Sunday 13 June 2010

Update 2

Here is an image of WEW 707 in June 2009 after being neglected since 1978!
In fact, some remedial work had been done as the tyres and inner tubes had been replaced to allow the car to be moved.
The badge has been removed as some of the enamel had flaked off.  Strange to relate, the enamel, when the badge was installed in 1959, was white but when a replacement was obtained, the enamel was blue and we were told that all the Fairthorpe badges were blue!
This year, as soon as the cold weather started to give way to something more in keeping with car restoration, the hydraulics were tackled and the first setback was that when an attempt to remove the slave cylinders (two per front brake) was made, it was found that the unions behind the front brakes were locked solid.  This resulted in damage to the Bundy tubing when the unions were eventually removed using equipment more powerful than the usual spanners - additionally, although large amounts of underseal mastic had been applied to all rust-prone areas of the car, some of the tubing showed signs of  rust.
It was decided that it was unsafe to re-use any of the original hydraulic tubing and that copper piping would be used instead.  After the tubing at the front of the car had been removed and equivalent length replacements, complete with the appropriate new unions, had been obtained, it was found that the unions would not screw into the slave cylinders, etc.  This was an easy mistake to make as visual comparison of the old and new unions did not indicate that they were different - unions with the correct threads have now been fitted.
It was not a surprise to see that the rubber/metal bushes on the steering centre arm had deteriorated and were not up to the MOT, or our, standards of safety and reliability.  The car reputedly has a Standard 10 steering box and other steering components except for the idler arm bracket that is an in-house Fairthorpe product.  As no information on sources of replacement bushes resulted from my posting on the FSCC website message board, I posted a request in the Standard Motor Club for information.
The result was the name of a company in Tamworth, Staffordshire that makes replacement bush/pin units that do not use rubber and so have a likely longer life.  Not only that, but the informant is local to me and has offered facilities for pressing the new bushes into the centre bar!  That's one problem resolved.

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1961 - image 1

1961 - image 2

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About Me

Chartered Engineer (Retd). Interests are Family History and a 1959 self-build sports car.