Trailer mods

 

New Look Trailer.

I had the van chassis delivered a few weeks ago and use my bike trailer to move it around. N 18 ton truck got it to my house and with a bit of pushing and shoving manoeuvred it out of the back of the truck and down onto the trailer. Once on the trailer it was easy to move around. It stayed parked up for a week until I could work out how to get it off the trailer and into a space where it could be worked on. In between time it was used as a plant stand. 

Having got the trailer out I  decided to do a few mods to it so that I could store it in a smaller space. This required taking the welded side supports off and making them bolt on. At the same time I varnished the wood and repainted the metal bits.  I drilled the bracing struts so they would bolt back in the same place before grinding off the weld. I hacksawed the corner uprights off and welded on side plates to enable bolting back on. I welded captive nuts to the inside of the trailer base frame. 

The plywood base needed to be trimmed away to accommodate the nuts and bolts that would protrude. The wooden sides would also need a bit of attention to fit again. The sides got a varnish too. All of the original screw holes for the base and the sides were filled and re-drilled and new screws fitted. The old screws were working a bit loose so I needed to do something. I had this trailer box made to fit my bike trailer over 30 years ago so a bit of  restoration was needed to get it into pristine condition again. I added a few more things to the trailer over the last few years to make it easier to strap a bike to it. Even thought I have had it for years it is still an evolving project. What else can I do with this trailer?

On a rainy day I made another phone stand. This time I used another mobile phone mount. This one was a cheapy from Lidl that would not stay stuck to the windscreen. I was waiting for a project to present itself so when the rubber sucking pad parted company from the base it was time to do something with it and the second phone stand was created.

Why Electric?

 

Electric Vehicles.

 

What about electric vehicles? I have my concerns that we are going headlong into a disaster that will create so much pollution that we are not able to deal with. I have titled this article to include cars, motorcycles and lorries that will be built in sufficient numbers throughout the world to create the problem. I will try to show the arguments in a sensible way and why I have come to my conclusions but I will start with what I see.

Politically there is a drive to reduce pollution and all of that is being placed on the general public to make our environment better but I see no burden being forced upon industry that contributes over 30% to mucking up our environment. Covid has done us a big favour in showing how wasteful people are. Showing that much travel is unnecessary thrust upon the community by employers who don’t trust their employees. Now the buses and trains are empty. All the public transport is losing money and air travel is a fraction of what it used to be. I have benefited immensely living near Heathrow, the air is so much better now, the roads are less congested and the threat of the third runway is somewhere on the horizon out of sight for the time being. Politicians are forcing us to change to electric vehicles. No more Internal Combustion Engines (ICE) I don’t understand this as the most pollution comes from the particulate matter discarded by brakes and tyres not from car exhausts. That blows away but traffic that starts and stops leaves behind the particles that don’t blow away. The pollution on the London Underground assaults the senses and is far greater by orders of magnitude than anything above ground. There is a blindness by the politicians over this funded by big business. If you want to reduce pollution then you need to reduce traffic, even ban it from  some areas. Many cities have reworked their road systems in favour of bicycles during Covid and now want everyone to ride bicycles everywhere. This has resulted in a reduction of space for the majority of traffic vastly increasing pollution. The result of this is that the cyclists don’t use those cycle lanes because of the stationary traffic next to them. All I see is a waste of money. The politicians have no idea that the majority of the population are not able to use bicycles as a mode of transport. Currently less than one percent of the total journeys are made by bicycle in London. Most of the time the cycle lanes are empty along busy roads.  The cycling lobby are doing a great job in twisting the arms of local government but who is going to ride a bicycle anywhere in the pouring rain? As about a third of the population are over the age of 65  so who would want their granny to be out there in such conditions? Even if the weather is nice cycling anywhere requires a level of fitness that eludes most of the population and does not get you far. Where I live you take your life in your hands just trying to get to a safe riding area on urban roads. There is no respect out there. Using a bicycle is not a favoured mode of transport. You need an engine to be with the traffic and to do any distance. I’m not sure who is advising the politicians, but whoever it is they are out of step with this world. You would get better advice from any group of people in any pub, on any evening anywhere in the country for free.

