Ivan Saxton

Someone in Queensland (State of Australia) may be able to access black&white photos of some of the pre-1914 Napiers which were converted into rail cars and existed for some decades. The largest 65 and 90 horsepower models were comparable or larger than the 66 horsepower Pierce Arrow. Though the fuel cost on the road may have been only incidental to the original owners who had large land holdings, but the miles per gallon would have been much less running steel flanged wheels on steel rails because of reduced friction. A wheat farmer in the northern Wimmera here in Victoria , Orvil Cheville ( spelling?) told a mutual friend that a 60 ton B-double semi-trailer rig used the same quantity of diesel for the trip to the same destination on the coast as had typically taken for a 5000 ton trail load before they closed the train service.

Please do not panic. Your brakes can be fixed. Years ago I experienced one of these that someone got for the wheels and tyres, sold the radiator core, cut the headlights on their bar taking pieces where it mounted from the front fenders. We towed it here on the end of a chain, had had to return the bolt-on wire wheels, for the "enthusiast" to use the rims to build wheels for a Rolls Royce. He destroyed a good car . I steered it as it was towed about 40 miles, and I did the braking for it AND the tow vehicle , as was the best practice them. The Packard rolled and braked beautifully , steered easily and precisely, and the brakes were excellent. It can all be fixed on yours. Your dad wanted you to have it. Do not panic. People will help you to fix the brakes. There is a very good set of brake drums here if yours are worn. You will not get a better hobby car for children of your own. The worst defect is the wrong modern radiator core. I have a perfect original radiator from another source with the very distinctive core pattern, which will fit in the shell in place of the modern one that looks bad.. If you promise to keep the care and use it for your family, and eventually leave it to one of your children, I will give you that to help you and freight it to you at know cost. Ask on this forum for help of someone in your neighbourhood who might show and assist you to put the car right. And some day you will find the opportunity to help someone in some way , that needs, and deserves, and appreciates what you can do to help them. Favours need to be passed around.

From memory the generator was driven low on one side off the rear of the timing case. I gave an engine that had been set up with a welding generator to a fellow with a car at Heyfield (about 70 miles away). I'll check with someone from their local car club to see if there is anything traceable, and also enquire through the Vintage Drivers Club in Melbourne. If I can borrow one I will fabricate and machine one from mild steel for you Zero cost to you , of course) A few years ago I made a small number of starter end plate/brush holders for the 20s 4 cyl T head Stutzs. Originals were diecast from contaminated zinc that had crumbled. The first one completed I feighted off to Bill Greer of the Stutz club, whose late Bearcat was immobile. Same price, of course. Philosophy is that if someone cannot just do something to help people like you or Bill Greer, this world is not as good a place as it should be.

There have been no cheers of approval from any of the many Lancia owners here. That is possibly the ugliest and least beneficial sacrificial accident crumple zone to have every been attached to the front of a fast and safe car. Lancias have always been extraordinarily quick from A to B, without deliberate intent to drive fast. My 1953 Aurelia B22 saloon is a substantial manifestation of Grand Prix technology in a family sedan. Twice in the late 1970s I was astonished that I sat down in a dentist's waiting room in Melbourne, 70 minutes after I drove out my gate here, 70 miles away. Brakes, acceleration, and handling are just so good that young spend little time below your cruising speed. In the 1951 Mille Miglia, Bracco , driving a well prepared Aurelia GT finished second, twenty minutes behind Villorisi's 4.2 L V12 Ferrari, which had over twice the engine displacement and an advantage of 60mph top speed. The Lancia trailed by just 3 minutes at 850 miles, after which the heavy rain stopped and the road became less winding. The Flaminia design was much like the Aurelia in many respects. Do you think Raymond Loewey learned anything from the Italian designers like Pininfarina and Carlo Felice Bianchi Anderloni?

The sports car on the left looks like MG TF, the first one without wire-spoked wheels. I am not an enthusiast. I drove one once, to deliver it somewhere about 40 miles away for a friend, and it was awful. I different friend restored one much later, and said it was not much good on the road. He said he fitted an anti-sway bar on the front, off a Simca. That, and radial ply tyres transformed it; and he enjoyed it for years.

