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This restoration is really using all of my skills! I’m now into woodwork which does make a refreshing change from oily stuff and paint.
As I said before, the sides of the grassbox are made from 3/4″ plywood and the metal brackets that hold it in place on the mower are secured with steel screws that have been shortened down from 1 1/2″ to about 1″. This means that most of the screw that is in the wood is the smooth shank under the head with only a few threads that really grip the wood tightly. As a consequence many of the screws weren’t actually doing anything as they had chewed out of the holes they were in, so a remedy had to be found.
Each screw hole had been drilled through the wood and each one appeared on the inside of the grassbox. Masking tape was used to temporarily seal the holes then matchsticks were glued into each hole using PVA glue; the masking tape was there only to keep the glue in place whilst it hardened and will be removed as soon as it has set.
I’ve now put this to one side to harden whilst I turned my attention to the chain guard. This is now partially complete but needs a little more fettling, so that will be next inbetween stages on the grassbox. One thing I discovered whilst looking at the original photo’s was that the rim of the guard was edged with some dark coloured material, presumably to prevent it rubbing the paint. It hasn’t got it fitted now and must have been thrown away years ago but it rang a bell in the back of my mind- I had some ideal rubber strip hanging in the garage which I’d bought for edging the overiders on the GT6 a few years ago. I tried it for size and it fitted on the steel edge of the guard, but I’ve only got about 12″ of it spare so I’ll have to order another strip from the local Triumph dealer.
That’s it for another day. Mrs. Geoff is treating me to a fish and chip dinner!
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It was the turn of the grassbox today. According to my sources there were only six of these grassboxes made as the “proper” ones were still being designed. This one consists of two 3/4″ thick plywood sides with an aluminium wrapper plate screwed to them. They also have an aluminium angle profile strip around the edges to afford a little extra protection, but what I thought were dome-headed rivets turned out to be woodscrews with a slotted head.
First job was to wash it all down to get the muck off, then a good hour spent with the rotary polisher fitted with a sponge pad and cutting paste. It has come up quite well but there are quite a few scratches on it- these haven’t had a detrimental effect on the paint as the metal is aluminium and hasn’t corroded so I think I’ll leave it and see what it looks like.
The woodwork has also largely escaped damage but the top veneer has started to lift in places so I rubbed it down with a fine scouring pad then treated it to a coat of clear satin polyurethane varnish. This seems to have gone into the cracks and sealed the surface so I was happy with that.
The worst part of the grassbox was the steel bracketry that holds it onto the machine. Rust had got under the paint and bubbled it up; it looked a mess so I took the decision to strip them back completely to bare metal and repaint. The woodscrews holding them on had also been on and off a few times, so much so that many had a very wide slot in the head that was difficult to get the screwdriver to engage in.
At this stage it was apparent that the grassbox had been hand made as the woodscrews had been shortened from 1 1/2″ to 1″ long so that they didn’t protrude into the inside of the grassbox. That will be tomorrow’s job- to find some more woodscrews to match these originals.
Have you ever tried to find a woodscrew these days with a slotted head? Most of them seem to be crosshead or torx. Nobody said it was going to be easy though…….
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I wouldn’t waste my money on the stuff, Angus! Give me a pint of Marston’s Pedigree any day!
Not too much action today as I’ve been at the farm loading up ready for South Cerney next weekend. One thing that I’ve managed to do is to clear my bench of all of the odd jobs, such as bolting the trailing seat back together and giving it another coat of varnish to seal it.
One thing I did notice was that the one thrust washer which mounts against the frame inside the roll had obviously been given to the apprentice to do. The centre hole has been drilled off to one side giving the whole washer a lop-sided appearance but it shouldn’t affect how it works. Things like that are part of it’s history and should stay like it, I feel.
Anyway, the only thing left to do to it now is to attach the seat cushions which will be away for at least another week, so it’s keeping the GT6 company in the other garage.
In the words of British Rail in the 70’s, we’re getting there!
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I’m not having any of you accusing me of slacking so I’ve been in the garage again today. Not too much more to report apart from the fact that the axles on the trailing seat seem to be in remarkably good condition with original paint still showing through where it hadn’t been worn off by the rollers. All of the bolts have been cleaned up and re-entered into their respective holes so that they are now doing the job they were designed to do. All of the thrust washers and retaining screws for the rollers are still serviceable and so will be used again, but I’ve spent the morning wiping everything down with meths and spraying it with satin-finish varnish to preserve it. It’s all got to dry now before I do any more building up; now it’s Saturday afternoon, where did I put that beer….?
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Before getting stuck into the polishing and fettling I had one last dusty job to do, so I thought it best to get that out of the way first. I’m talking about dismantling the trailing seat and it fought me all the way.
The seat pan has already been cleaned and rubbed down; the cushions are away at the trimmers to get repaired, so the drawbar and rollers were next on the agenda. It really is a weighty piece of kit so to reduce the weight I decided to remove the rollers first. Somebody had really tightened up the securing screws at the ends of the axles and it didn’t help that they were dome-headed with a recessed hexagon for an Allen key- I was convinced that each one was going to round off just before they cracked and loosened. The drawbar is adjustable and is slotted into the front of the seat platform but the locking bolt had not been tightened for some time, being only two turns in. This meant that the drawbar was absolutely solid inside the outer tube and only plenty of oil and knocking it backwards and forwards got it loose enough to come apart.
