Association of ABC Enthusiasts
NEWSLETTER No. 1002, Aug. 2013
This Newsletter is being hurried through, partly as a reminder of the Annual Autojumbles at Netley Marsh and Beaulieu on 6/7/8 September. Member Steve Hall has a stall at Beaulieu, Yellow/401, and it is suggested that any of us present should gather there at 14.00 on the Saturday to say hallo to each other, and exchange intelligence about ABC pickings on offer at other stalls!
Circulation of this Newsletter is 20. It includes a Membership List, but only to those of you who have signalled permission for your credentials to appear in it (Ref. disclaimer in Newsletter 1001).
The Technical Tip for this issue concerns Sopwith Front Fork Spindles/Bushes. As outlined in the VMCC Journal for February 2013, the set-up here is unusual in that the bushes move with the spindles, and it is the outsides of the bushes that form the bearing surfaces. The spindles are in fact tie-bars: they clamp-up the pairs of bushes and their central spacer tubes between the fork blades or swinglink ends to form rigid structures, with just enough shim-washers to prevent the swinglink cross-tubes etc. being clamped too. (The ‘interrupted’ spindles act as cantilevers rather than as beams, but the clamping principal is the same).
My forks were well-worn! Mainly, I think, from indifferent maintenance, but also from indifferent lubricant! Bicycle-style oil-cups were fitted adjacent to the bearings, not grease nipples. All the bushes were oval on the outside, which matched the insides of the holes they came out of! The holes all came up clean after reamering them through at dia. 17/32”. (They started life at dia ½”, so 90 years of toil had been quite kind to them). New bushes were tailored up using brass: the originals were of bearing-bronze of some sort, but, because fork bearings are not in continuous rotation at elevated speeds, rather in limited oscillation at low speed, I thought it unnecessary to spoil them. Modern grease nipples were fitted, an acceptable departure from original spec., I felt. Where nipple inside-ends would have protruded through thin bearing-surrounds, the nipples were halted at less than full-engagement with araldite! See picture below for the final result.
A reminder, that ABC Enthusiasts don’t need to be Sopwith owners. All are welcome, with ABCs of any shape or size: Scootamotas, generator/APU engines, even full-blown cars. The more the merrier…even with no ABC goodies at all!
Again we are indebted to Howard Burrows, for inviting us to plunder the treasures of his flickr site:
http://www.flickr.com/groups/1807920@N23/, which is exclusively ABC-orientated.
If anyone would like a re-issue of Newsletter 1001, cleaned of the Automatic Correction Cues (or whatever those curly, coloured squiggles under certain words are called), with or without Attachment, just let me know. At that time, I didn’t realise that such squiggles would be transmitted to you.