In 1983 my 1918 Mercer had a full tank of fuel when the crankshaft broke because some idiot had line bored the main bearings without the block bolted down. Ten or twelve years later I needed fuel at the weekend for the 10hp rider/mower, and I used it in that without problem until I had used it all. The chemical mix of petrol or gasoline is probably always complex, and varies with the season for evaporation characteristics or maybe wax-type content; and also for the required anti-knock characteristics. There is probably considerable tetraethyl lead content; and of the main chemical categories of the fuel itself, ie paraffin, olefin, and aromatic, it is probably the aromatic, including benzene type, that have the greatest propensity to cross-link and form a gel of very high viscosity. If the fuel is liquid , it should be fine to put some in your T Ford or Dodge 4, or your lawn mower; but you may or may not have to re-optimise the carburettor fuel metering.

Matt Hinson is one of the moderators of this forum , who is likely to be able to help you fly your flag the right way up. I spent some time trying to work out the timing marks on my engine flywheel. You need to remove the rectangular cover above the flywheel. I decided to loosen my engine by squirting ATF-acetone in all the spark plug holes. I also un-bolted the valve cover plates. These were partly undone and loose. I Tried to carefully exclude dirt, but there was plenty in there already, so I will have to dismantle it all and re-assemble it clean. I had removed all the spark plugs, which were a motley lot. I reckon one had such a long, hot centre electrode that it must have been for a Hesselmann cycle, or "spark-plug diesel". You can see into the edge of the cylinder bore through the big 7/8"spark plug holes . It is quite easy to pick top dead centre 1R and 1L. There are marks SR and SL on the flywheel as you would expect, with a fine indicator lie to match the very light line scribed on the rear edge of the rectangular inspection hole over the flywheel. This firing datum point is when the piston is about 1/8 inch before top dead centre. Now, as 1 and 6 fire on alternate revolutions of the engine, it is best to remove the Right side valve cover plate, which should be easy to remove and replace if you remove the carburettor. I can tell that the fuel which the engine ran on last was rubbish, because it had not burn very clean. Early fuel was a mixture of paraffin ( like kerosene), olefin, and aromatic, or benzene type structure. Good explanation of the chemistry and characteristics of early fuel is the Sir Harry Rickardo's book "The High Speed Internal Combustion engine; and in the biography of Sir Harry Rickardo by Reynolds, titled "Engines and Enterprise". If you turn the crankshaft to the point where the SR mark lines up, and the exhaust valve of cylinder .6R has just closed, and that cylinder's inlet valve is about to open: then re-mesh the distributer drive gears so 1 R is about to fire. Then connect the spark plug leads from each cylinder to the correct marked positions on the distributer cap. It is good to get someone knowledgable to help. Two heads are better than one on a job like this,

I probably should have called it the Cowl section, Mal; but sometimes using a different or contentious word will focus the reader's attention. I was concentrating on communicating technicality in an understandable way to offer the path to the solution. I have started to look at the flywheel markings, which are numerous, very lightly stamped in eighth inch and 3/16th inch sizes. I have to squeeze in between the Lancia Aurelia and the Packard in its engine stand. In a few days I will be able to get it out and turn it 180 degrees so I do not have to read everything upside down. I will also have to clean all the dust off so I can remove the spark plugs to get some light oil into all the cylinders, and remove the tappet covers so I can spray ATF-acetone on all the valve stems, so I can turn it over easily with the Armstrong starter. Then I can clean the light rust of five decades or more on the flywheel circumference where everything is stamped, so I can make sense of it for you. I can also dig out that gear pair of the camshaft and distributer drive of that engine whose crankcase was stolen. Then I should be able to work it out for you. I do not have the indicator plate for where there is a cover over the flywheel . You just have to work from basic principles. My engine has English Lucas distributer caps that Mr Ray Denny senior fitted; but we did not think he got the engine running. They had a lot of interesting cars through their hands, including probably eight or more Tipo 8 Isotta Fraschini. I saw a 1928 LaSalle and an early Mercedes from which they had stripped the bodies because they thought those were too far gone to restore. They offered me the Mercedes for 100 pounds, but I was at university and could not afford 100 shillings. That 28/95 Mercedes has moved several times and had a lot of money spent on it since then. I saved the original back mudguards which they were going to throw out!. Ray Denny junior told me that when he was a kid there were around a dozen Stanley Steamers Backed up to the fence in the backyard of their home. There must have been a lot of good cars wasted. I'll tell you when I find more.

