Augusta progress

[Mikenoangelo]

The tube is the main piston rod of the shockabsorber which is a good sliding fit in the bottom pivot of the sliding pillar so nothing can protrude from the outer surface of the tube. I wonder whether the screw might have originally been stopped by the end of the thread but that this has been made deeper than it should be by some misguided person running a tap in to clean the thread? Or perhaps the screw was soft soldered in place.

Mike

[Kari]

There is no history of the valve becoming loose. The screw is spring loaded via the ball and for additional safety, loctite or similar can be added. The original drawing does not show anything securing the screw.

Regards Karl

[Mikenoangelo]

Mystery solved Karl - thanks for the drawing.     In the drawing it does look as though the screw should be stopped by the end of the thread and on the left side suspension of my car this is the case and the ball is still free to move with the screw fully tightened. On the right side, which has the end cap of the lower suspension pivot displaced, the cap screws further in until stopped by the ball contacting the inner stop pin. So is seems that my guess about the thread having been cut deeper is right - so Locktite it is!

Happy New Year to all - I've had my Salmson out today for 110km on a locally organised NYD run (a tradition local members of the VSCC have maintained since 1980) followed by a pub lunch in magnificent sunny weather.

Here are an Alvis 12/50, Chenard Walcker, Vauxhall 30/98 and the Salmson at the pub.

Mike

[Mikenoangelo]

Gosh it’s March already!

Steady Lancia progress, interrupted by the need to go over the steering of my Salmson which was becoming a little wandery. I overhauled the steering box making a new bush for the droparm shaft and new thrust washers for both box and kingpins. The steering is only ¾ turn from lock to lock so has to be set up with very little play in the system. A nice design touch is that the bronze bush for the droparm shaft is bored about 0.25mm eccentric and can be rotated to adjust the mesh of worm and wheel. The Salmson uses about 25mm of trail (stub axle mounted 25mm aft of the kingpin) to give straight running and self centering and the kingpin itself should have no rearward inclination (castor). It turned out that the springs have settled a little since last reset in 1985 which had tilted t the kingpins forward, partially negating the positive trail. Wedges between spring and axle with a 2.25 degree taper resolved that and a short test run on a salt free day showed a worthwhile improvement. So now back to the Augusta.

I’ve obtained a new clutch spring to replace the one which was fitted which was of too large diameter to fit into the retaining cover as well as being rather askew. I’m hoping that this old spring was the cause of the vibration which sent me into the intricacies of the transmission.

I have also trued up the driven dogs of the freewheel unit which were slightly tapered, resulting in end thrust under load which had worn the selector fork, a known Augusta problem. The selector fork was welded and ground true and I set the freewheel unit up on a mandrel on a dividing head mounted horizontally on my milling machine so that each tooth could be ground by a diamond grinding disk in the chuck of the mill. The diamond disc of 22mm diameter came in a set of 6 for (£5.45 delivered!! Silverline via Amazon). The mandrel supplied is far too skinny so I made another of 20mm diameter so that the disc is supported across almost the full diameter and runs very true. This worked a treat and the job of grinding the teeth took just minutes and no more than 0.002 inch was needed to dispose of the taper. Working out how to do it and making the mandrels took much longer!

Of course dismantling the free wheel to regrind the teeth involved letting loose the nine small rollers which ride the central cam to give the free wheel effect. This is a pain as the rollers come in three diameters varying by 0.5mm and have to be fitted in the right order which at first sight is tricky unless you are equipped with ten fingers on each hand. I made a sleeve to fit over the roller unit with a slot through which the spring, the spring loaded stop, the larger, middle and smaller rollers can be inserted for each group of three, turning the sleeve as each is popped in.  Again a two minute job with the right tool.

I dismantled the front suspension and built in hydraulic shock absorbers to remove the grease which was clogging everything. As mentioned earlier I found a coil bound spring in the relief valve at the bottom end of the offside shock absorber spindle. It also turned out that the springs of the two tiny pressure control valves in the piston of the shock absorber were too long and completely coil bound. As the travel of these valve is only about 1.5mm, an extra 1.5mm of length of spring completely blocks the valves so it is hardly surprising that  the ride was a bit bouncy.

