thank you Bryony! Mulled wine... Cheers!

Wolseley Hornet finishing attention... please click here to open

 We have machined a temporary nylon arrangement for simple oil filtration ready for this very brief engine first run as we do not have the original gauze. However, provision will be made to have a discrete modern oil filter within the housing before the next run.

Below we are dressing some supercharger induction flange faces before a final oil stone to true.

Below, next flange for dressing..

Here is some final work to enable the adjuster nuts to nip the follower/rocker side faces when completing the valve clearance adjustment. We have machined new 0.015" brass washers to replace the distorted original copper items which may have allowed the valve clearance adjustment to migrate.

Valve adjustment with this eccentric bush arrangement (not just unique to Wolseley) is tricky as you must have all adjustment positions in a similar place on the eccentric bush. If you do not keep this in mind, you can run some "eccentric" valve timing from cylinder to cylinder as the rotating adjuster motion drags the foot of the follower away from the centre line of the camshaft, altering that particular valve's timing in comparison with the next.

Although not obvious in the photo below, the bush in the middle of this follower / rocker is eccentric. Rotating this repositions the follower on the cam to change the "tappet" clearance. It is then nipped firmly with the thin washer and nut to lock to the follower faces.