Jack's Stupid Bradford Questions - Part 1

[Jack]

Afternoon all.

Since the last few days have resulted in several interesting discoveries involving Project Codename NAR 744, including its evidently rebuilt engine, the various interesting bits of woodworm, and a solid chassis in need of little more than a good hovering, I have started tinkering.

Since Mr Clements knows about as much about Bradfords as I do, he has applied similar logic so far but we are going to need a bit of help.

Question 1: We have found TDC on the flywheel by looking through the hole in the bottom of the bellhousing. But where is TDC marked on the crankcase? There is a possible line on the top of the crankcase, but hard to tell if this is intentional or a moulding line from being cast. We did look in the manual, but it didn't give us a nice pretty picture.

Question 2: There is a very small but clearly intentional hole through air intake directly underneath the carb, which when trying to start the engine resulted in petrol dripping onto the top of the engine. Is this correct? Won't air leak through the hole? Why is it there? Surely this will result in a bit of a fire if fuel goes dripping through there onto a hot engine?

I can promise a multitude of opportunities for anyone who knows anything about Bradfords to be able to answer some exceptionally straightforward questions over the next few months. Luckily it will serve to show everyone just how very well designed these vehicles are - after all anyone can make something more complicated, truly brilliant engineering is coming up with a simple solution. And the Bradford sure has got a few of those!

And a photo just because everyone likes a nice car photo. And to show it is nearly finished, clearly.



Jack.

[David Kemp]

The line on the crankcase should be 1/2 way in the inspection hole. Given this is a CC bradford, I don't know about CA or CB models. There is an article about the manifold hole & yes it is meant to be there, all my years of Bradford ownership I never noticed one.

[StevenGray]

The TDC line should be visible on the inspection hole at the top of the bell housing as per Davids comment. (probably full of crud)

On CA and CB it is a line on the top edge of the crankcase

Steve

[Jack]

Righto. Thanks all so far, we got it to fire with a combination of jumpleads and tweaking, but didn't get beyond firing, it isn't ready to run yet.

With that in mind, stupid question 3: The car looks cosmetically like a javelin/jupiter one, are they the same? Might be useful if we have any problems with fuel end of things.

Jack.

[george garside]

both are 30 vm but choke and jet sizes etc different - full info should be on here somewhere on info sheets produced by the club for the Bradford some years ago.

george

[Jack]

Thanks George. Plan to cheat and swap Bradford for known working carb put back on the shelf Out of interest, is there a readily available replacement carb that people have used on the Bradford, or is this likely to be of fairly limited benefit? It certainly doesn't seem to be sucking in huge amounts of air, and I'm not exactly going to be racing it, but curious if it has been done.

Hopefully I can track down the info sheets, I am currently reading what I can find in the Gallery and internet, should have some more paperwork coming from the rally this weekend that I can read and understand (perhaps) to help too.

Planning while Keith has cleared out the garage and gone to the rally to have a look underneath on Sunday, see if there is any serious rot that needs treating underneath, but initial signs at the front end look pretty good. The handful of splinters that should have been the rear wheelarch was more concerning, but we can get that sorted.

Jack.

[george garside]

Jack , I have not personaly come across any other carb being used on a Bradford . However Jowetts did experiment with a twin carb version of the CC engine in conjunction with a 1940 4 speed gearbox. Horace Grimley told me that the performance increase was sufficient to make it difficult to handle!

george

[StevenGray]

A carburetor data sheet can be found here http://www.stationary-engine.co.uk/Zeni ... thSP48.htm

They are pretty simple units, i find that I have to remove and clean the jets and passages occasionally

As the petrol in the bowl evaporates there tends to be sediment that gets left behind which causes the problem

Steve

[David Kemp]

A friend many years ago put an early skoda carb on, but my choice would be stick with the zenith, they are simple & easy to clean. Clean out your fuel tank & put a good filter between it and the carb.
Only problem I ever had was rust in fuel tank, & worn butterfly shaft. These both due to age of car not Zenith design.

[Jack]

Back again, yet more questions. Question 4: The rear wheelarches are shot, the wood is rotten and the metal arch needs enough welding to make it more sensible to replace. Is there any reason not to use ash-throughout plywood for the wooden section of the wheelarch?

It seems like creating an arch like that is going to be really quite wasteful using timber, and an exterior grade ply seems to be stronger in more directions as well as easy to cut into a single arch for this hidden section. I apprectiate that to some it might be heresy, but this is, after all, not concours restoration.

Also (I suppose question 4.1) there is plenty of room to use thicker material to replace the wooden arch, and would provide more strength to do so. Any compelling reason not to beef this up a bit? I am considering a campervan type folding bed in the back, which would rest on the wheelarches (that we are replacing) so the additional strength seems like a good idea.

