Jowett Kestrel Rebuild & Restoration

[julian]

Thanks to all &,Tony of course you are right about not missing an opportunity to buy something that might come in useful one day - I guess that's why we all come to have so much stuff in our lives!

I went ahead with the welding as a friend offered to help me out with it. He used a professional MIG welder to build up the teeth, which was followed up by grinding and lots of filing and measuring. The end result is as shown below:

I've now re-mounted the gearbox and have been able to check the meshing of the starter motor gear and the flywheel ring gear by manually engaging the motor gear and turning the engine backwards so that the starter gear remained engaged. All seems OK, so the next stage is to try driving the engine with the starter - I may mark up the teeth with engineers "blue" to see how things look.

Having re-assembled the clutch, it's now clear that two of the clutch operating levers are not touching the release bearing when the clutch is fully released. It looks as if there is some wear on the finger "tips", so I'll probably have to remove the levers and call in services of my friend for some more welding!

[george garside]

none of the toggle arms should touch the thrust bearing when the pedal is released. There should be a sixteenth of an inch free play on all 3 toggle arms before contacting the thrust race. It is also very important that the adjustment on all 3 arms is exactly the same

george

[Jack]

Hi Julian,

Just spotted this on ebay, is this not the thing that is damaged on your car? Might be worth having even if the teeth have been built up with weld already - if they are worn previously it sounds like they get a fair bit of wear in normal use.

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/JOWETT-BRADFO ... 58c6262576

But does this item fit a Kestrel? It lists 8hp and Bradford, does this have the same ring gear?

Jack.

[george garside]

the ebay ring gear is for the CC Bradford only and is the normal shrink on veriety as used on most engines. The pre war and CA CB are completely different

george

[george garside]

Julian the profile of the 3 toggle arms needs to be very precise and identical on all 3, have you tried the club spares bods for new/better ones. I think they are identical with those on the CA & CB bradfords and pre wars from 1930 but you would need to check that

george

[Forumadmin]

See clutch problems in Javelin section.

[julian]

Thanks to all for the advice & suggestions on the clutch setup.

The Kestrel came with a "spare" engine, which has seen better days, but did have what looked liked viable clutch operating levers, so I spent some time removing and cleaning them up. When test fitted to the Kestrel it looked like they were going to do the job as they contacted the thrust race and could be adjusted to the 1/16" clearance. I then had another look at the levers I had removed and compared them to the "spare" engine parts and noticed there was very little difference in dimensions. After further investigation I realised the movement on the original levers was restricted by the "knuckle", near the pivot end of the lever, touching the back plate. All I needed to do was file a little metal off the knuckle and I was then able to set up the clutch correctly. I was also able to confirm the 1/16" clearance resulted in 1/2" movement at the end of the clutch pedal.

I need to do a bit more work on the linkages as there is still too much lost movement ( about 1" on the pedal), but the clutch operation now seems to be OK.

[julian]

I've been steadily progressing with work on the Kestrel, but have neglected the forum a bit, so here is an update!

In an effort to improve the clutch backlash I decided to remove the operating lever that clamps to the main shaft and have the holes built up with weld. It proved to be very difficult to remove in situ and in the end I had to remove the gearbox (again) and use a puller to remove it. Pictures below show the wear to the holes in the lever and associated rods.

I've now re-mounted the gearbox and once the welding is complete I'll be able to re-assemble the clutch levers.

Other work has included making a coil mounting bracket and fixing a spare Lucas coil I had rather than used the body mounted coil that was fitted to the car when I acquired it.

This then of course allowed me to run the engine on the chassis and check out the petrol tank, pipe and pump. So after adding a gallon of fuel to the tank and manually priming the carb, I was able to start the engine and check for leaks etc. I'm pleased to say all ran OK, so I feel the chassis really is finally getting there, although I keep finding other little finishing off jobs...

[julian]

... one such job was making 2 new rear body mounting brackets. One had a poor repair and the other was in 2 parts.

I made new brackets from a piece of angle iron and fixed in place with round headed screws & nuts:

I've checked the bumper mounting brackets fit OK over the screw heads as these were previously rivets.