My choice for getting around town is by motorcycle. I can get through the traffic, can park easily at no cost and my pollution footprint is very low. Since Covid with the risks of using public transport the motorcycle shops have been cleaned out and there are no scooters or lightweight motorcycles to buy. I have no information about electric bikes or power assisted bicycles or scooters. I have seen a few of these oversized childrens’ scooters around and they are quite quick. A bit too quick to be used on pavements. I only see that they have a rear brake and am not sure if they are entirely legal or even safe enough to be out there. At some point there will need to be legislation to protect people from themselves. I do like the idea of power assisted bicycles especially the, not so legal, 40mph ones. Now that is a beast. It is a motorcycle with pedals! Oh! A proper moped! We have a situation that there are bicycles out there that can exceed the 15mph limit that should be taxed and insured but at the moment it is a free for all and many are taking advantage of it. It won’t last.

Industry

Mentioned earlier, about industry, and their contribution to the environment needs to change. There is so much being produced I am not able to tackle all the issues so I will focus on the most important one, and the one we all rely on in the car industry. To think that we would have no more cars produced would be unthinkable, but I’m sure it was the same for the horse and cart at some point. Surmising that the loss of production could reduce the pollution levels by 30% at a stroke and save the planet is a possibility but that would cause a financial disaster and governments to crash is unthinkable but Covid has done  that for us. And we would still want our cars in this mobile society. Even if we keep the old ones running we would still need all the parts to replace the worn out bits. I see there is not much thought into how we can have lighter cars with narrower tyres. We have a trend for bigger cars and wider tyres making our cars heavier and fatter than ever before, Reducing the weight of a car requires less energy to move it and to stop it and being lighter needs narrower tyres all of which could reduce the particulate matter immensely along with using less fuel. Time to have a tax on the weight of the vehicle. Current tax is wrong, when cars pay much less than motorcycles to use the roads and some pay nothing at all. This excludes historic vehicles. The revenue must be very low having emissions as the bench mark. Who ever advised the government on this? Someone who has an electric car or bicycle?

The car industry needs to rethink how they make their cars. We have a surfeit of plastics that is polluting our oceans, rivers and countryside.15p on a carrier bag has not solved this. We have to do something about this. How about using all these plastics to make cars? Some things would have to be of metal. Steel needs about 1000 C to melt it down and turn the raw material into a sheet. Plastics require about 200 C to do the same. Using plastic could save 80% of the currently energy used cutting pollution proportionately and cleaning up the world at the same time instead of the discarded, one use plastics going into a big hole in the ground in a poor country.

 

 

Batteries

Pollution is the word here. Batteries are a big issue, in that the materials used to make the new high powered batteries being Lithium, Nickel and Cadmium are all very toxic and not massively abundant in this world. Mining them creates a wasteland where nothing can live because they are so toxic. Keeping them in the ground is the best option. Our world is going headlong into creating more powerful batteries using more toxic materials but these materials just don’t go away until they are chemically dealt with to make a safe compound as with the old alkaline batteries the materials are recycled. How do you deal with the modern mixed metal batteries? I don’t know. Does anyone? Where is the information about how we are going to deal with the problem of safely disposing of millions of old electric car batteries? Sending them off to anywhere that will take them I guess.

Safety comes into the equation. Has anyone being following the E motorcycle racing? One of the big issues with powerful batteries is the stored energy within them. When an E motorcycle is damaged the whole bike is contained in an explosion proof chamber until the energy within the battery dissipates. Fires and explosions have been reported on these. You might think that your electric car battery is “Safe” but what evidence do we have to support that? There is no information about what happens to an electric car in a major accident. Government vehicle safety tests don’t appear to cover this. What would happen if a battery or batteries are damaged in an accident? We know it would have the same outcome as with an E bike but more so as they are bigger batteries. Now let us put some energy into an electric car. So far there are only about 30,000 electric cars on the road. There are not enough charging stations even now but what will be needed will be fast charging stations at motorway service stations for people to carry on their journeys. You need lots of  volts to do that somewhere in the region of 50,000. The more volts, the faster the charging even 80,000 has been muted. This will not be free as someone needs to pay for this roadside technology. It is a disaster waiting to happen. Forcing 50,000 volts into a battery in 20 minutes will make it very hot indeed.  Mains electricity is only 220 volts and most people know how big a bang that can produce when a fuse blows. How big a bang would you get with 200 times more potential?  I do hope they don’t put these in the same area as fuel pumps. The assumption that most of the charging would be done at home, slowly and overnight. At present there are not enough electric cars to have any real impact on the electricity supply but what happens when it becomes a million or more? Will there be enough electricity available from the National Grid? If demand required more power then that will increase the pollution levels as most of our supply is based on fossil fuels. This does not make any sense. Is it any different from burning fossil fuels in your car?

