I haven’t managed to get too much further since my
last update in early September, other ‘life’ stuff getting in the way, and
although I want to finish the Humber as soon as possible I don’t want it to
become a chore. That’s a really good way to ‘lose the love’ and never finish
it, I’ve seen many and bought some unfinished project cars over the years where
the owner has just lost interest, and usually a lot of money also! Anyway on
with the show;
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| Bonnet top frame with side hinge. |
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| Bonnet with skin template. |
As I mentioned in the last update I chose to build
the bonnet, (hood for the American readers), before the body as I thought it
would be easier and give me some good practice. Boy was I wrong! With the
various shapes, curves and hinged sections it really tested me out. Luckily
I have an old 1929 Willys Overland that I can get ideas from, to see how the
professional cars builders did it.
As usual there were some hold ups out of left field.
The side sections need to be stiffened; this was done in the old days by rolling
a ‘bead’ into the edges of the metal. This adds two right angles, (per bead),
to the metal therefore reinforcing it. I had bought a bead roller a while back
for this purpose but it needed a stand, and for me to learn how to use it. The
fabrication of the stand was pretty straight forward. However it did lead to my
wife having concussion and a broken Hamate bone in her wrist. I won’t go into details
but just say the fulcrum action in trying to straighten a steel arm resulting in Svenja being catapulted up, and
we all know what goes up must come down – in this case with a crash. I am
really sorry sweetheart ;-(
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| The bead roller ready for use. |
With the bead roller now usable I practiced, and
practiced, learning a lot, the main thing was that I was pretty shit at it. Oh
well practice makes perfect!
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| Aluminium practice piece |
The Luvax dampers rebuild was still ongoing, but as
of this today I have one finished.
The bees wax impregnated jute string seems
to be working at sealing the oil reservoir around the worn shaft. From what I’ve
read, worn shafts where a common problem causing oil leaks and damper failure.
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| Soaking the jute string in melted bees wax. |
As I mentioned before, they were a complete mystery to me until I stripped one
down, cleaning the congealed oil out of the small passages was a pain I soaked
them in diesel for a week and tried to blow them clean with compressed air, this
was repeated several times before ready for re-assembly. Luvax Damper oil is no
longer available, (no surprise there), so I used Studebaker steering box oil which
should be a good alternative. I had a devil of a job getting the oil into the
vane chamber, in the end I found I had to work the vane back and forth until
all the air had been expelled, which took about 150 million times back and
forth ;-) and it had to be slow, if you did it too quick oil became aerated and
you had to leave it until the micro bubbles escaped out the filler hole. All in
all a very time consuming process.
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| Coiling the string around the shaft ready for the gland nut. |
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