Martyn G

Dear all, Posting an advertisement on behalf of Mr. Wolf Grodd, who is not a member here but I thought this would be topical given the recent ALF threads. I hope this is OK! Wolf is selling his 1924 ALF, rebuilt to resemble one of the Mercedes 90 chain-drive tourers owned by Count Louis Zborowski of Chitty Chitty Bang Bang fame. In his own words: "I acquired an incomplete pumper some 15 years ago in Sydney, Australia. I always wanted a large engine, veteran chain driven tourer. All necessary components came with this purchase. The chassis was shortened by 13 inches, the 25 inch wheels are built around the original hubs, the sprocket was enlarged by 50% to take new chains and raise cruising speed to over 100 kms per hour. A complete new body was constructed with a new bonnet, firewall set back, steering column lowered and beautifully deep buttoned green leather seats front and rear. The whole project is styled on a 1915 Mercedes 90, which had a mere 9 litre motor. This of course retains its original 14.5 litre, which has never been apart and shows no sign of wear. Rebuilt gear box and clutch, shortened shaft between engine and gear box, original differential, the paint finish to the body is a matt black "barn find". After years of exciting motoring it is now time for a change and I invite expressions of interest. This is surely unique and I'm inviting offers of around $80,000 U.S.". I've attached a picture to give an idea of the looks of the car. The car is located in Brisbane, Australia and was a feature car in Restored Cars magazine in 2002. It really is a spectacular and different car, even for a converted ALF! As I say, I'm only posting this on Wolf's behalf and don't have too many further details, but please feel free to ask and I'll do my best to answer. I do have several more pictures and can email them on request; or if you may be interested in purchasing, please feel free to contact Wolf directly at sleepingbeauties@bigpond.com.au for more technical information and pictures. Best regards, Martyn Griffiths

Hi Ken, Thanks for the useful information. It will be a while before I get to examine one of these machines in person and I'd been wondering how the backfires reach the oil pan. Don't the oil filler necks have a cover of some kind? Is this the only way the problem can occur? How frequent is it? BTW, Tom has created a group on Yahoo for ALF speedster discussions - if you'd care to join, it's at: http://autos.groups.yahoo.com/group/AmericanLafranceSpeedsters/ If you join, it's easy to post whole albums of pictures, hint hint! Cheers, Martyn Griffiths

Al, I could really use a handbrake lever, and a seat if you have one. Maybe more down the line. Could you please email me at nipngnwm@q-net.net.au if you have these items available? Thanks! Tom, Good work! Joining up now! Cheers, Martyn

Chris, thanks, I know Hal, I'll ask him about it. Al, thanks also. I figured they were probably 38s. I think the rears are 38's too though, or the car should slope noticeably to the front (mine has 40's on the rear at present and does slope). Any idea of the make of these diamond-tread tyres? Tom, that looks like the yellow car currently for sale at Hyman.com, yeah? The builder has really gone for the Mercer look. Not bad, but I like cycle fenders best mesself. Cheers, MG

PPS - this car won at the Ohio concours in 2003. Does anyone have any further information or pics? I would really like to obtain more pics if possible. It looks to have a few features I'd like to plagiarize! Also, does anyone know offhand the make & size of these tyres? Cheers, Martyn

PS - Tom, are you going to fit dampers? A lot of people do, one of the UK speedster guys said online somewhere that it was more to prevent bad behaviour at high speed than actual shock damping. With the springs on a diet, the car will be more prone to axle misbevaviour I guess. Thanks to all for the good stuff re pan vents. That'll come in handy. Cheers, Martyn

Restorer32, I agree, a club or some sort of online community thing would be a great idea. There's already a forum for ALF fire-equipment buffs and the guy who runs that seems to be tolerant, but a lot of the membership might not be. Tom and I found out that the Yahoo ALF fire-equipment list is definitely *not* a friendly place for speedster owners. I think maybe a Yahoo ALF speedster-only list might be a good idea? That should be easy to find and join. It would be good to have a permanent place for discussion - this thread has been great, but it's temporary and not easy to find with a general web search. There are definitely dozens, maybe hundreds of speedsters out there, and many owners must be online. The Yahoo lists allow for a fair-sized archive of photos, so we could show off our machines, put up technical graphics, etc. Maybe a home page to back it up and direct surfers to the list, too? I can set these kinds of things up if you think it would be worthwhile. BTW, I have also laid my hands on a nice 1924 Type 12. So to speak - it hasn't actually shipped yet. Can't wait. Cheers, Martyn G