I compared the spring rate of the dodgy springs with those which seemed to be original on the nearside shocker. This was easily done by inserting the spring in a blind hole in the end of a brass rod so that the spring projected from the rod, then with the rod in the chuck of a pillar drill, the spring was pressed down onto kitchen scales to show the load needed to compress the spring by 3mm. The spurious springs were significantly stiffer than the originals as well as being too long. Now coil springs are not quite as one might think as, if they are shortened by cutting off a few coils, they actually become harder to compress so that was not an option for me. Springmasters in Redditch have a huge catalogue of springs and within a couple of days I had a sample which seemed about right when tested. I bought three sets, weaker and stronger than the sample to try in situ and in fact my sample was the closest to the original. I then assembled the shock absorbers and oiled them to get a feel of their action. Result both shock absorbers had the proper easy action on bounce and stiff action on rebound, however the offside shock absorber was now noticeably stiffer than the nearside. I tried swapping shock absorbers from nearside to offside and the stiffness was related to the shocker not to the pillar which forms the cylinder in which the piston slides. Swapping the valve springs to put the weakest springs in the stiffest shocker improved matters so I will leave it at that. I did note that the piston of the weaker shocker had been chromed in the past but was still about 0.005 inches less in diameter than that of the stiffer one so quite probably leakage around that piston explains the difference in stiffness.

If you are wondering why shortening a coil spring makes it stiffer, imagine two spring torsion bars of different lengths. Twisting the shorter through a few degrees takes more effort than twisting the longer through the same amount. A coil spring is just  a coiled up torsion bar in which, when the coils are compressed, the twisting of the bar provides the resistance.

I managed to straighten the distorted main suspension spring for the offside pillar by brute force using a large pipe wrench to tweak the lowest two coils into line. All re-assembled and feeling quite free now it is properly lubricated. I must say I can’t see how, when oil is applied to the top of the pillar, the excess over the running level can do anything other than dribble out over the knuckle of the axle for a couple of days as it has nowhere else to go. Just have to catch it with a bit of cardboard against the tyre and then mop the floor.

Hopefully the gearbox bits should be ready at HB Bearings next week so that both Lancia and Salmson will be ready for Spring, whenever that comes.

Mike

[Kari]

Mike,

Thank you very much for keeping us informed on the process of work on your Augusta.

Regarding filling the front shock absorbers with oil, I found the instructions from the owners manual resulting in a patch of oil on the floor (and tyre)
Unfortunately one does'nt know when the oil needs to be replenished unless most of the oil is gone and the wheels start bouncing.
When I want to know if there is enough oil and the shock absorber is working fine, I proceed as follows:
Jack up the front
remove front wheel(s) (for better access)
remove upper aluminium dust cover by unscrewing the oil nipple
unscrew top cover
remove damper rod drive springs upper, flat nut and lower.
Now the rod can be moved up and down full travel. There must be resitance felt in both directions, especially when reversing the sense of travel at the bottom. If there are any light spots, then there is air in the cylinder. By filling a little oil at the top of the rod and repeated movement of the rod, the air can be expelled. If there is uninterrupted resistance both ways, the absorber is fine and no more oil needs to be added.

I hope this helps

Karl

[Mikenoangelo]

Thanks Karl - a tedious process but it is logical. A very strange design oversight on Lancia's part! Perhaps one could fit a glass sight gauge to see the level as on a steam locomotive boiler.

The oiler nipples are like the Enots equivalent fitted by Rolls Royce in the 1920's but smaller. I don't have an original oil gun and so I have to temporarily replace the nipples with a modern version to oil the pillar. I shall have to make an appropriate size connector for my oil gun.

I must say the whole process of oiling is a very messy job and can see why people were tempted to use grease. I bought a rather expensive Wanner oil gun which was claimed to be intended for oil not grease but it leaked oil everywhere as the pressurised oil flowed back past the piston and came out at the wrong end of the gun. I made a new piston in aluminium with an "O" ring to replace the rubbishy plastic piston supplied in the gun. This solved that particular leak and I suspect the gun supplied must have been fitted with the wrong piston in the first place.

Mike

[mikeC]

I have used a Wanner oil gun bought new in 1968; loaded with 140 oil it has never shown any sign of leaking ...

[Dikappa]

In 1968 they still made quality stuff....I was born in 1968 

Now it's just difficult to find quality gear, and sadly even a high price is not always a guaranty for good stuff.

[Mikenoangelo]

No physical progress this week as I am awaiting the gearbox bearings and so on from HB Bearings and hoping to collect them tomorrow.

However I've been looking closely to see whether is is possible to replace the free wheel with an overdrive 5th gear. Probably will never do it but the thought process keeps the mind ticking over and if it were done would be a nice improvement.

I'm thinking of a simple mainshaft/layshaft arrangement with helical gears for silence an a simple dog engagement. A very similar overdrive box is used in the US to fit in the torque tube of the Ford Model A. Sold as the Mitchell overdrive. It would involve making a modified layshaft for the main box and a new rear cover but no further modifications to the gearbox.

I'm curious to know how the fifth gear was done on the Ardea. Pictures of the Ardea 5 speed gearbox show what looks like an extra compartment at the back, although this is also present on the 4 speed version. Has anyone been into an Ardea box and are there any parts book drawings or even better proper sectional drawings?

