|
Fascinating stuff. A couple of the shots show the trucks had short prop shafts, extended with chains.
|
>> Fascinating stuff. A couple of the shots show the trucks had short prop shafts, extended
>> with chains.
Why is that? Not being old enough to know the reason, is it because they were unable to manufacture long propshafts that were strong enough? I noticed a lack of centre bearing.
Those old cars look strong on the surface, but I assume that they didn't have a particularly stiff structure. Some of the trees that they are wrapped around are relatively small. I've seen modern rally cars with their internal multi point roll cages hit big trees and bounce off them. No sign of damage (none to the tree either apart from a bark grazing).
I certainly wouldn't have wanted to be the victim in some of those mishaps.
|
>> >> Fascinating stuff. A couple of the shots show the trucks had short prop shafts,
>> extended
>> >> with chains.
>>
>> Why is that? Not being old enough to know the reason, is it because they
>> were unable to manufacture long propshafts that were strong enough? I noticed a lack of
>> centre bearing.
>>
Possibly because this was before the limited-slip differential was invented. Much of this era's heavy haulage technology still derived from the steam engine; Scammell in this country also manufactured lorries with chain drive up to the 1930's I think.
|
|
That theory dawned on me earlier today. Must have been some ferocious wear and tear on those chains.....never been keen on them for bikes, even with modern techie ones.
|
>> .......... (don't mention the bald tyres!)
That's not what I call bald. My 1936 Citroen, bought in 1956, had completely bald, smooth as a baby's bottom, no tread whatsoever, remould tyres when I bought it and the same tyres when I sold it. Those were the good old days!
|
You can't claim a crossply tyre is bald until it's showing canvas in the middle of the tread for at least half its circumference.
Steel-braced modern radials aren't really the same. When the steel starts to show it gets frayed and the tyre is very likely to puncture itself.
Honestly you young fellows today don't know you're born. Everything on a plate with h&s officials nannying you and wiping your bums. Tchah!
|
|
Ok A.C you are the Daddy..;)
|
Interesting stuff.. I liked the Ahrons fire engine with it's bell and spotlight just behind the wreck in the first picture....looks like part of the accident but I'm sure it wasn't. Like today, the brigade turned out to help.
I have a few black & whites of RTAs in Manchester in the past, liberated from a skip at headquarters. I think that only fatals were officially photographed but some look very minor.
Worth scanning and posting ?
Ted
|
>>Worth scanning and posting<<
Go for it Teddy!
One of the things that 'got me' about that DiM article was the amount of cars wrapped around trees, literally.
/(*_*)
|
>> Worth scanning and posting ?
>>
>> Ted
>>
Yes please.
|
As promised, here are some original police shots from Manchester Only a couple look serious enough to warrant a police photographer but we don't know the circumstances.
s479.photobucket.com/albums/rr152/1400ted/12/?action=view¤t=RTA12.jpg
No.1...I don't know the location but the Morris seems to have come off pretty badly compared with the older car.
No.2...I'd hazard a guess at a Ford Pilot.....big tow rope on the axle.
s479.photobucket.com/albums/rr152/1400ted/12/?action=view¤t=RTA34.jpg
No.3... This one is at the junction of Deansgate and Quay St, The bike carries a local reg.no. of about 1949
No.4... Upper Brook Street......no rules on roping then, Pat !
s479.photobucket.com/albums/rr152/1400ted/12/?action=view¤t=RTA5and6012.jpg
No.5...Great Ancoats Street/Lever Street. The Austin Devon has come off worst against the Blood Transfusion van. The Land of Cakes is now, sadly, no longer.
No.6...Another Morris perhaps ? I think this one's in the yard at Platt Lane police station. That ACA reg.no. would suit SWM nicely
None as violent as the American photos, but a good idea of the roads and accidents of the period.
Ted
|
|
Thanks Teddy, no seat belts / air bags / crumple zones in those days so I dread to think of the injuries incurred :(
|
|
ACA would have been a Denbighshire reg.
|
She has an ACA now but it's a prefix one.