Though it is probably easy enough to restore proper function if you know how, I have never seen those directions. Because the red indicator fluid is up to the top of the tube it is probably wildly inaccurate; and that may affect market value.

I will try to help you. But can you please turn your Twin Six the right way up. There are very few here, and scattered, and it is difficult to appreciate your photo as it is. Traditionally I believe that the British Navy flew their flag upside down as a signal of distress. From what I can discern of the First Series chassis photo in the AQ Packard book, the two high terminals for spark plug leads on each cap go to the front of the engine. I believe that the position of the spring clips for the distributer caps were originally above and below; but later changed to fore and aft. This was probably to avoid earth contact if someone decided to remove a cap while there was power to the points. The caps are labelled R and L , and with direction of rotation arrows. ( Of course, because the shaft that carries the rotor buttons is a single shaft driven by skew gears, those rotor buttons have opposite rotation.) There cap terminals are marked by firing order, on what I assume to be the early cap type, the numbers are indented in the manufacture about 1/8" size. On the later cap there are recesses about the same sixe with little black numerals on a white background secured in those. As you will know, the firing order of each bank is the same 1 5 3 6 2 4. If the left and right caps are on the wrong sides of the distributer an the plug leads mounted by the cap numbers, The spark plugs will nit fir in correct order. There should be a top dead centre #1 cylinder marked on the flywheel, and I shall check this later today on the engine from Sir MacPherson Robertson's 1922 wire wheel Runabout, which a friend and I bought about 1961. I later got some other critical parts of the same car including the speedo which shows 44,000 original miles; and I believe the engine has never been apart. I assume you already have the cylinder heads back on. If so, it is best to remove the tappet cover or covers from the Right bank, inside the V. This will enable you to ensure that the inlet and exhaust valves of #1 cylinder have clearance while those of #6 have none, ( which means that the exhaust is closing and the inlet starting to open). Remove the four nuts and lift off the distributer, and with the hand advance lever on full retard, turn the drive shaft in the direction of rotation till the right side points under the top cover just start to open with the rotor button in the correct position that you have placed at texta mark inside the housing according to the contact for #1 in the distributer cap. You should probably repeat this for #1 Left bank; to compare the alignment of the slot in the top of the distributer drive from below. You would expect that the slot should either align wit the axis of the crankshaft or be transverse to it. Knowing that Top dead centre is a different point of crankshaft rotation for 1 R and 1 L, you should be able to deduce whether you time from Left or Right bank. There should by rights be timing marks on the skew gears whereby the distributer is driven from the camshaft, and if you can re-set this is should make life easier. I know I have the camshaft from the sad and incomplete 1917 project that came to me from New Zealand, and the vertical shaft should be in one of the boxes , if I can find it. The crankcase was stolen, and the aluminium sump; which should have rewarded some hairless urban lower primate with a few drinks. If you need to read this more than twice, you will understand James Ward Packard's steadfast objection to automobile engines afflicted by the complexity of multiple cylinders. Do you chance to know where there may be a stray repairable skuttle for a 20s Twin Six. I have just bought a fairly decent Twin Six chassis with most of what I lack . But the skuttle I have from New Zealand is so badly rusted on the sides that it will be very difficult to restore correctly in isolation, and a lot of work otherwise. It would not affect the shipping cost much if I could get another when this one comes. ( I do not have a radiator or shell either.) I hope this helps you.

The reference to Charles Jackson's involvement with Mercer may have been from a long time ago. Ray Wolff sent me copies of the second and third sections of his article on Mercer from Antique Automobile issues from the late 1950s. ( I have a recollection that he may have been editor of Antique Automobile for some years.) This was probably the first widely available account of Mercer history, from the time when most knowledge probably was held through the un-written memories of people like Ralph Buckley. You may find that looking for what you want through Mercer connections would have you fishing in a dry creek. You are probably better to talk to someone older who is a long time Bentley owner, and who may be not too distant from where Charles Jackson lived. It may be useful for you to talk to Tom Stewart in Leesburg VA, who has a 3 litre Bentley which I understand he drives regularly. He will know other owners, and between them they may know some history of other cars. You may probably trace Tom through someone in the American Lancia Club. You should probably understand that the 4 1/2 litre "Blower" Bentley's were not created so much by the Bentley company, but by a small group of very wealthy people that were interested in racing, particularly the 24 Hour race at LeMans. They were the "tail that wagged the dog", and it is recorded that Walter Owen Bentley did not like them. They were spectacular, but their racing success was disappointing. It seems that the engineering required to maintain them may have been challenging. One example hare in Melbourne was owned by champion racing driver Lex Davidson for years without public appearance, and after him by John Creswell who was a very distinguished engineer. I never got to talk to him about it, because I never saw it with him in public. It is likely that owner satisfaction is more likey on a podium somewhere like Pebble Beach , rather than on the highway. One was featured at a recent "MotorClassica" at the Exhibition Building in Melbourne. It was beautifully restored, but it was huge and looked heavy. I am not surprised that W O Bentley should have commented that the Stutz at LeMans in 1928 was lower and handled better than his cars. I hope this is some use to you.