Jack.

[Jack]

Back again, yet more questions. Question 4: The rear wheelarches are shot, the wood is rotten and the metal arch needs enough welding to make it more sensible to replace. Is there any reason not to use ash-throughout plywood for the wooden section of the wheelarch?

Also (I suppose question 4.1) there is plenty of room to use thicker material to replace the wooden arch, and would provide more strength to do so. Any compelling reason not to beef this up a bit? I am considering a campervan type folding bed in the back, which would rest on the wheelarches (that we are replacing) so the additional strength seems like a good idea.

Jack.

Well, it seems plenty of people have read, but not posted, as I've had three different people give me some great advice offline on suggestions above. So I will try and summarise their advice:

Plywood isn't a great idea because despite being stronger in the various directions and probably easier to fabricate into the shape we want, we would need to screw into the side of it and that would either split the ply or require strengthening where screwed in, and as a result not a great option - it would take longer to make it work than to just use ash.

Beefing up the arch and the thickness of steel used for the arch seems to be ok, other than increasing the weight marginally it shouldn't affect things.

This leads to Question 5: Leaf springs - we have disassembled and found a broken spring on one side, and the leaf spring expert yesterday declared them significantly worn (and they are certainly rusty and fairly tired - the end of the lower springs has worn a rut into the underside of the spring above, and even if we clean up and recondition them the spring rate won't be right and they will eventually snap at that point under load. On that basis I am looking at replacing the rear springs, as the reconditioning cost is going to be more than new springs. Has anyone found new springs available off the shelf, and if so where from? A quick bit of measuring up gives us 34" between the mounting points, and 34 3/4" inches along the face of the spring.

I have found some springs which are very similar in size, however I could do with the original spring rates for the Bradford to see if we are in the ballpark on this. I couldn't see this in the paperwork we have, other than my very unscientific method of getting both springs and standing on them and measuring the deflection has anyone got the spec for these?

Jack.

[Jack]

Nobody has mentioned Question 5, so I am assuming that a readily available replacement hasn't been found. It sounds as though JCS have secondhand springs that might do the job, though these will (by their nature) be original springs and so 60+ years old. On Sunday I am hoping to get a good look at an alternative at the Woburn Abbey Classic Car thing, and Monday hopefully will be picking up replacements if my measurements and general guesswork are correct.

More stupid questions to follow, though we are now making progress with the bodywork (and a bit of painting, which I am not very good at) so the questions might be more woodwork-related and other sensible things to help the ash frame along.

Jack.

[Jack]

Not so much a question as a picture or two to keep everyone up to date with progress, but stick with it as there is a question at the end

We managed to convince Amy that this was the final colour, and that it would go nicely with the green van. She seemed to be not entirely happy with my choice:



Luckily this was just the yellow primer, though it isn't a million miles away from the yellow colour that a few Bradfords are painted in.

But they soon changed colour, the light wasn't great so they look a bit darker than they actually are. Amy did not get to see this colour, but hopefully she will approve:



This shows the colour a bit better, as well as the metallic finish.



I know the purists might not like it, but we had to do something with these wheels - they were significantly rusted and required repairs in some cases, and short term (since we are not doing a full rebuild, just getting it back on the road for now) it will do nicely to grab a bit of attention at car shows from perhaps a different audience to the usual Jowett enthusiast. We opted to paint rather than powder coat so that it would be easier to remove in future if required.

And now for Question 6: Does anyone have a good ash supplier they could reccomend? We need to order a fair bit of timber for the wheel arches and the back corner repairs, and struggling a bit on this. I can arrange transport from pretty much anywhere in the UK, but need to know who I can trust to supply good quality timber suitable for the job.

Thanks,

Jack.

[ian Howell]

Jack: -

When I started the repairs on my Long Four I bought an American Ash beam 100mm x 200mm x 3m from an old established local timber merchant, after explaining why I wanted ash and why it had to be well seasoned. Apparently English ash may be better but it is quite difficult to find, may not be as well seasoned (demand means it doesn't stay in stock long) and is probably very expensive.

This was probably a mistake as I have spent (too) many hours cutting it into bodywork section sized pieces.

However, none of the finished pieces have warped and I still have quite a bit of timber left. I am contemplating a further rebuild of the 'A' frame as I have had to 'patch on' quite a few bits to get the doors to fit well. The 'A' frame was my first foray into body building.

[Keith Clements]

If you have counted the wheels you may see why ...


As Jack is rather large and found out last night he would need to extend the van to sleep in it.