project 1951 Lanchester LD10 - Rear Corner Inspection

[Christine]

Old skool radiator repairs Bryan  in Camden Road Tunbridge Wells . Probably got one on the shelf !!

[barrett]

+1 for Mr Bryan. Worth a visit even if you don't need a rad doing just to see his set up before H&S closes it all down...

[Christine]

Lead free solder ,what that ? ?

[somewhatfoolish]

Does Mr Bryan have a scary vat of caustic soda that looks like a witch's cauldron, complete with foul fumes, bits of twig etc? That seems obligatory for small radiator places.

[Christine]

Two ! And Bakers fluid freely available for a fiver ? 

As you fight your way down the alley , sing ,Three Little Birds...so he can hear. And you'll get discount.. and to really get in his good books , those red elastic bands that postmen drop ? He collects them , Serious..theres a ball about a foot diameter made from elastic bands!

[BlankFrank]

Top job on the car there Vulgalour.

 

Did a google, i thought i'd post some pictures as they're ace:

 

taken from here: https://aceac.weebly.com/ac-ace-radiator.html

 

 

 

 

[Christine]

Ive never seen the son ? Praps he does the plastic ones !

[lesapandre]

That's the thing about old cars. They take you interesting  places and you meet nice people. Looks a fantastic place and long may it flourish. 

[anonymous user]

55 minutes ago, Christine said:

Ive never seen the son ? Praps he does the plastic ones !

Perhaps he is the son

[Joey spud]

If you don't want to get stuck in T.Wells traffic or want a second opinion/quote might i recommend this chap.

https://www.yell.com/biz/radicool-services-rochester-9330977/

He is shares a scruffy ex Dairy yard in Higham with a Stonemason and the last time i visited a few down at heel Mk2 Cortinas too.

I have known/used him for about thirty years (he fitted an uprated three row core to my Scimitar radiatior in 48 hours),even ''hold out yer hand'' Mike Brewer has featured this guys handywork on WD in the past (TR6 fuel tank patching).

 

[barrett]

A few years ago Bryan and his wife were on a cruise for a few months and one of his rivals spread a rumour he was dead. When he got back home the entrance was filled with flowers and the mailbox full of tributes addressed to the wife. He was livid! 

[Christine]

It was on telly !  Free advertising  ,.?

[somewhatfoolish]

1 hour ago, barrett said:

A few years ago Bryan and his wife were on a cruise for a few months and one of his rivals spread a rumour he was dead. When he got back home the entrance was filled with flowers and the mailbox full of tributes addressed to the wife. He was livid! 

Is the radiator refurb world that cutthroat? Blimey. 

[Angrydicky]

That Tunbridge Wells shops looks amazing. What a timewarp! I love places like that!

[HMC]

Love the sign.
 

[lesapandre]

It's these kind of super people who keep our kind of cars on the road for not crazy money... Would a carefully curated recommended spreadsheet be useful somewhere on here mon braves? 

Loving this Lanchester stuff btw. So useful to any other owners too. So detailed and so beautifully written. Interesting to see the engineering close up - the Daimler/Lanchester workforce was huge - 22,000 I think. These cars look virtually hand crafted. Wonderful.

[Tadhg Tiogar]

9 hours ago, barrett said:

A few years ago Bryan and his wife were on a cruise for a few months and one of his rivals spread a rumour he was dead. When he got back home the entrance was filled with flowers and the mailbox full of tributes addressed to the wife. He was livid! 

Bet he was "Disgusted of Tunbridge Wells".

That's probably banjaxed future cruises, though. 

[dozeydustman]

I got a radiator recored for a bizarre looking Pattison RCT cricket square roller rebuilt at Hamilton Radiators in Swanscombe. They charged £not much for tank resoldering, a pressure test and a core flush. This was 2012 but I hope they're still going, similar old school place run by an old boy with a pipe if my mind is right.

I could see Vulgalour with a pipe.....

[vulgalour]

Work on the Lanchester has been progressing steadily, there's parts on the way and all these recommendations for Bryan and the photos of the place and the man pretty much seals the deal on that one!  Looks like precisely the sort of person and place that ought to be working on this car.