I managed to speak to Bill Orde. He started as an apprentice with an old time auto electrician, Which means that he has had hands-on involvement with magnetos, for his own cars and in helping other antique car owners for over 70 years; Including membership of the Veteran Car Club here in Victoria ( which would probably be around 60 years.) The Veteran Car Club here deals with cars made until the end of 1918. Always use a decent iron or mild steel keeper across the pole of a magnet while it is not on the magneto and not on the poles of the charger. Always mark the correct position of your manets so they go back where they were; and use a compass to make sure they go on the charger in the right direction. What you may loose will be miniscule unless the steel of the magnets is rubbish, and you can count that out. If a magneto will throw a spark over 3/8 of an inch long (without a safety gap), you can be sure it will throw a fat spark across the 18 thou spark plug points gap under working compression. Magnets are probably the least likely cause of magneto trouble. Most likely troubles are tracking across surface of old insulating material, breakdown or deficiency of an original capacitor, and perished insulating varnish of an old coil that has not been re-wound, that melts when hot and solidifies between the fixed pole pieces and the armature poles. T model flywheel magnets can be re-charged in situ, but you have to know what you are doing.

It is obviously nothing like the Aero/Dixie type, of which I think there may have been some branded Splitdorf; but I may be wrong. Clearly you just need to remove the screws only to remove the magnets, which need nothing more than that to hold them in place. When I saw Jim Lunney working on magnetos he used a small pressure from his press to make sure the screw driver did not slip and burr the slot in the screw heads. There is a bit about the Splitdorf D low tension magneto in the copy of Dykes I was able to access, but you would need to consult a much earlier edition . There was nothing specific about re-charging the magnets in it. The troubles with zinc diecasting generally related to whether there was impurity of lead and cadmium in the zinc. If a diecast item of that age is still good, it may have been pure material. The diecast cam follower bodies of the 16 valve 4 cylinder T head Stutz engines can be the devil to remove from the crankcase. We have made new ones from new castings of cast iron.

Can you post definitive photos of your magneto so I can see what you are dealing with. I have an idea that they made the ones branded "Aero" and "Dixie" ( ? spellings ) were made by Splitdorf in the early 1920s, and these had diecast end plates that were not a problem. I think others were of conventional pattern. If the magnets are covered by three brass covers, one on each side, and one over the top lengthwise, you probably have a polar inductor type similar to the original Dixie mag of my Roamer Duesenberg, and the identical Aero mag. On these the magnets pull off the sides when you remove the covers. The magnets are notched at the bottom on tehe inside for clearance, and are not attached by screws. Jim Lunney of the Veteran car Club here was an old time auto electrician in Melbourne who is no longer with us. He had several coils re-wound for me, and the magneto of the Roamer would throw a most impressive spark. But then after a little running it would develop a chronic impairment of the zeal, and would not spark at all. So I have used a good conventional Simms mag while I have given visitors joy rides in the un-finished car; and I have not got around to determining how the high voltage output was tracking to earth, and this is of course pre-requisite to overcoming the problem. Everyone told me way back that the Dixie and Aero mags were unreliable, but I am confident that the fault can be remedied, and that they should give good reliable service because the design has advantages. The town were Bill lives is about 3 hours drive from here; and I shall have to ring around to get a new phone number. He used to live about 20 miles out and was still able to drive though he was using a walking frame; but His wife now has problems that were beyond his strength to cope with; so they were moving to a situation of reliable assistance to both of them. When you get phots up I will have a look then speak to him.