Ted
|
>> Fascinating stuff. A couple of the shots show the trucks had short prop shafts, extended
>> with chains.
It allows the gearbox and final drive to be mounted on the chassis rather than needing a more complex axle. This means the prop shaft doesn't have to cope with large relative movements, or any appreciable plunge. As the engine will be slow running, there's not much danger of whirl, and so, little need for a centre bearing.
If the chainwheels are close to the front spring shackles, the shaft centres will not move far in a relative sense as the suspension moves through its travel, and so, the chain drive and rear axle is very simple. The differential is still there, but is inside the chassis mounted gearbox unit.
As the technology to build the final drive into heavier axles developed, getting rid of exposed chains with their associated lubrication / wear difficulties was an obvious improvement. Heavy chains like those pictured would have imposed serious dynamic problems at speed, and so, these were a low speed design.
|
>> If the chainwheels are close to the front spring shackles, the shaft centres will not move far in a relative sense as the suspension moves through its travel
The jewel-like little Honda S600 sports car had that arrangement, with rear suspension through trailing arms that doubled as oilbath chain cases. That meant of course that the shaft centres were perfectly distanced at all points in the suspension travel.
Despite its Oriental charm I don't think the S600 was all that successful. I wouldn't be too surprised if that rear suspension and drive system became a bit troublesome/expensive after rough treatment or many miles. But I don't really know. It also had a twin-cam 600cc 4 cylinder engine with four tiny little carburettors, one for each cylinder. That too might have needed a green thumb to keep it in reasonable tune when it got old and dirty.
Chain drive Frazer Nash had a sort of analogous arrangement, but with four chains and sets of sprockets engaged by dog clutches serving as the gears and, er, no differential giving it very sporting handling. They could break chains when driven harshly or in real anger though. Or when two gears got selected at once, which could happen.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Tue 5 Jun 12 at 18:00
|
|
where these during prohibition?
|
>>
>> Chain drive Frazer Nash had a sort of analogous arrangement, but with four chains and
>> sets of sprockets engaged by dog clutches serving as the gears and, er, no differential
>> giving it very sporting handling. They could break chains when driven harshly or in real
>> anger though. Or when two gears got selected at once, which could happen.
>>
Thus came the demise of J. G. Parry-Thomas in 1927, not far from me at Pendine Sands. Whilst attempting the land speed record in his car "Babs", a drive chain snapped at 170 mph and decapitated him.
The car was subsequently buried on the beach; it was exhumed 40 years later and is now usually resident at the Pendine Museum of Speed, along with a couple of Brough Superiors and much speed-related ephemera. Worth a visit if you're in the area.
|
|
Chopped his head off that chain - should have bought a shaftie...!
|
>> Parry-Thomas in 1927, not far from me at Pendine Sands. Whilst attempting the land speed record in his car "Babs", a drive chain snapped at 170 mph and decapitated him.
Yes, but the chains on Babs were very big, like lorry chains, quite long and outside the car with nothing between them and everything else.
Those early speed record devices could be frighteningly crude. Even quite late ones indeed. The need to put down thousands of horsepower instead of a couple of hundred... the drivers must have been pretty brave as a rule.
|
|
I don't doubt it ! But an exposed chain drive driven by a monster ngine running in sandy conditions didn't combine to a good outcome. I had a chain snap on a 250 motorbike - that was bad enough, the split link took a chunk out of the number plate. I have a photo somewhere.
|
|
And legend has it that the louche American dancer Isadora Duncan had her neck snapped when her stylish long scarf caught in the rear wheelspokes of the Bugatti she was being driven in... nasty that. Dangerous things, cars, if not taken seriously where it matters. Willing but stupid they are, like horses.
Last edited by: Armel Coussine on Tue 5 Jun 12 at 20:06
|
Babs was a Leyland special. I think the guy who exhumed and restored her died recently.
Recall a mention in a classic car mag.
After burial, a sign was erected over the grave saying " Here lies poor Babs "
I'll do some of the photies tomorrow....only six or seven I think. Also some official ones of the Shadow Moss air crash. I posted one on another thread ages ago.