You may remember, we recently removed the water pump.  Happily, this pump is of the construction type that means you can strip it down and rebuild it.  We're not doing a full strip down because the pulley bearing has no play and runs very freely thanks to previous owners keeping it well greased no doubt.  As a memory jogger, here's what we started with.

It's been repainted several times and the grey paint is both thick and flaking off.  We've decided that anything mechanical we remove will be at the very least cleaned and made to look as good as possible before reinstalling, so we opted to do just that with the water pump.  Four bolts hold it to the front of the engine, the lower two are pretty much hidden from view so you have to feel for them.  Of note are the temperature gauge capillary line which requires care to remove (fortunately ours did not put up a fight), and the thermostat housing which is part of the water pump assembly.  We had already removed the thermostat housing when doing the first drain and flush of the system, otherwise it would have been just as easy to leave it attached and remove everything all in one go.  With the waterpump off the car, there are several bolts holding the backing plate on, and four holding the fan blades on, these all came out very nicely and soon we had our first look inside the pump.  Happily, it was very clean inside and while the flash does make the rust look very visible, it really isn't any more than you'd expect to see inside a cast iron housing like this.  No heavy scaling or large deposits except around the end of the large cast hose joiner.  All of the brass fittings are in excellent shape and water flows very well through the pump itself.  That was a huge relief as it means really the only thing to do with this assembly is to remove the many layers of paint and repaint it.

It's a fairly simple assembly, you can strip it down a little further to remove the pulley and bearing but we saw no need since that's all perfectly okay and it's more work for no gain, mechanically or cosmetically.  The first of several rounds in the paint stripper was begun so that we could assess the condition of the metal before repainting.

One thing of note on this style of water pump is that the backing plate can corrode away, quite badly in some cases.  Ours isn't that bad, though when we found a stainless steel alternative with gaskets available through one of the three eBay sellers (they've made life so much easier on the parts hunt!) we opted to go for that.  Here's the original backing plate, we're not sure if this is cast iron or thick sheet steel, either way the coolant facing side of it is what's on show here so you get some idea of the corrosion that happens.  This plate is in really good shape, all things considered, I've seen some where they've corroded so badly they've holed right through.

The fan blades, like the rest of the pump, appear to have originally been black.  Working back through the paint layers the first looks to be red oxide, then black, then grey, then a brighter red, then at least two other greys and some hint of white on the blades, so they've had a life.

We opted to simply repaint in bright red, partly because it's in keeping with the car and partly for safety.  There's no fan shroud and a fast spinning black fan blade made of thick steel in a dark engine bay is just asking for trouble.  Yellow is more visible still, but felt out of place given that the other bits and pieces are red.

Painting that part was easy because the shape meant respraying with rattlecans wasn't an issue.  The other components are considerably more fiddly shaped, and very heavy, so we've opted to brush paint those in enamel.  I'm quite confident with enamel paints so am sure I can get a nice finish on these parts.  First thing is 2-3 coats of red oxide, I've already done the lower metal pipe and the thermostat housing a few days ago, we've now got the first coat on the main water pump housing which is the most difficult item.  Previously the old paint was so thick some of the casting markings were no longer visible, now that isn't an issue.  The only problem with enamel paint is how long it takes to dry, so generally I can only get 1-2 coats of paint on in a day, schedule permitting.  It will be a few more days until these are all painted and a few more until the paint is hard enough to properly handle and reassemble.

The pipe and the thermostat housing have had 3 coats of red oxide and 2 coats of black gloss.  They need one more coat of black gloss to be finished.  I'm really happy with the finish.  One thing we decided early on is that unless a dent, or pitting, or other damage is detrimental to the operation of an item it is left in place.  We're not taking a file to casting markings, and we're not filling the rough surface of cast parts smooth to get that restored look because that's not what this project is about.  Instead, we've opted to embrace imperfection.  One of the main reasons for this is that in a few years when the initial shine has worn off these refurbished parts they should all blend together and look like they've always been the way they are, if they pick up the odd chip here and there it won't draw the eye in the way it would with a better-than-new finish.

To save having too much of the car apart at once, we're tackling one component at a time, refurbishing it, and reinstalling it on the car once done.  The starter motor will probably be next, then the dynamo, and then the fuel pump, all of which would benefit from a clean and refurbish, and the first two would certainly benefit from a lick of paint.  A leather repair kit is on the way so I can get the front seats repaired and once those are done I can make a start on the door cards and associated woodwork.