They're two-wheel-drive, with a heavy bronze transaxle and sprocket on each side. The rear axle is solid, and suspended by semi-elliptics with a shackle at each end (because you have to be able to tension the chains, so there's also a kind of swingarm/adjuster). The brake drums do double duty as drive sprockets. BTW, there are brakes only on the rear wheels, but they have both inside shoes and outside bands, separately actuated (IIRC, the bands are the main foot-operated brake). Some of these trucks were retrofitted with factory aftermarket four-wheel-brake kits. The lurid drifting was done by non-ALF racers mainly, I doubt the fireys would have been too keen on it!! Same sort of engineering on Mercedes Simplexes, though.

Ha ha! Mebbe, haven't worked it out - the usual capacity is 14.5 litres not 16, this one's bored as Restorer32 says. There are also smaller 6-cyl ALF engines eg Type 38 and Type 12, can't recall capacity offhand. One's 11 litres, IIRC.

And here's the other Four I mentioned, up for auction early next month in the U.K. It's not bad really: http://www.classic-auctions.co.uk/detailb.php?&sal_salno=S03C&car_carno=15920&sal_type=CAR Significantcars.com says they have a 1915 speedster coming soon also. Cheers, MG

PS if anyone would like to see video of an ALF speedster running, there's some here: http://www.couldbemine.co.uk/lafrance.htm This machine was for sale in the U.K. on www.prewarcar.com earlier this year, but has now sold. Cheers, Martyn G

Restorer32, I'm killing myself laughing here at the "less seasoned" bit! Hope you weren't burned or otherwise injured though? Didn't know about the explosion hazard and it's a bit of a dampener. Would it be feasible to cast up a stronger case with ribbing, or would that just result in the pan blowing off? How bad is the shrapnel and flame hazard really? I think if I ever find one of these I'll be using the electric-start only...ideally by remote control! I spotted the cast cowl and was going to ask about that, almost couldn't believe what I was seeing. Ditto the radiator; I thought you might have cut down or lowered the original or something. How many leaves did you take out of the front springs? I can't believe the amount of work you've put into this thing. The design is brilliant, great job, you deserve to be proud. BillP...don't say that...I've been looking all year...there's too much competition already, hehe!! Prices are shooting up, actually. A year or two ago two Type 75's were advertised at 6K but you wouldn't get a deal like that any more. Bore on these is usually about 5.5". Dunno the stroke, offhand. Supposedly you can use some Lycoming aero-engine pistons, and there are supposed to be John Deere ones that also fit.

Wow! Restorer32, see what you mean about the design work. That's a ton of stuff you've done there. Love the tube thing. Oil cooler? Chris, motor looks nice. How far have you got now, is it back in the car? How much work did you need to do to the motor? Tom, awesome Hudson.

That's one of the Speedster Motorcars replicas I guess; they used to make kits, but only turnkeys now I think. I fancied the kit, more fun to get your hands dirty. Very hard to find a boattail kit now.

OK, here's my try at posting Chris's 1916 ALF... ...seems to be working; all I did was resave it with a new filename and highest quality setting, like I said, boards are weird! Chris, thanks for mailing that, and it would be fantastic to see your progress with this project as you go along, hint hint!

Oh well Chris, thanks for trying! Will be great to see if you can fix it. If you get nowhere, email it to me at nipngnwm@q-net.net.au , I'll be happy to give it a try for you also. Might just need to be resaved or something before the board software will allow it, boards can be funny sometimes. Cheers, Martyn

Chris, it looks like maybe there is a space in the filename? Try renaming the file without spaces then re-send, that might do it. I've been talking to Hal myself. Was he good to deal with? Seems like a good guy. Tom, yeah, I hear they have unbelievable torque. Great-looking motor too, something really different. You're definitely not the only one! I've collected pics of a few dozen speedsters off the net, guess there must be hundreds in all. There are some real stunners. Restorer32 - pics!! pics!! Please!! I for one would be really interested to hear about the tech details but am in Australia so can't stop by anytime soon. Did you use the original sprocket hubs and turn down the teeth? How did you attach the new sprocket rims? Were new drive chains hard to get? How did you know when to quit, with the flywheel? From the capacity, this is a six, right? Sorry for all the questions! Cheers, Martyn