What may be done in the future?  

I have read an article published in the Road Magazine Aug/Sept issue 2020 featuring Pat Symonds Chief Technical Officer for F1 and he thinks that the ICE still has a future with different types of engine and fuel cells. Synthetic fuels tailored to suit a specific type of engine are possible drawing carbon, hydrogen and oxygen from the air. In this article he says that electric cars produce twice as much carbon emissions  than conventional cars because of the amount produced in building the batteries.

In my view if you want to tackle pollution and make the air cleaner then going electric is not the solution. Making better use of what you have is the way forward. People want cars, so smaller, lighter and more fuel efficient is the way. It is up to the manufacturers to make then without pollution  making processes.

Le Petite Van Gris Part 5

 

Le Petite Van Gris Part 5

 

What to do on a rainy day? Lock down continues as now we are stuck in the house waiting for the rain to stop another storm has left us awash. I have just returned from a few days on the Norfolk Broads with my brothers. They have an annual trip there to go sailing and fishing. I use it as a retreat to do some reading and writing and generally catch up on the events that I need to write up. This year, there was not much to write about so I spent the time playing with an outboard motor that was not running very well. It does now. It does not seem I have done very much but I have been working steadily on the van engine. It was an oil burner; there was as much oil outside of the engine as inside and burn marks on the piston. I would have to replace them.

 I had heard about a 730cc conversion done by Pete Sparrow so thought I might invest in one. I thought it was a bolt on upgrade like the 652 conversion but not so. After talking to Max at their workshop it turns out to be a much more engineered project with the crankcase needing to be modified to take the bigger liners, the camshaft re-profiled to make best use of the increased induction volume and some work on the ports to help the gas flow along with lots of bits replaced to ensure the rebuilt engine is in as good a shape as possible. This goes along with a price tag of £2 to £3000 and there is a waiting list of several months for them.  This lead me to the decision to just replace the barrels and pistons. The 652cc conversion I was told by Max was not worth doing. I did the oil seals as a precaution along with new oil cooler, fuel pump and oil filler neck. I have cleaned up and painted the cowlings and the inlet/exhaust manifold with heat resistant paint. The rocker covers got some paint too.

 When I received the new barrels and pistons I set about fitting them. The big and small ends had no play in them but when I removed the left side piston I found the small end bush was tight on the gudgeon pin and the bust was rotating in the small end eye of the con rod. I had a replacement bush but that would not grip so I had to go back to the original split bush, tin it with enough solder to stop it slipping and reamed it out to get a nice fit for the new gudgeon pin. Not the best thing to do but if it does get noisy I will need to get an oversize bush fitted. I put together a simple ignition circuit, got the points to work, managed a spark with the old ignition coil and some spare HT leads and we were in business. I made a stand for the engine to get it off the ground. I had half an old gearbox that I could fit the starter motor to along with the main 2CV electric cables and the starter motor worked too. I turned the engine over for a few minutes to prime the lubrication system so that it was well oiled before I started the engine. I dropped a bit of fuel pipe into a can of petrol then connected up the battery and tried starting it up. The carb primed with fuel and after a few revolutions with the choke it fired up. There was no exhaust system fitted so it was noisier than usual but not ear shattering. I ran the engine for a minute. I then asked Gita to take this video of the engine running.

 Success I now have a serviceable engine for the van while I wait for the big one. So not much done in the last month?

Jack's

 

Jack’s

 

Another 2CV virtual club night using Houseparty and four way conversations. It is a shame more people do not take part.  All 2CVers welcome to participate on the third Monday of the month at 8pm. The following week I had an invite to meet up with John from the LE owners club at Jack’s Fish and Chip shop in Bagshott. He was not going to be able to join us for the virtual LE club night on the first Tuesday of the month so I met up with him at Jack’s. In the biking world Jack’s is a bikers’ meeting place where likeminded old guys meet up on their equally old bikes to enjoy a good natter and discount fish and chips. It was a good turn out with everyone respectful of social distancing. 

