Hello again bus fanatics!
Mrs Sweetpea and I have been on a field trip to discover the geology and weather of Iceland. They have a lot of geology and a great deal of weather. So much weather that it nearly blew us off the island on a few occasions.
Anyway, before we went I did get a day with Ian playing with GKE68.
When we started the engine we had a huge oil leak from an open bolt hole on the near side of the block. Ian found some bolts to stick in the holes.
That should have sealed up our oil leaks. (Yeah right.)
Last time out we had fitted the radiator so if we chucked some water in it we could actually run the engine long enough to get it warm.
Ian got the watering can and started filling it up.
GKE was of the opinion that the floor needed a wash and all the water ran out of the bottom hose amongst other places.
Ian started buttoning up the leaks which was a miserable job as there was a large puddle of water right where he needed to work. Why is it that the puddle always forms directly under the leak that you need to fix?
While he did that I crawled under the middle to replace the webbing on the brake band carriers.
To explain…
The rear brakes are applied by pulling on two steel bands that run much of the length of the bus. About half way down there is a carrier that’s lined with cloth webbing to stop the band flapping around. Well the cloth webbing was knackered and some new stuff had been obtained from somewhere. Presumably some form of magic because I’ve no idea where you get webbing for an 80 year old bus.
For some reason that I can’t fathom I managed to remove both bolts that hold one of the carriers onto the bus in such a way that it fell off and hit me in the mouth.
You know that idiot kid at the back of the class playing with the crayons? I think that might be me!
Anyway, after fixing both carriers I managed to bolt them both back on without dropping either of them on my head.
I’m calling that a success.
While I was down there Ian walked past dripping so much water out of his clothes that I felt the splashes under the bus. He’s a more determined bloke than I am. You wouldn’t catch me mopping up puddles with my clothes while still wearing them. You’d find me sitting in a corner with a cup of tea, scoffing a tasty sammich, and contemplating my life choices. In fact I’d demand that the floor was cleaned, polished and warmed before I fixed the bottom hose.
A bit later we got the engine started and found the next huge oil gusher. There is a banjo bolt on the rear head that feeds oil to the rocker arm. It had no washers and was poring oil down the back of the block so we had to fix that. We did get the engine warmed up. Ian proved the clutch was working and that you could get a few gears. The rear half of the prop shaft isn’t fitted at the moment so we could spin the gearbox without it going anywhere.
One of the mechanics from the garage came over for a chat because the smell of diesel smoke had gotten him nostalgic for the old days when he worked on older stuff. He also brought a massive fan and stuck it in the fire door to suck the fumes out which I appreciated because the old girl was making my eyes water.
I spent quite a while standing by the engine bay watching it and listening to it. It’s bloody deafening. Interestingly it’s completely steady idling. My dad worked on a converted Bristol Lodekka with a Bristol BVW engine for several years. That engine used to hunt terribly when it idled. In fact I remember hunting idle did seem to be a bit of a thing when I was a kiddie. But this thing is totally even.
I thought I could hear a knock from around cylinder 4 and Ian suggested we pull the handle on the injection pump that would stop 4 firing. It did take some of the harsh edge from the noise so maybe injector 4 needs to wake up from its slumbers. The interesting thing was that even with one cylinder not firing it didn’t go lumpy. The flywheel must weigh as much as a house.
One bit of bad news… The starter still doesn’t work. It’s doing the clattery thing again. Ian has noticed a possible cause though. To explain the idea we are going to have to get really geeky so sit back for a lesson in Gardner starters. With colourful pictures…
This is the strangest design of starter that I’ve ever seen.
The pinion is fixed on the end of the starter shaft. To engage it in the ring gear the whole armature, commutator, and pinion move through the starter body. The other interesting thing is that the starter initially runs on low power. Just enough to spin it to allow the pinion to drop into the ring gear. Only when the pinion is engaged does the starter get full power and attempt to spin the engine.
Initially it’s like this.
The blue thing is a ring on the armature that trips a mechanism to allow full power.
When you hit the start button the motor starts to spin slowly and the armature moves the pinion into the ring gear.
When the pinion is engaged the ‘blue thing’ trips the mechanism that allows full power to be applied to the motor and the engine starts spinning.
What Ian noticed is that the armature is able to over shoot and drop the full power mechanism again.
I’m not sure if this would actually remove full power from the motor if it got it at some point. I don’t know exactly how the mechanism works. But it’s not likely to be helping so Ian has taken the starter to see if he can work out what’s supposed to stop the armature from overshooting.
This design of only applying full power when the pinion is known to have engaged has an interesting advantage.
The really big Gardners could be fitted with 2 starters and by cross linking the ‘pinion engaged’ switches and providing external contractors both starters would only get full power when both had engaged.
Oh yeah… I found the fuel filler cap.
So I fitted it.
Ah, those innocent days when people didn’t pinch your diesel.
James