Gloves? Sorry!! <img src="http://forums.aaca.org/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Got no useful info. Did you get it sorted eventually? Best, Martyn

Tom, You're not alone! I am actively shopping for a circa 1915-1925 ALF myself. (Heh! When I first started looking for something to replace my current project it was an Auburn boattail replica I was after, but I couldn't find a decent kit. Yours looks beautiful. Turnkey, or did you build it?) Anyway, I ended up getting obsessed with these monsters instead. The one you liked is a 6-cylinder, I like it too, but I don't get these prices at all. Why pay that for what's obviously a very old conversion, probably needing quite a bit of work? It'll have a high mileage, in addition to whatever hours were on the engine if it used to be a pumper. It may have "history", but so do all the original fire engines, and you can pick a running one up for 15K with 3000 miles on the clock, and do the conversion yourself. The one at Hyman's is a 4-cylinder, I agree it is too 'pretty' or fussy. There's another four on a UK auction-house site, but it's similar, and yet another on oldclassiccars.com, but no photos of that one (it's a bit cheaper though, IIRC). No other six-cyl speedsters around right now that I know of, but there are a couple of the fire engines for sale here and there. Of course, you can spend a packet restoring one, especially if you need to get new valve guides etc made. Anyway, glad to see *I'm* not alone! (Doesn't mean we're both not crazy, of course.) If you'd like to yak more about these things I'd love to hear back from you. Cheers, Martyn G

Thanks Pep! I'll save that for when I need to do it. I have new felt seals for my car and am about to fit them (it was torn down when I bought it). Can I ask, since you'll probably know. How do they fit? Yes, I's that iggerant! <img src="http://forums.aaca.org/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" /> Cheers, Martyn G

Hi Clive. Does the body have a wood or steel frame? I wonder if it's an Australian-bodied car? Were bodies built in South Africa? If so it would be interesting to see how they compare; I'd love to see pics if you have any. Anyway, you should try fitting the carb. Just see if you can get a good idle and take it from there. I have a cast-iron carb on my DA, and though I haven't got the engine running yet I'm told it ran fine with that. You can get away with a lot, eg a couple of weeks ago I even saw a DA manifold that had been chopped and a downdraft carby added on top of it. Apparently it ran better than the original. Cheers, Martyn Griffiths

Oh well - thanks anyway, Clare. No, haven't advertised there yet - it is on my 'to do' list however. Do you have to be a member? It seems like a useful club to join anyway... Cheers! Martyn

Gene, If you can find good used parts it's probably cheaper, but if you have no luck try these guys: http://members.ozemail.com.au/~ausrov/DODGE%201929.htm they have repro running boards (someone told me some body styles vary in the shape of the boards, so check dimensions before you buy)and rust patches for radiator shells, and these guys: http://www.vintageandclassicreproductions.com/Dodge.htm have repro distributors. They're both in Australia but should be able to ship to you no problems. The second outfit also usually has a stall at Hershey I think, and someone in the club does combined orders from them, so that might be worth checking out - could save you on postage. I haven't ordered from these co's yet so can't comment on their service etc. Cheers! Martyn

PS Clare, my car was once totally complete, it was owned by my family and we drove it when I was a kid, my dad sold it in '84 but I bought it back a few years ago. It had been stripped down and some resto work done, but had lost hood, running boards, and other bits and pieces. Have replacements for some of them, but others "went missing" from my garage at some point, including a full set of bumpers. That's life I guess. I do still need a fair few bits I haven't mentioned, because most of them can be had as repros or through the clubs and/or the chances of finding originals are about nil. (Good Australian tourer rear door outer and inner handle, anybody? Vintage and Classic Repros only make the front handle). May as well ask while I'm at it - anyone got a set of Richards-body tourer hood irons? Oh, also bonnet catches, and the U-shaped tail-light stalk? Just the stalk, OK for the light. PPS Clare, my pillars are the square type and are 17 3/4" from the hole in the scuttle to the top of the top thread. Would your spare frame fit do you think? Thanks again!

PS another point, yes the sealant can be pretty thick stuff, so make sure all the moving bits do have proper clearance once it has set hard.