I arrived on the Kawasaki and, shortly afterwards, John on his Velocette Valiant about mid day. There were some choice old British bikes but I enjoy the Italian bikes and on his day there were two to choose from. Arriving with a whisper of smoke a little 125cc Rumi two stroke twin motorcycle arrived. Unusual in white and twin exhausts it looked the part. Rumi were more famous for their scooters and their sports engine with twin carbs. They even produced a racing bike in the late fifties and early sixties. 

Parked not far away was this superb Moto Guzzi, an ex police model the Falconi. It is the horizontal 500cc single that evolved from the Thirties and this model had enclosed bacon slicer flywheel. It stared and ran very nicely. I do like these machines and would love to own them but I have nowhere to store them, I have the other disadvantage  of where I live with that unless you have a rocket ship to join in the traffic you take your life in your hands. Motoring has lost patience with the world and aggression rules.

 You just have to get out there and fight for your road space. I had been putting it off but I have now taxed the Buell so I have been out on the road enjoying this sports-tourer. Now I need somewhere to go. In between forays out on the Kawasaki to try to get my biking brain working lockdown has left me with a bit of apprehension where is it safe to go? While not going out |I have been working on the engine for the Van. I know the chassis is waiting in Croatia to be delivered but no idea when so filling in the time I have lapped in the cylinder heads and polished up the rockers, ground in the valves and replaced the guide seals.

The bores are good so this is just a little fettling to check out the engine. It has not run for more than 20 years. I am going to run it before it gets fitted in the Van to check for oil leaks as I have had to replace the oil cooler.

Le Petite Van Gris Part 4

Le Petite Van Gris Part 4

Surprisingly, I have been quite busy doing bits of things but nothing much to write about. I have been playing with my LE Velocette. It required a new battery and two new cooling fans bought for £1.57 each plus postage. They are Maplins 92mm x 25mm, as cheap as I could get on e-bay. I had fitted the pin connectors when I installed the first ones about 20 years ago and so replacing the old ones was quite quick and easy. Going for a test ride I was giving a bit of throttle bit to check the carburetion after some adjustments and blew off an oil pipe to the oil cooler dumping the contents of the sump on the road. I have now removed the oil cooler until I can get a better way of ensuring the pipe stays on the fitting. Jubilee clips on a straight shank do not keep this rubber pipe on under pressure. I am getting out a couple of times a week on the Kawasaki for a ride around. I find it difficult when you have so few places open and even those have no toilet facilities available when you get there.

I have spent some time working on bits for the van. The engine covers are being stored in the van while I am trying to decide what to do with the engine. This one has a heavier flywheel which will suit the van better but the original engine has composite covers and this makes the engine much quieter. Both are in need of a bit of TLC. I have created the wiring harness and wired in the LED reversing and fog lamps.

 

The original handbrake bracket in the cab was removed for use in a kit car. I am taking the opportunity to reposition it for my convenience to the right of the gear lever and turn it through 90 degrees so it points at the right angle as I did with the Burton. I had to do a bit of modifying by adding suitable brackets to mount it under the parcel shelf.

 

I contacted Burton to see if I could get some door mechanism parts. It took a while for them to respond but were not able to supply me with what I needed. I would have to just make it myself. I used the Burton rod system to secure the bottom part of the tailgate.

The starting point was a boot lid handle and lipped boss. The lipped boss became the internal door handle and things moved on from there. I used 8mm mild steel bar with stainless steel bar for the  ends, a couple of oilite bushes pressed into alloy blocks and a couple of hex bar connecting pieces. All suitably machined by my good friend Bob who lives not far from me. He has the facilities to do the required engineering. 

I spent a few days working the mild steel bar to the right shape to fit the inner door handle and got it all assembled. I need to paint the bar at some point but that can wait until the body is painted. It will need to be removed for that anyway. 
It has now been fitted to the tailgate and works a treat. I surprised myself that it just needed a little tweaking to get it to work smoothly. I now have a secure lockable door mechanism that can be opened from the inside.

 

The Little Grey Van Part 3

Le Petite Van Gris

Part 3

Lock down continues and although not going out on the bikes or in the cars restricts what I can report on we are having virtual car and bike club meetings to keep in touch and I started the LE. It is the only bike I can ride at present.

In between Gita and I have been exercising every day for an hour to help fill in the day and I have launched into garden projects like finding somewhere to store garden tables and chairs to free up patio space to have more pot plants even to the extent of creating a plant trough for tomatoes and beans topped off with extending the irrigation system to cope with daily watering.