I thought I should re-check what I think I know, and rather than dig out Dykes, I took the lazy way and entered "Re-magnetise Magneto magnets" into Google. It is all there for you to do it yourself; and there is also good instructions to wind your own simple magnet re-charger. It is worth repeating here that there is a way of re-charging the flywheel magnets of a T-Ford with minimal time and effort. Bill Orde has been one of my antique car friends for over 50 years. he started as an auto-electrical apprentice in what was considered a rural city here; and he worked for the same man for several decades. When a T Ford owner, (whether he was a farmer from out of town, or a town resident) decided his car was getting harder to start because the spark was weak, he would book in for re-charging, and be instructed to bring the car in first thing in the morning, and be promised that the big job would be finished late that afternoon. It was really a scam, but maximum profit was considered good business; and the boss would never order one of his workers to dismantle the engine for re-charging when he could charge for seven or eight hours labour, yet charge the magnets perfectly by flicking a current through the field coils with the flywheel magnets in the correct position. I can still check the specifics if you want to know, because Bill is still with us, though now too unroadworthy to work on cars anymore.

Allied to this, I believe There was a Murphy designed phaeton that was used by Auburn in perhaps small but significant numbers. It had wind-up windows in all four doors. In around 1960 you would still encounter the better performing American cars of the late 1920s in use as daily drivers in our state capital Melbourne. One day my friend Cliff Rees saw one of these travelling the opposite direction to him on one of our main roads. Cliff did a rapid U-turn , intending to catch the Aubun and invite the owner to our Vintage Drivers' Club. Cliff's Chrysler could embarrass things like Volkswagons in city traffic then, but he couldn't get within a bull's roar of the Auburn. The small eight Auburn was a 1929 8-90; and I believe the body was actually built by Limousine Body Co to Murphy design under licence. The car changed hands not long after to a chap in the VDC; But it coughed a connecting rod out the side of the crankcase, and was off the road for quite a while. The 8-90 engine was similar to the earlier 8-77, but with a whisker larger bore, a better camshaft, and a more efficient Rickardo patent cylinder head design. Some years later I trailered home the remains of an Auburn 8-90 sedan which had thrown two connecting rods. It seemed to be experienced in that, because on the opposite side of the crankcase a very large hole had been repaired by expertly replacing the ventilation hole by bronze welding the piece back in. I could not tell why the damage had happened, but I have kept the engine so I can repair it similarly and use it in the 8-77 when I get round to restoring the car. I would like to give the engine another chance for what it has survived. I know of another that had the same problem; so if anyone has an 8-90 it might pay to examine most carefully the connecting rod bearings, bolts, and oil feed.

2 to 6% antimony in an alloy is not something you would ideally choose to work with or probably drink from. Its place in the Periodic Table of elements makes it un-surprising that its toxicity is similar to that of arsenic. Its unusual property which favoured its use in printing type was that it expands as it freezes, whereas all other common casting metals shrink. So type letters cast with antimony content printed sharper images. Inhalation or ingestion of antimony dust by tradesmen was an occupational hazard. Aresenic is probably more persistent as a health risk now, because it has been a popular remedy for protozoal deaths of animals in our food chain. It does not seem far-sighted to protect poultry and pigs with a life expectancy of weeks or months when the protective agent can damage the DNA genetic code and is carcinogenic at very low levels . I guess we are expected to take responsibility for ourselves.

Hi David, There are a couple of things that might help. You are probably only dealing with small residues, so a very small amount of something fairly inert and harmless should be useful. Ethanol and acetone each have one hydrophilic end an one hydrophobic end. Either of these will happily attach the contaminant to the main volume. Aside from possible issues with rubber hoses that may not be oil-tolerant, and possible diminution of radiator cooling efficiency through oil becoming part of the sludge coating with iron oxide from the engine water jacket, it is not likely to do much harm. How do you lubricate a bronze-bushed water pump without a grease cup? Some people added water-soluble cutting oil to the cooling system. Engines do become contaminated with water in the lubricating oil, But this is vapourised and expelled through the crankcase breather when the oil reaches working temperature, which is way above the boiling point of water. I guess historically the engines most likely to suffer emulsion sludge build-up were some fire-trucks, which might be driven fast , and then put away when the engine had not been able to get the oil to working temperature. However, I have enough of a 1911 Lancia to restore, whose water pump is fully enclosed and driven by the timing gears. Few of these cars survived, and probably only those whose owners knew to drain the water from the sump first thing in the morning, and whenever else necessary. (Tom Stewart, who is somewhere close to you, has or had an early gearbox which may be correct for my car, or maybe the same as the later gearbox which is incorrect and difficult to adapt. Could you help me with a favour by checking whether it is correct or not? One really good book which you might enjoy is "Automobile Design: Great Designers and Their Work". On p50 is the drawing of Amedee Bolle fils original hydraulic tappet design, which he patented and used in his production cars from 1910; and was used by Cadillac and , I think, Packard in the 30s! I checked the listing of available copies, which range in price from $6 to several hundred dollars. The pioneer inventiveness of Amedee Bollee pere and his sons is mind- blowing. There is also a chapter on Henry Leland. All chapters are by different specialist authors. If you want to find a copy I will give. you the directions by PM