Another project the other half has decided we should embark on is a removable entertainment system and it's quite a neat idea.  We're on the lookout for something along these lines.

And a pair of grilles, something like this.

We don't want anything valuable, because all we're after from these is the casing, the innards are of no use to us.  His plan is to take a period appropriate radio, ideally on the smaller side, and retrofit it with a modern mp3/bluetooth player.  The two grilles will go in the kickpanels at the front where the trim panels are completely gone on our car and integrated into new panels.  He wants something that will look like it belongs inside the car since we won't have any visible concessions to modernity.  Ideally the head unit will be removable too, possibly with its own rechargable battery incorporated, so it can be taken out of the car and used as a stand-alone music player.  Finding a radio is easy enough, finding the right one has so far proven tricky since most are much too big, much too valuable, much too ugly, or all three.  It's probably going to be something we find when we're not actually looking for it, hopefully a neighbour will be throwing out something suitable, we've done quite well for things we need when other neighbours have been getting rid of things so who knows?

[Zelandeth]

You've reminded me that "clean fan" needs to be added to the to do list for the Jag.  It's currently basically invisible when running and I've already had my knuckles thwacked by it more than firmly enough to draw blood.  It's apparently yellow under all the congealed oil!

[vulgalour]

Today has been mildly productive, with new items arriving and progress being made on a couple of items.  First thing to arrive was a job lot of old spanners I found online for not very much, 42 spanners in total of various ages and manufacturers.  I went through and organised them into sets of like manufacturer, while there's a fair bit of size duplication this is made up for in variety of spanner shape and size.  They're marked variously with some being Whitworth, some being BS, some being a combination, a couple having just a fraction marked with no indication for what measuring system it relates to, and one with no markings at all.  There's spanners from Snail, Gedone, Gordon, King Dick, Bedford Vanadium, Atco, Humco, Garrington, Tipco, Brenco, Elora, Jenbro, Enfo, and a couple with markings I can't make out.  Snail brand ones are probably my favourites for their logo, while the Gedone seem to be the nicest quality.  A few have what appear to be date markings on them, the oldest being a HumCo. from 1940, while there's an unbranded one from 1957, another unbranded one from 1961, and a Snail from 1966.  They're all well used and there's enough here to make up both an at home set and a small tool roll for in the car, I just need to figure out which are going to be the best fit for the most common jobs to decide how we split them up.

The water pump only required two coats of red oxide before an even finish was achieved so that got the first coat of black on today, it will probably need three coats of black to finish.  The pipe and thermostat housing received their final coat of black today and look very smart for it.

The new stainless steel backing plate for the water pump arrived too, it's an exact match for the original and came with two perfectly cut gaskets which is a big time saving when we rebuild and reinstall the pump since we won't have to make those from scratch.  Here's the new and old plate side by side.

More items arrived of the rubber variety, namely a fanbelt (the one on the car looks fine, but is very old now, so a new one seemed wise), and some new radiator hoses.   We'll also be replacing the smaller rubber hose connectors for the heater pipes, and all of the jubilee clamps so we shouldn't have problems with hoses and connections when we put everything back together.  The old hoses weren't in terrible condition, as it happens, it just seems wise to replace them so that we can avoid the disappointment of sudden failure.

The other item to arrive was the leather care kit I'd ordered from Wakeson, a company I've used before and found their products to be pretty good for the price.  I wasn't sure how much I'd need having never done leather repair before so I just ordered their standard tear repair kit, what's not shown here is the strong fabric you glue on the back of the leather.  The little pot of glue is quite a strong contact adhesive, solvent based, and goes quite a long way.  The leather conditioner is recommended for dry old leather, which ours is on the edge of being, and being used as more of a precaution than a cure.  The other item not shown is the dye pen, something I opted for rather than a spray dye since the redying on these seats will be restricted to very localised areas to blend with the original finish.