Ted
|
Parry-Thomas' problem was that he had developed the habit of driving with his head stuck out to one side. This from racing at Brooklands where the screen would become opaque fairly rapidly, due to oil mist from the exhaust of the car in front. Many early racing vehicles adopted a "total loss" approach to lubrication.
This meant that when the chain went, his head was right in the firing line. IIRC he was not decapitated, just killed pretty much instantly by a length of heavy chain hitting his skull.
The reason that the chain went was because Babs' chassis and transmission was never intended to handle the power produced by that engine. Stuffing an ever larger aero engine into a racing car until something broke, at which point it became time to aquire a new chassis, was a fairly standard way of getting more speed at the time.
Again IIRC, Babs was originally one of Count Zbrowski's (spelling?) "Chitty Bang Bang" cars.
|
>> The jewel-like little Honda S600 sports car had that arrangement, with rear suspension through trailing
>> arms that doubled as oilbath chain cases. That meant of course that the shaft centres
>> were perfectly distanced at all points in the suspension travel.
>>
One of the masters at school had an S600. It had seized back brakes. Aged 16 I got to jack it up and see if I could free off anything on the strength of my dad having been a village garagiste. I'd never before seen a car with a short propshaft and half-shafts driving the suspension arms. I got nowhere belting the drums with a claw hammer from the carpentry workshop. Eventually the car was brutally dragged out of its garage and towed away on its front wheels.
|
The S600 was, in effect, a four wheeled motorbike as that's where Honda's expertise was.
The carb-per-pot and chain final drive are a giveaway, as it the fact that little engine revs to some ungodly limit.
Tuning a multi-carb setup is simple, if you have a good ear for higher frequencies. A simple piece of tubing and listening to the hiss from each carb's inlet throat is by far the most effective way to achieve perfect balance. Once correctly balanced, setting the mixture is simple as you have eliminated "crosstalk" in the inlet manifold, each carb will be feeding only its designated cyclinder(s) and the jolly old Gunson's Colourtune is your friend. Being something of a lazy SOB, I used have two Colourtunes, enabling me to set both SUs on my MGB at the same time, by plugging 'em into 1 and 4, rather than having to move one (rather hot) unit between pots.
|
|
Another problem this solves is that of unsprung weight. A major issue given the primitive friction dampers of the period and the massive nature of diffs, shafts and brake drums capable of dealing with serious horsepower at the time.
|
>>
>> Honestly you young fellows today don't know you're born. Everything on a plate with h&s
>> officials nannying you and wiping your bums. Tchah!
>>
Even so I bet you were glad when detachable wheels became common, and puncture repairs easier. Or were you still using solid tyres?
|
>> Even so I bet you were glad when detachable wheels became common, and puncture repairs easier.
Puncture repairs were a lot easier in the crossply days CP, and the financially challenged could just about do it themselves: Remove wheel, remove cover, remove tube, find puncture or punctures, patch, reassemble without damage if possible, reinflate, balance if money available... Done it myself plenty of times, gouged holes in inner tubes trying to get covers off with big sharp screwdrivers... even put a 'gaiter' in a bulging cover more than once. Ooh yeah.
There was a lot to be said for tubes. If you had proper tyre levers and a bit of experience you could learn to do it in the end. But you had to wash your hands afterwards, even if you didn't have to go to hospital.
|
I am in London at present, enjoying the emergency vehicle sirens and batting about. And tonight I passed one of my favourite motors, a clean matt-black Ford Model T 4-seat tourer with hood which lives in St John's Wood and is obviously in regular use (I go down its street quite often and it isn't always there).
I wonder if it has the original transmission or something later and more conventional. I have a feeling the original system may not suit traffic, but perhaps it does when you get the hang of it.
A Model T is an all time classic and one of the more affordable ones having been made in very large numbers. And people would be right for once when they called it 'vintage', a word idiotically abused these days.
|
|
Has it got a CC exemption AC ?
|
>> I am in London at present,
Ah!
Then that accounts for the sleek limousines with police outriders that I had seen around!
|
The golden age of American motoring - BiggerBadderDave
