Restoring a Top Hat

[Parazine]

Yeah I wondered about that 

[David Witton]

Some VHT paint on the manifold wouldn’t go amiss!

[Parazine]

Some VHT paint on the manifold wouldn’t go amiss!

Dunno David, it'll be a driver. I've never found paint stays on very long, one good slog up Porlock and it's gone!. Mind you, I gave up painting manifolds in about 1979 - there's probably better paint available now.

[Parazine]

More damage!

Fitted the new springs yesterday but now that the chassis is straight on the ground, I noticed another problem:

   

THE BACK AXLE IS BENT!!!

That's not a trick of the camera, the torque tube really is bent by at least 1/2" to the offside. The impact must have pushed the broken chassis and engine backwards and the strain pushed on the torqe tube, bending it out of line.

I pondered on why the teeth on the crownwheel were worn in an earlier post, when I had the axle apart. Now. it's blindingly obvious, all the clearances will be wrong and I expect the axle will howl like a banshee.

Oh dear, is there no end to the damage that was done all those years ago?

Two things are becoming clear to me:

1) The car was really seriously damaged in this accident; it must have been a bad smash.

2) The car would have driven like a mare after the "repairs" and couldn't have been used for very long after. The car was completely unused after September 1931 so the crash may therefore have occurred in late 1930 or early '31.

[Reckless Rat]

Bugger! Do you reckon it's recoverable?

[Ruairidh Dunford]

That's a real shame Tim - it is quite common for the axle tubes to get bent but that is a new one on me.

Would another T/T overcome the issue or is the banjo housing twisted too?

[Ivor Hawkins]

What a crying shame and you were doing so well! I’m wondering whether the axle could be jigged and straightened cold. I know when I was working for Blackhawk Automotive, we would have bolted it down to a jig and with the aid of hydraulics, given it a gentle tug to realign it, in my view the axle would take it without sustaining further damage.

Maybe worth considering?

[Hugh Barnes]

A pal has just had an axle casing straightened for the MG J2 he is working on, but that is a very different construction, being made in one piece...

[Steve Jones]

I have a friend that's a very successful A7 VSCC trials competitor. A while back he bent an axle tube. He's a farmer by profession (those that know will now realise who he is!!) and he regularly deals with an agricultural engineer for repairs to his machinery. These people are used to repairs to very heavy components and think out of the box. He took the bent axle tube to his man who set it up in his very large, heavy duty, agricultural engineer's lathe, wound the cross slide tightly into one end of the axle tube and set the lathe going on a very slow feed! Two passes and one straight axle tube resulted!!

With apologies to Tony Griffiths!!

Steve

[Parazine]

Progress!

I thought about the bent axle problem over the weekend and it seems that I will probably have to build a rear axle for this car in the not too distant future. Having said that, I can at least have a go at fixing the immediate problem so that I can get a few miles on the car when it goes back on the road.

I've checked the sheds and attics and I have enough bits to build a 30-31 axle for the car, which is my preferred course as the early type are difficult to adjust and more difficult to get spares for. The 30-31 axle will take the later 5.25 CWP which is much better than the 4.9 on the road (this car will be a driver) and they're simpler to build and adjust.

In the meantime, I thought, why not have a go at using a jack to bend the axle back to somewhere near straight?

   

So I set it up this morning, loosening off the chassis ball mounting first. It actually bent very easily, proving how delicate these early cars are.

Yes, I know it's a bodge! No, I know it's not exact but I checked it for straightness with a long piece of box section steel and I reckon it's taken 90 - 95% of the bend out. The CWP is still in poor condition so it will, most likely, be noisy but I do feel a bit better about it now and it should be good for a little while.

The body is finally back on the chassis and bolted down; it seems to be more or less sitting straight now.

So that's it for a while, back to work tomorrow and SWMBO is telling me I have to catch up with gardening, starting with sorting out and using the Rotovator this weekend. Ho Hum!