I've now started working on the bodywork and so far have removed the front floor panel and seat rails and carried out some wood repairs. After re-enforcing the mounting trestles I've been under the body and cleaned-up and treated the wood on the underside which all seems to be in reasonable condition. The picure below shows a very empty front cabin view!

[julian]

... and similarly empty rear cabin:

Returning to the clutch linkages here are photos of the welded & re-drilled parts:

I've now re-assembled all the parts and, after a bit of fettling, the clutch operation is now spot on with just the 1/2" free movement due to the 1/16" clearance between the fingers and the thrust race.

[julian]

The first job on the bodywork was to remove the battery box repair which had almost rusted through at the base. The repair consisted on a complete new box that fitted inside, over the front & along sides of the original battery box apperture.

Having removed this, the original condition of the front panel was revealed:

View from underneath:

I intend to make a new smaller box that fits inside the aperture and rivet/spot weld this to good metal. Some repairs will also be needed to the front panel, but this will reveal the section that was covered over by the old repair.

I've also started removing the rust & paint from the engine bay panel and have this mostly stripped back to metal. This brings me to the subject of how best to treat any remaining rust - it's almost impossible to remove all traces of rust unless the whole area is shot blasted, which I don't intend to do. Any words of wisdom from my fellow restores would be very welcome.

[Tony Fearn]

I've also started removing the rust & paint from the engine bay panel and have this mostly stripped back to metal. This brings me to the subject of how best to treat any remaining rust - it's almost impossible to remove all traces of rust unless the whole area is shot blasted, which I don't intend to do. Any words of wisdom from my fellow restorers would be very welcome.

Hi Julian,
Have a look at my post in Natter re 'Micro-blistering of 30 year old paint'.
Chris Spencer put me on to the Bilt Hamber website viz:-

"It is important that the rust is neutralised once you have prepared the panel - I recommend Bilt Hamber Hydrate 80 - link here" : http://www.bilthamber.com/corrosion-pro ... treatments

I've a feeling that you have already used one of these products.

Tony.

[Forumadmin]

Classic car forums offer many suggestions regarding rust removal and prevention. Long term solutions require removal by grinding or cutting out of all but thin surface rust. Rust between seams and joins that cannot be seen perhaps can be neutralised with some chemicals usually phosphate based. Some form of seam sealer after priming with a phosphate rich primer should be applied to prevent further ingress of moisture. Then after painting with an appropriate top coat which could be an under body sealer or in this case a special battery box paint. Dousing in wax oil to fill any remaining cracks helps.

[julian]

I read through a number of articles and comments on the internet & most reports seem to conclude that non of the rust converters seem to work all that well. In the end I decided to give Hammerite Kurust a try as I've used this in the past with some (if not total) success.

It certainly appears to give a good finish and leaves the previously rusted surface a blue/black colour. I've applied this all over the engine bay panels inside and out & worked well into the seams.

This photo shows the engine bay area after stripping old paint and sanding rusted areas:

To repair the battery box I folded a piece of plated sheet steel to fit inside the remains of the battery box compartment. I used 16 pop rivets to hold the repair in place and similarly applied a patch plate to the inside of the top section of the compartment. Photo shows the inside view of the box and Kurust treated surfaces:

Photo of engine bay area and side panels treated with Kurust and filler used to smooth over the joints between old and new metal.

[julian]

..and here is my first attempt at spay painting - admittedly only primer, but it cetainly improves the appearance and hopefully will be a good base for the gloss coat. I thought this was a good area to practise spraying and is much easier to access while the body is off the chassis.

As I've been stripping the paintwork, I noticed that the top layer of paint on one of the "B" posts came away very easily and revealed what I believe is the original paint underneath. I carefully removed the remainder of the paint and t-cut the surface to produce a surprising finish as shown below.

This confirms that the Kestrel was a 2-tone green/black and there are other areas I've found on the doors and catches which also confirm this.

I'm hoping to be able to use this part to get an exact paint colour match.

This started me thinking about the bonnet - would this have been 2-tone also (i.e black top/green sides) or would it have been all in green?