I apologise that the Post above should have been more comprehensive. I had accumulated sleep deficit over the weekend. You can adapt valves with longer stems, and with larger diameter heads and stems, and I have done this when I could not access correct replacements for my Lancia Aurelia. This may be quick and easy if you can use a centreless grinding machine to reduce the stems; but doing it in the lathe as I did then, you have to be very careful to achieve finish and size without discrepancy of taper. Your micrometer needs to be able to read to a tenth of a thou. Very, very many antique cars were made long before Elwood Haynes' invention of "Stellite" , which could give poppet valves good hot-hardness, and resistance to rapid oxidation at or near red heat. The original valves of my 1911 4 cylinder Napier had perfect stems, but the faces on the valve heads were not brilliant. When I heated the valve faces carefully with a carburizing flame on the oxy-acetylene torch, (as you do), even the exhaust valves oxidized so rapidly that it was impossible to wet and build up the faces with the cobalt filler rod. The job needed a little cunning and trickery. I cleaned up the valve face again with the grinder, then coated it with nickel powder from a little powder-facing torch; and the interface of nickel powder protected the valve so that the Stellite rod would wet the surface and build up in the normal way. This accords with Tom Reece's guidelines in Antique Automobile , that you Repair, or Replace As Necessary. I guess that article of Tom's may be worthy of republication, West.

"Oversize" often does not mean a very big increase in stem diameter. A digital calliper will show you the difference; but you open the guides carefully to fit with a reamer or with a "dunny-brush" hone . The hone gives an ideal cross-hatch surface finish. The best instructions for this are in a DVD produced By Guy Croft, on cylinder head reconditioning. He used to be a builder of Formula 1 racing engines, both V10 Arrow and V8 Minardi. Since then his work has been on the in-line 4 cylinder Twin OHC FIAT/ Lancia engines for special purpose.

I certainly looks General Motors style, a bit reminiscent of the Opel design that was taken for Australian GM Holden production until about the early 70s when they changed to a different engine with a 7 main bearing crankshaft. This has the starter on the opposite side to a Holden. This does not look as big as the military use engines which may have become available as salvage or surplus. Those were sometimes side-by-side mounting of paired mirror image engines in amphibious vehicles. Indeed, the problem and ideal is to see the car with a correct engine.

Most people do not want to look into a Knight double sleeve valve engine unless they have to.. The individual junk heads even of the same model WK engine may have different material junk heads. If they are cast aluminium alloy there is always a possibility that corrosion in the water jacket pocket that surrounds the centre tube ( which has the spark plug at the bottom) could leak enough water to cause that problem. Tom Hogan had a spare engine for his big 66 Roadster, for which I rebuilt the junk rings with molybdenum wire-feed coating, which cured its compression loss and stopped its smoking habit. Several of the aluminium junk heads were corroded enough to leak water; so we used the full set of cast iron heads that were fine. If you do have to cast and machine new heads of aluminium. You need to consult Sir Harry Ricardo's text book "The High Speed Internal Combustion Engine", which was the basic text book in universities on heat engines for generations of mechanical engineers. Gabriel Voisin made his first prototype sleeve valve car with a small but significant design error. In 1920 it ran perfectly well without detonation on the rubbish low octane fuel of the day, with unprecedented power and economy because the compression ratio was around 8 to 1 ! You have to choose what characteristics you want and what performance you would like. A steeply conical combustion chamber gives less power at a lower compression ratio with great smoothness. The radius/curvature to the flat annulus which the piston crown approaches closely at Top Dead Centre gives good turbulence. you will get better power and performance If you choose a much flatter cone, and better fuel economy; but the "squish" turbulence may be greater than ideal, and the running will be perceptibly a little less smooth. In the early 1960s, Phil Irving was the guest at the monthly meeting of the Vintage Drivers' Club in Melbourne. Phil had produced one of the most successful Formula 1 Racing engines ever, based on a stock production aluminium cast General Motors V8 engine block. When someone asked him a question about modifying 1920s engines for better performance, his answer was brief. Phil said that you can go to a lot of trouble and expense to make alterations; but you may well discover that the designer was right in the first place. With a sleeve valve engine it is likely to be safer to do that than with a poppet valve engine.

