Tyres and stuff !

[Andrew Eales]

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So, the paint is on, and the problem of the 2 rear tyres (rotten and flat) is resolved.
Firstly having looked at the price of new cross plys and fallen off my seat I looked at alternatives.
Option 1, was space saver tyres from a vauxhall vectre which you can get at the scrapyard for £18 each and are usually unused. - However they are quite low profile and have "For Temporary Use" written on the side of them. This is fine I thought as I will only be using the Bradford "temporarily" anyway ! A re think got me wondering what the police and insurance view on this might be and I discarded this plan !
Option 2. London Taxi tyres. Available on the bay from £30 each. Great plan - but the hole in the rim is too large for a standard tubeless schrader valve, so it has to be inner tubes.
Again good value at about £10 -12 each. However due to the relative skinniness of the tyre, it is a pain of a job to get the inner tube in and position it so you can get the valve sticking through the hole (my hands are still aching this morning). Other than that its the best solution at £40 a corner - result.

The engine - starts and ticks over fine but coughs and stalls regularly when you rev it up under load. Its as if the spark is weak and the extra fuel is putting it out ! Trying new points once I wrestle with the second rear inner tube. Anyone else had this problem. ??

[Andrew Eales]

So, the new points seem to have helped, however the bradford still back fires quite a lot on the over run. Too rich maybe ??
Took it for a quick "blast" down the road.
Not a lot of go about it, but that seems normal and it ran OK, but the brakes need adjusting as it pulled right quite violently on braking.
I think the biggest issue is clutch judder when taking off. Its quite marked and I now wish I had changed it when i had the engine out ! A job for next summer maybe, unless it settles down.
Its quite bouncy which i think might be the fact the body is now much lighter. I may need to reduce the springs on the rear. (I was warned the taxi tyres were a bit bouncy)

I could do with a windscreen as well as its a bit breezy even at 30 which is as fast as i took her up to....

[David Kemp]

If you want a softer ride, spread the spring leaves with a spring spreader, it looks like a G clamp with wedges. Then pump grease between each spring leaf. If you can't find a spring spreader, lift the wheels as high as you can off the ground then inject with grease. This is messy but very effective. You need to make sure your shocks are in good condition & filled to the correct height with oil.
Lastly remove some spring leaves, Bradfords were both 8cwt & 10cwt somewhere there is a list of how many leaves for each,this should give you a guide of what leaves can be removed safely.
If money is no object place teflon leaves between each spring, a lot less messy than grease.

[Tony Fearn]

.........remove some spring leaves, Bradfords were both 8cwt & 10cwt somewhere there is a list of how many leaves for each,this should give you a guide of what leaves can be removed safely.

George, have you any references for this action. I have Bradford-type rear springs on my 1933 'Flying Fox' at the moment. I could do with a little softer ride, especially when there's only one-up.
Tony.

[george garside]

Tony / Andrew. I don't have any official references but would suggest a process of ''suck and see''. On the basis that a Bradford could carry 8 or 10 cwt officially aand up to 50 % more unoficialy! ( I have had 15cwt on board!) for a car with a light arse end the bottom two short leaves could well be done without but I would remove them one at a time. With them removed there may well be too much undampted springiness and so on Andrews Bradford 'special' a pair of decent telescopic dampers could be fitted along with the originals. Tony would probably not wish so to do in order to retain originality but maybe Bradford dampers would be more efficient than the pre war veriety ??.

I would be very wary about removing leaves from front springs as so doing may upset the castor angle.

Andrew - Haave you any idea of the weight of your vehicle? The Bradford Utility delux weighed in at 17 cwt and was road tested by the Motor as having a top speed of 54 mph and able to reach 38 mph in 2nd gear. The basic van was around 14 cwt so your special should be no more than 12 cwt and with its lower wind resistance should , I think, be capable of 60 ish at 4000rpm. When I was running a Bradford as sole transport it would easily touch 55, hold 50 on a flat road and with but a puff of wind astern could go up to 60 ( at which speed the front end became worryingly light!) The CC engine became beautifully smooth at around 4000rpm.

AS to the spitting back there could be several possible causes. Air leaks at carb flange or throttle spindle,weak mixture, incorrect or worn jets, over advanced ignition at idle, incorrect tappet settings, poor valve seating/ burnt valves, etc etc. Its very much a question of working through the possible reasons one at a time .


george

[David Kemp]

On Bradford handling, the New Zealand club did an excellent article on improving the Bradford steering. The only part I remember was heating the steering box mountings & bending so the steering column is not being flexed. It would be well worth your while trying to get a copy of this. Bradford's it seems can steer straight!

[george garside]

around 1960/61 one of the steering box mounting brackets on the crossmember broke off. I phoned Jowett Engineering at Howden Clough at 6.30 pm , not really expecting anybody to be there. ' The phone was answered and I aasked if they had a steering box cross member for a CC Bradford. The response was '' right or left hand drive sir!''. The guy then said that he could have it on a 7pm train from leeds to Stockport and that it would be at Stockport station by about 8pm if I could collect it. It was and I did and had it fitted by 8.30 and was back on the road!. No prepayment was requested and the invoice came with the part.

A few days later I took the precaution of welding a couple of extra chunks of metal from the outside of the brackets to the cross member to be 100% certain that they would not flex in any way. (I carried out this mod automatically on other Bradfords I owned)

The correct amount of free play on the burman steering box is half an inch at the rim of the steering wheel and of course most are worn well beyond that limit. Adjusting the pressure on the peg and or removing shims will not completely cure the unwanted free play as so doing would make the steering over tight around the straight ahead position which is where most of the wear on the peg occurs. My solution to this problem was to mount the steering box, drained of oil, and column in a bench vice. Coat the peg and worm with course valve grinding paste, refit lid, tighten adjuster and then spend half an hour or so rotating the steering wheel from lock to lock whislt occasionally tightening the adjustment. The box was then cleaned out with paraffin and the operation repeated with fine valve grinding paste followed by a thorough washout. The worm and peg, now licely lapped in to each other could be adjusted to the original factory settings using shims and peg adjustment as necessary.

I am not recommending this procedure but just recounting the method I used. i.e if you do it its at your own risk as I have no wish to be sued!

For what its worth the Commercial Motor in 1948 said that ''steering, acceleration and braking are all that could be desired''. The motor in 1948 described Bradfords steering as ''sports car steering'' commenting that 'Perhaps the most surprising feature of the whole chassis is the steering, whih is very light and requires lless than 2 turns from lock to lock, It is in fact , a form of steering which would do credit to a full scale sporting car''

In 1952 'the motor, described the Bradford as ''delightful to drive'' and that ''familiarity soon makes the driver perfectly happy at the wheel''.- and during their test the ''covered many miles of open roads at speeds of up to 60mph''

george

[David Kemp]

A friend recently drove a restored MG from the 50's , his comment , was it reminded him of the Bradfords he drove 40 years ago, the MG owner was not impressed.

[Andrew Eales]

i'm planning on removing the 2 lower rear springs and weighing the whole vehicle on 4 bathroom scales ! Might take a wee while to report back.......