The passenger seat is the worst one in the car, with a lot of cracks and tears to the front bolster.  Repairing the tears so they're stabilised is actually pretty straightforward.  Cut the fabric into strips about 1.5-2" wide and then ease it between the leather and the padding, using one of the wooden sticks provided makes this quite easy.  Then using the other wooden stick, dip it in the bottle of glue and smear the glue between the strip of fabric and the leather.  It does work best if you glue one side of the tear down first, let it dry, then glue the other side, this allows you to line up the leather the closest and minimises the size of the repair.  The leather on this section is under tension and seems to have shrunk a little, so the gaps I could do aren't quite as close as I would have liked, that's something the filler will fix.  The kit did about half the tears on the section of leather, it's quite fragile when you handle it so some new tears were created as I was repairing old ones so it's a little fiddly until you've secured a couple of tears.  Another kit should be enough to repair the remaining tears.

To minimise the cat scratch damage and scuffs, I used the dye pen to draw and blob over the affected areas.  Then, before the dye was dry, I quickly brushed over it with some paper towel to remove the excess dye and blend in the coloured area with the original finish.  This worked exceptionally well on the cat scratches on the top of the seat.  Perfection is undesireable with this job, so we're not trying to make the seats look like a  uniform newly dyed leather, this approach helps draw the eye away from the damage and see the seat as a whole.

Until the second repair kit arrives I can't do anything about the other cat scratch damage so opted to give everything a go over with the conditioner.  The leather drank up a lot of the conditioner and did become softer afterwards, a few more applications should see the leather much more supple and less prone to further splitting.  The previous conditioner we used was a lighter duty one and gave the leather a nice sheen, which is a nicer finish, so once we've fully repaired and applied some more of the heavier conditioner, we'll go back to that lighter one to bring the sheen back to the leather.

I'm pretty sure the Wakeson products are generic and I could probably research it and buy it in bulk cheaper.  However, it's not really cost effective for the quantity I need so I'm happy to buy the kits and products as they provide them since they do what we need at a sensible price.

[somewhatfoolish]

I've  used Gliptone/liquid leather stuff, but as you say it probably all gets mixed in bulk by the same bloke in a warehouse in Basingstoke.

[vulgalour]

Today has been a pleasant day of sorting through cosmetic items on the car with the other half.  The final coat of black paint was put on the water pump and that was assembled to keep all the parts together.  Thermostat housing is not bolted down properly yet, waiting on the new thermostat and gasket arriving.

The through bolts for the water pump will be painted black before the unit is installed.  I was going to paint the fan bolts after they were installed until I realised it would actually be easier to do it before by sticking them in a piece of cardboard to spray paint them.  I'l be very careful when these are tightened up, it will be very easy to damage the paint.  This was also an opportunity to use the spanners we bought recently.

The bigger job of the day was the leather and rexene refurbishment.  Other half decided this was his job which is good, because I find applying the conditioner on the tedious side and he's not a fan of doing the repair work.  The leather on the seats isn't terrible, but it is a little harder and drier than it should be as you might expect for leather that's nearing 70 years old and hasn't had any care for almost the last forty years.  With some of the leather and rexene you could hear it crackling as you pressed on it, the door pockets in particular were quite bad for this.  The leather was also very flat and not really conforming to the shape of the padding inside because it wasn't that flexible.

Over the course of the day, several applications of conditioner were applied and it's been quite the transformation.  The rexene responded very favourably too, we weren't sure if it would since it's effectively vinyl, but a lot of the minor crazing and almost all of the crackling noise has been eliminated.  Here's a before of the front seats when we first got the car.

And today, after a thorough clean and condition.

The same story in the back, before..

..and after.  The leather is much more supple and springy, it creaks now in that way old leather does, rather than crackling, and the transformation in person is so much more dramatic than in photographs that you'd think we'd had the interior retrimmed.

We're going to keep applying the conditioner and generally pampering the leather to get it as soft and supple as possible.  For the cost the transformation is astonishing, the biggest expenditure really is time, and now we have beautiful original seats without the expense of a retrim.  While this was being done, I was tackling the steering wheel which had started to shed the brush painted black enamel messily.  I knew the wheel was most likely bakelite, like the rest of the fixtures, and hoped it would be a nice colour underneath the black paint.  I wasn't expecting miracles, often bakelite is repainted because it's ugly, or its damaged, and quite often it's been treated harshly, ruining the original finish, so I was fully prepared to have to repaint the wheel.  The initial test area revealed just how weak the bond was with the black paint and that there was a pleasant (if plain) bakelite waiting underneath.