It may be rash to presume the temperature it may be totally or partially exposed to inside the distributer in service. Perhaps the most reliable application of the technology may be to make a mold to cast the working item from a thermo-setting plastic in the nature of Bakelite. A three-D printer is constrained to build from thermo-plastic thread stock: Please advise me otherwise if I am in error. I suspect it may be possible to machine a rotor button from Bakelite rod, but I cannot guess the comparative difficulty of machining one from stock because my son does not have 3D printer yet .............

I can make a guess who rode with that on his radiator cap. Jim Foyle, of The Garage, Piltown, Co. Kilkenney, Ireland had a Clement of that age which he liked to take on the commemoration London to Brighton runs in England . In the early 1960s, I received a letter from Jim, who was attempting to restore what then seemed to be the only known Tipo 510 FIAT left outside Australia and New Zealand. He has no timing gears, and was unable to get new ones made without engineering drawings. I wrote back that I could help him; but that he should not hold his breath because I could not immediately get home to pull what he needed from the damaged engine of a parts care. In due course I posted the bits to him. ( The 510 FIAT is a very well-made car, which cost about the same here at the time as a 1923 Cadillac. Vittorio Jano's signature is on engineering drawings for it. Then another letter came from Jim, wanting to know what he owed me. I replied that it was just an inexpensive favour; and that what you do with favours is help someone else who has a problem. After a while a big parcel came for me, with a Waterford crystal whisky decanter and 6 glasses, which still have their little stickers on them. Now my mother was a teacher, and in the early 1930s she spent a while as an exchange teacher with the London County Council. She said that some children still lived in houses with dirt floors. She visited Ireland then and now she was taking a trip to England, she wanted to visit Ireland again. I told her to phone Jim . He met her at the airport, and closed his workshop for 8 days while he drove about 1100miles to visit everything a tourist might want to see. And he would not let her spend a penny of her money. Some years later, my friend Bill Orde was trying to restore a 3 litre Bentley from a collection of parts. One chap near Dublin had a lot of what was needed, and Jim was only too happy to inspect it, report back, pass on the payment, and organise shipping. That, and two other lots of Bentley parts in England, were located through Robin Morris, who came here one day as a backpacker. I fixed the ignition problem in his "Rent a Bomb", he had a meal with us; and after he had a look at the cars and the workshop, I took him for a ten mile ride in the 1918 Mercer. Robin's brother had a business working on ( W.O.) Bentleys, who located the available parts; which enabled Bill and two other owners to restore their cars. When Jim and some of his friends came to Australia in 1988, they drove two of Bill Orde's early Italas in the F.I.V.A. Rally. And Jim brought stacks of presents for everyone, including another Waterford drinking set for Bill Orde. All up, he enjoyed paying a lot for those bits that I gave him from that parts car at Barellan, for which I paid a 100lb sack of new season potatoes, which cost me two quid. Recently I was asked how much I wanted for remains of a couple of incomplete chassis which could never be used to restore a car. I told Doug that they could be worth a million dollars, or nothing: As far as I am concerned, goodwill is always worth more than money. So I get a warrantee refill of the apple box with second apples from his orchard/coolstore/packing shed whenever we run out. Doug has built a stunning FIAT-based racing special for "Historic Racing "at Phillip Island and at Winton, and I have helped him significantly with that, too. Jim Foyle is gone, and I believe his car collection is all dispersed. How the radiator and RAC badge have been separated from his Clement I cannot imagine, (if that was his).

It looks typical of Gemmer, which came in several different sizes. Dimensions would be useful to determine what it could be used for; if it is not badly worn. It is not surprising that it is from a left hand drive car, but it could replace a missing right hand drive box if you can run the shaft with the worm gear underneath instead of on top; and then it will steer in the right direction.