The last time I saw GKE 68 was… I can’t remember. Probably a month or so before lock down.
Things were getting back to normal and I know Ian had spent a day or two making a start on things. Eventually we got together on a day I could make… We are off again!
Before I tell you about the work we did lets bring you up to date with other events and what Ian was trying to do when he was working on his own.
The next cunning plan is to get the clutch and gearbox back on. So Ian had been assembling the clutch, the cross shaft and forks.
Have a drawing…
I believe the clutch plate and cover went on ok but when Ian looked at the cross shaft and forks he realised they were trashed.
The cross shaft (blue) runs in some bonze (probably) bearings at each end. Well the bearings were worn away so badly that it had damaged the cross shaft. Worse still, the forks (red) were bent and twisted such that the trunnion parts weren’t opposite each other and didn’t point at each other. There has been some head scratching as to how the forks got bent. Possibly it was badly misadjusted and a heavy footed driver over pressed it. Who knows? Maybe we’ll find out when we try and reassemble it.
In the mean time the assembly has gone off for ‘gentle adjustment’. The cross shaft will get turned down and over sized bushes fitted, and the forks will get warmed up and realigned.
Back at South Eastern Coachworks the gearbox is sitting on the floor looking, well, bleedin’ heavy.
The other thing you’ll notice in that photo are new road springs.
A chap called Paul is planning to replace them, in fact he’s started work stripping the front. I’ve offered my assistance as engineering apprentice but we’ll see if I’m needed.
No point in having a gearbox if you can’t change gears. Round the back of the bus was this...
This, frankly, vast piece of engineering is the gear lever. The box at the bottom of the gear stick is aluminium so it’s probably lighter than it looks.
I believe it bolts directly to the side of the engine block. The shaft pointing towards the bottom left rotates to go across the gate and goes in and out to select gears.
To connect it to the selector on the box is a thin, lightweight metal pipe.
I lied, it’s huge too. All we are missing is Colonel Mustard in the drawing room. But that was definitely the murder weapon.
The other thing in the pictures is the hand brake. I just love the handle.
It’s beautiful.
Lets break off to something I actually got involved in.
One problem we noticed while changing the rear wheel bearings was that the outer race of the bearings on the right side appeared to have been spinning around. Not unlike Kylie.
“I know you’re feelng me ‘cos you like it like this…”
Sorry. Got carried away there.
The outer races and spacers should be a fraction wider than the hub such that when you bolt the drive flange on the races and spacers get nipped together. There is a drawing of it somewhere in this thread. They were actually thinner than the hub, didn’t get nipped and were allowed to spin.
In order to counter this problem Bristol made three sizes of spacer for the back of the hub. So we popped off the the Bristol bus dealers and… Oh no. Bristol were taken over by Leyland, and so on and so forth… Well anyway, we needed another idea to deal with this bit of unobtanium.
I had a thought that if we could find an appropriate thickness sheet of steel we could trap it between two bits of plywood and cut a ring out, creating a nice flat spacer. Ian twigged that the side of an old oil can was about the right thickness and made one.
So off with the drive flange, pop the outer bearing out, slip the spacer in and bob’s a creepy relative.
Sorry, that’s the only photo I took of the exercise. Unfortunately, once you remove the drive flange and half shaft you are so covered in oil and grease that picking up a camera is no longer an option. On the positive side, I’m sure Ian has very soft hands.
The other thing we started all those months ago was to remove the back half of the prop shaft so that we could replace the UJ bearings.
As with everything, it’s not little.
So where do you get replacement joints for a 1930s Bristol bus? Well apparently there was a British Standard for universal joints. The ones fitted to this (made by Hardy Spicer) were probably quite common. The blue spiders are apparently military old stock ones.
The book says…
“Hold the joint and tap gently.”
Yeah right.
“Ian, how much force do you need to use to get these joints apart?”
“Just enough to get them apart” came the answer.
‘Just enough’ turned out to be using two sockets as drifts and thumping it hard with a lump hammer.
Some time later…
If that was me I’d have to paint it.
As it happened the old joints weren’t in bad condition so we’ve put them to one side. I think only one bearing was showing some signs of trouble.
Steering box next.
Ian wanted to take it with him so he could, at least, make an inspection. In the cab the steering column drops through the floor with the clutch pedal on one side and the brake pedal on the other. These sit on a bracket bolted to the top of the chassis rail.
Not too difficult to get them out of the way.
Ian had to remove the bit you put your foot on on the clutch pedal to drop it through the floor - it just bolts on. But the brake one ferreted through the rubber mat ok.
The steering box is also bolted to the top of chassis rail just ahead of the pedals.
The ice-cream tub isn’t an original Bristol part. It’s just got the bolts in for the steering box. But clearly one of the bus’s mechanics is dead posh.
Anyway, this is where we came unstuck. The idea was to take all the fixings out, slide it off the side of the chassis and drop the column carefully through the cab floor. The problem is that one of the fixings is a stud that comes out of the bottom of the box and down through the chassis rail. So we have to lift the steering box about an inch to clear the stud.
Except…
The bolts that were put in to hold the cab floor in won’t let the box go up enough to clear the stud over the chassis rail. I think we’ll have to take the floor out to do this and the nuts they used are nylocks. It’s going to be a curse word of a job.
So we admitted defeat, left it and went home.
Before I sign off, SEC have been making progress too.
The interior side panels now have brown ’stuff’ on them.
I was wondering what the brown ‘stuff’ might have been. I thought 1939 might have been to early for some sort of vinyl but apparently it was invented in 1933. Whether it had become a thing in Bristol I wouldn’t know.
Many of the hand rails are in.
And…
Oh look, it’s got a letter box! (It’s for your used tickets really.)
The seat frames are in. Or at least some of them.
The wood is to make up slats for the floor I believe.
Now this is likely to be a problem. Remember that gearbox? There are two ways in. From underneath - which we can’t do because we can’t lift the bus to slide it under. Or through the saloon which is now full of seats.
Even if we got the box under the bus we’d still need an engine crane in the saloon to lift it into position.
These are the problems where better people than me start earning their salary. Not that any of them get a salary, they are all volunteers.
Some of the glass is in.
And…
Let there be light!
This all happened when COVID was in retreat. Currently more of the country is being locked down. Since moving the gearbox is going to need a few bodies and it’s likely SEC will rethink their policy on visitors to protect their own workforce… Well who knows when I’ll next see GKE.
That said a friend of mine is trying to get me involved in another bus restoration project and it’s a bus that Ian occasionally works on. Luckily for me it’s a bit too far away. But I’ll admit I’m curious…
You wait 50 years for a bus and two come along at the same time! They are like, er, well, buses.
James