Now back to the van, the interior lights have been fitted into the roof support beams and wired them in. not a simple job as I had to drill the holes laying on my back and getting hot swarf assaulting me in the process. At the same time I made some vents in the two outside beams to let hot air out and these have simple controls to blank the exit ports off. I have started rubbing down the undercoat that I put on a few weeks ago and that is hard work. 

I fitted one tail gate switch but its position made it vulnerable so decided that a long lever microswitch would be a better option. It was a challenge to wire in the ten LED spot-lamps into the van roof beams and get the set up working. Three sets of lights when needed and two sets for when the tailgate is opened. Along with this I have made two consoles for the rear upper corners that contain power sockets and a USB port. The left one has two switches in. One for power to the sockets and the other is the interior light switch. We may be sleeping in the van so I wanted a convenient way to turn off the light. I have also been preparing a wiring harness to the rear of the van that will run along the chassis. I will use the mounting bolts of the tail light clusters as earthing points and have a 40amp cable to it. There will be no earth to the chassis at this end of the van.

The rear light cluster has been interesting in that it is an after market LED set up and having had all the light fitting holes filled I have a blank canvas on where I could put things. There is a degree of symmetry that makes things look right. There is a fitting problem in that around the tailgate things that stick out need to be avoided one that they will get damaged and they hurt when you hit them. I have chosen slim flush fitting units for that reason. There are still loads to do before I get around to working on the engine. I have an oil cooler somewhere that I can fit when I find it having sheered the pipes removing it so I could get to the plate behind it to clean it up and give it a coat of paint along with the rest of the engine cowlings. All have been cleaned up and painted. The garage looks like the hanging gardens of spare parts.

The Little Grey Van Part 2

Le Petite Van Gris.

Part 2

Writing this on a Tuesday evening, the sun is shining and it is week five of our lockdown. I would like to be driving one of the cars or one of my motorcycles but have decided to stay at home and find things to do. I have already  had one bike club virtual night and two car club virtual nights. It is much better to be meeting up with people face to face but we can no longer do that. There is a bright side to this in that we can all have a drink which is not normally the case. So far no one I know has come down with this Corona virus but it has not been the cause of other people passing away. Sadly, dear friend, Bill Crosby passed away at the end of March. He was a strength that made things happen envisaging a London Motorcycle Museum and made it a reality. He saw it through to its final breath and left an immense legacy for us all. On another recent death and that was of the Great Stirling Moss. A man who put some sparkle into Motor Racing and as a child I watched many of the Grand Prix’s on a black and white tele. 

What have I been doing, well I started to strip a heavy flywheel engine that I want to use in this little van. I was kneeling down for so long I hurt my ankle and couldn’t do much for a week so I did standing up stuff like de-rusting the engine cowel. Once cleaned up I found some 20year old white hammerite that I smothered everywhere. This old stuff really keeps the rust at bay.

After much rubbing down I primed it and top coated with gloss black. Looks OK as it will spend it’s life hidden under the bonnet. More fun with the rear door of the van. Having got it in place using wood screws I needed to replace them with some stainless button head bolts. This is now done but getting the door in the correct position afterwards has been a pain. Fine when I had wood screws but with bolts it just did not sit right. I have got that done now. The mounting brackets for the gas struts also needed the screws replaced and after getting some 50mm bolts this is now done. The lower brackets required longer bolts but all not have had the brackets threaded to take the 6mm bolts so I don’t need to fit nuts. 

It all seems to be coming together. I have rubbed down the whole of the glass fibre van body and preparing to give it another coat of paint. This time with  a roller instead of a brush. I hope the finish is a bit better. It took me three days to rub the body down and I had to stop because I I had no finger nails left.

Another little project is the Burton gear shift linkage. My brother, Adrian, has made up a new linkage. The rubbers are gone and replaced with a ball end joint and steel block. The Burton gear shift tends to eat the rubbers because of the greater pressure on the levers as a shorter gearbox lever is used. I did a video to see what happens to the linkage when you change gear to get some idea if this would work. I know a longer version works as Citwins make one already.

 I’m not able to use this as it is too long for the space available on the Burton. I’ll let you know how this goes.

Although not using the cars and bikes they get regular inspections and start ups just to remind me of what they sound like when you crack open the throttle. One day soon I hope?