It’s now all rubbed down with wire wool and WD40 then cleaned up with the Screwfix degreaser, although a lot of the grease build up I chiselled off with a paint scraper beforehand. All of the smaller parts are soaking so as soon as they are clean I’ll start on re-assembly. An interesting aspect of the clean-up was that the drawbar had been filled with nuts by some industrious little rodent; I do hope that he didn’t go short of food when the last owner got rid of the mower!
I’ve also included some pictures of the lid now that I’ve removed the masking tape from the lettering. Unfortunately I don’t have the correct shade of gold paint to touch up the letters, so that will have to wait until I’ve been to the shops again.
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Chains are always difficult things to clean properly and if you leave dirt in them they have hundreds of places that it can grind away at. Putting grease on the outside just makes up a grinding paste and accelerates the wear, so cleanliness is very important.
When I took these chains off a few months ago I put them straight into a bath of petrol to give them a good long soak. That soak took two weeks before I got around to getting them out again and all of the old oil had been dissolved. Once the chains had dried out I then worked them backwards and forwards to make sure all of the dried dirt was removed, then hung them up to dry. That was about six weeks ago, so when I came to re-oil them this morning they were well and truly clean and dry.
What I find best these days is to heat up a pan of grease on a camping stove- Mrs. Geoff won’t let me do it on the house cooker- and drop the clean chains into the boiling grease and leave them boiling away for about ten minutes so that they reach the same temperature as the grease. At this point most of the air has been pushed out of the spaces in the chains and I then leave it all to cool naturally; that way the grease is sucked into the cavities on cooling.
I then heat it up again to a liquid and fish the chains out, wiping them with a cloth to clean the excess off and then I can pour the grease back into the tin to use next time.
Anyway, that gets the chains clean so then all I have to do is fit them to the mower. That’s exactly what happened without any further dramas, so tomorrow’s work will be cosmetic I think.
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I managed to avoid a soaking this morning, but only just! No sooner had I turned the mower around and dragged it back into the workshop than the heavens opened. Phew!
Starting on the cutting cylinder, I thought it would be the work of a couple of minutes to re-attach the drive sprocket. No such luck! I think it must have had some mishap when it was away because the centre bolt just would not enter the thread perpendicularly (a good word, I hope I spelled it right!). Luckily I had the correct taper tap for that thread, so gently and using plenty of patience I managed to restore the thread to how it should be. A good dose of grease and it all went together perfectly.
Next came the roller drive sprocket, and I suspect that somebody was in the middle of a repair when it was decided to replace the mower as the sprocket was loose on the shaft and the nut barely threaded on. On closer inspection it appears that somebody has made a new sprocket and made quite a good job of it; the shaft it fits on looks like the Woodruffe key that locates the sprocket has worn and rolled somewhat in it’s groove, then somebody has cut another groove on the opposite side of the shaft. That would have been fine, but the new keyway has been cut too far towards the centre of the mower and cuts into the shoulder that the boss butts up against. To compound the problem even further the external thread for the locating nut has been bent slightly out of true. I’m not going to swear, not yet anyway.
A new key was filed up and the old keyway used to seat it in. The sprocket was then pushed onto the shaft right up to the shoulder- it was then that I discovered that the boss was too short by about 60 thou and the shaft was still sticking out of the end of the sprocket. An appropriate spacer needed to be made, so an old Trusty washer was cleaned up and opened out with a step drill then a slot filed in it to clear the key which was also making a short appearance. Once that was on, a plain washer and the nut were then wound down and a finish tighten applied. It all looks tight and business-like so I think I’ll breathe a sigh of relief at that stage.
Chains next….
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Back to the workshop today. The cylinder fitted in very nicely with the new bearings and screws kindly supplied by Allett Mowers; the old cylinder bearing that I couldn’t get off the shaft had obviously posed a problem for somebody as the red paint had turned brown with the heat applied to get it moving, so a quick dose of grey primer and then Ford Sunburst Red over the top sorted that one out.
On Sunday I masked up the cutting edges of the bottom blade then gave the whole carrier assembly a coat of primer and Allett Green. This morning it was dry enough to handle, so I fitted that as well and adjusted it up using the four-point adjusters. In this machine the cylinder is bolted rigidly to the frame and adjustment is done by moving the bottom blade up to the cylinder; the advantage in this is that the cutting height remains constant as the bottom blade wears. If you bolt the bottom blade rigidly to the frame it does give a very strong structure but the height of cut gets lower as the bottom blade wears.
Anyway, enough of the sales patter (but it’s difficult not to after thirty years!). The concave had been repaired at some point in it’s life but the repair looked to be a good one. It’s also part of the machine’s history so I thought I’d just tidy up the frayed bottom edge to smarten it up a little; it fitted well with the three clips that fit over the bottom blade carrier and two 3/8″ BSF nuts on the top secured it in place.
The rest of the day was spent tidying up loose ends such as attaching the hinges to the lid, the catches on the back of the lid and touching up heads of bolts that needed a coat of green paint. I’ve even gone to the trouble to wash the stays for the lid- these are made from lengths of recoil rope that loop through parts of the framework and stop the lid from going too far and breaking. It would have been easier to use some new rope, but there wasn’t much wrong with the originals and I’ve tried to keep as much of the original machine as I can with this rebuild.
Tomorrow will come the big move outside so that I can turn it around and work on the drive chains. I wish I had the luxury of a large workshop again!
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