In fact, the bakelite of the rim initially almost looked like wood.  The other area that needed attention was the bakelite trim to the hub which had overpaint on where someone had touched in the original factory finish of the steering wheel boss.  This came off very easily, in some places with little more effort than a firm rub of a thumb, and the bakelite underneath was in very good condition.  I did prise out the horn push so we could clean up the contacts and the chrome bezel, but on trying to remove the wheel itself, one of the screws that holds the horn contact in that hides the fixings for the wheel was starting to break off even with a well-fitted screwdriver.  I felt I was tempting fate quite enough as it was, so left this alone once I retightened the screws.  I'd have to remove the paint on the wheel with it attached to the car instead.

I'd done my research and found that bakelite is tolerant of solvent based strippers, but not of alkaline based ones.  Fortunately I had some solvent based stripper that was slow acting so I could control its effects.  As the paint started to come off it became evident someone had keyed the surface of the wheel before painting it, losing much of that original sheen bakelite has which is pretty much impossible to permanently restore.

I persevered, carefully, and eventually had all the paint stripped, revealing a very smart old wheel that looked much better for being in bakelite than the black.  Another nice side effect was that the wheel didn't feel sticky when warm now.  There are no cracks or splits anywhere on the wheel rim so I wonder if the reason for it being painted was simply that the wheel had gone dull from use, or an unsuitable cleaner.  The steering wheel hub turned out to be aluminium under the black enamel and while initially I was going to repaint it black it actually looked really nice in bare metal, especially with the newly revealed wheel rim, so we've opted to leave that as it is.  The gear selector was cleaned up, also found to be in very good shape, and given a single fresh coat of black paint on the bracket, with the selector letters picked out so they're more legible.  I used a very small brush and some thinners to clean off the surface of the letters and the surround to give a really sharp finish to everything and make the best of the chrome against the black enamel.

The reconditioned leather of the seats has made the seats look and feel much more plump and springy, while the refurbished steering wheel is now something you want to touch and just run your hand around.  To bring back some of the sheen on the bakelite I used some Turtle Wax paste, not enough to make the wheel slippery, just enough to soak in to the bakelite and return some of the colour.  Tomorrow I'm hoping to make a start on the door cards now I understand better what the damage is and how they're constructed, the varnish on the wood cappings flakes off very easily so they shouldn't take very long at all to prepare and revarnish.  Another rewarding day of putting effort in and seeing positive returns.

Here's how the steering wheel used to look.

Here's how it looks now.

 

[spartacus]

This thread never disappoints.

Those seats look fantastic, you must just want to go outside to sit in the car and soak in the atmosphere.

[captain_70s]

Fantastic stuff.

Those seats are a grand recovery. This going to be a properly nice old thing when finished.

[RayMK]

I love the sympathetic philosophy that you are both taking with this unusual and enjoyable restoration. Regarding the interior, 'quite a transformation' is an understatement. Well done!

[lesapandre]

Super work. If the wheel does crack I think there is (was) a company that refubishes them. In period the other (gifferish) alternative was to put on one of those steering wheel gloves. 

But luckily what you have found underneath is in good condition. Super work - just shows what gentle conservation can achieve as opposed to replacement which can rob anything of its character. 

Doing the wood avoid any of the polyurethane synthetic varnishes. I am sure you are.  Natural beeswax is a good polish when you get to that point.

[somewhatfoolish]

Would the bakelite not respond to rubbing down, or does it have a skin that wears through? The back seat looks lovely.

[vulgalour]

I was planning to use Danish Oil on the woodwork rather than a polyurethane, something that will be able to soak in and revitalise where the wood is a bit dry, but can also work with beeswax.

I still don't understand the ethos of binning everything in favour of new when it's not necessary, not really sure where it comes from either.  You're not saving time or money by replacing with new, you're just making waste.

You can rub down and polish bakelite, it just doesn't hold on to the shine.  That finish bakelite has is to do with the manufacturing process and the material it's made from, a bit like gelcoat on fibreglass.  Some people do rub the bakelite down and give it a coat of lacquer, which can work well.  In this instance, since it's an item that's handled regularly, oil from your hands and the polishing action of using the wheel should keep it looking okay.

[anonymous user]

Probably too late for you now, but I have revived a few bakelite telephones and radios that have gone really dull with silver polish (the stuff on wadding in a tin) then finishing it off with beeswax.