I'm also a bit flummoxed with the gear pitch on the Augusta box. The plain spur gears for 1st and second are 3 Module pitch (three mm of pitch diameter per tooth) and there are a total of 39 teeth per set which indicates a shaft centre distance of 58.5mm which is correct. However the silent third gear which is helical is of a different pitch as the pair have a total of 41 teeth although obviously fitting the same shaft centres. My problem is that I can't find a matching pitch gear on any of the Goggleable gear charts. I'll have to take it to a gear cutter for advice - unless anyone reading this knows something.

Mike

[Mikenoangelo]

I came across this useful website

 https://www.carpdfmanual.com/lancia/

which has many Lancia manuals available free to download. There is a manual for the 4 speed Ardea which does show an empty compartment at the back of the main box. Perhaps Lancia always intended to offer the Ardea with 5 speeds but only implemented it after the war. I could just do with a sight of the manual for the 5 speed version.

Mike

[Mikenoangelo]

Found a drawing of the Ardea 5 speed unit on this site in the Ardea section.
https://www.lancia.myzen.co.uk/forum/index.php?topic=2742.msg53836#msg53836

 I need a bit of time to get my head round it but translating the design to the Augusta box does look feasable. At least when we locked down by the plague I'll have somethong to think about.

Mike

[Mikenoangelo]

The 5th gear of the late Ardea takes the drive from an extension of the layshaft on the main box and gears it up to a gear on the output shaft. A bit of a compromise because the layshaft is already geared down from the input shaft so the step up gear has to be correspondingly  higher ratio than it would be for a simple step up overdrive. I wonder if the Ardea 5th gear is noisy - has anyone any experience of this?
.
Mike

[Mikenoangelo]

Time flies when your having fun!  Lots done since my last report - in the garden (mornings, under supervision!!) as well as on the Augusta (pm). No time to think about 5th gear recently but will return to the subject later.

The front suspension is all back together, the new brake fluid reservoir in place and the brakes bled and refilled with new Dot 4 fluid. A Gunson pressure brake bleeding kit worked well as long as I pumped the pedal as each cylinder was refilled.

The gearbox shafts and new bearings were collected just before we were locked up. A snag arose in that the three deep groove double angular contact thrust bearings which are each attached to the end of a shaft by tightening a nut, proved to be tighter than seemed right so have to go back for rectification, at the moment held up by you know what.

I had planned to get the car up and running by now and to leave attention to the engine until next Winter. However I decided to lift the engine out, inspect what I can, deal with the oil leaks and fix anything else which turns up.

Working on my own with the aid of my engine crane, removal of the engine was straightforward, more so as the gearbox was already out. With straps looped around the engine bearers the engine is nose heavy (flywheel already removed) so an extra string looped around the fan pulley keeps it balanced. Unfortunately my home built engine support frame is a bit too wide and in any case would block access to the two crankcase side panels so the engine is now sitting on blocks on the floor - the effort of crouching down then getting up eliminates the need for less productive forms of exercise.

After a good scrub with solvent, and paint stripper on the cast iron parts I looked at all the gasketed joints to see where oil was escaping. It seems mainly from the fan bracket which acts as the front cover of the timing sprocket compartment, and from the crankcase side covers. The rear main bearing oil catching arrangement is fine and most of the leaks in that area came from the gearbox.

For those unfamiliar with the Augusta, the crankcase and sump are a single unit so that the crankshaft and bearings can only be accessed by removing the crankcase side panels which are pressed steel plates attached by means of screws along the rim. The gasket is compressed by the screws and tends to bulge between them letting oil out. Vintage Austin Seven owners will sympathise as their crankcase is closed at the  bottom by a similar plate which also leaks.

The immediate major problem was corroded studs, on the exhaust flange and the retaining stud for the water inlet elbow / tap. The exhaust flange has two 10mm studs with brass nuts, one of which unscrewed with some effort, more than I expected, while the other stud snapped, the nut being more or less fused to the stud.   Both studs were severely corroded.  I tried a roller type stud removing socket (which works in the same manner as the Augusta freewheel!) to no avail so had to resort to drilling out the core of the studs, and wangling the remaining thread out.  I shortened both studs to about 12mm, trued up the ends with a file and then made a sleeve bored 10mm to fit the stud at one end and 6.35mm (¼ inch)  at the other to fit a centre drill which would give me a true centre for the main drilling operation. I did this in two stages, first with a 6.35mm drill then (in another 10mm / 8.7mm sleeve) with an 8.7mm left hand drill bit, which clears the core of the stud, leaving just the thread behind. The left hand threaded bit came in an inexpensive set of 4 sizes from Sealey. No doubt the idea is good but the drill bit was far less able to bore into the stud than a normal drill bit and with a severely corroded stud, the L/H rotation failed to wind the threads out as it should so I pried out a couple of turns and then used an M10x1.5 bottoming tap ground flat on the end to make a clean cut. It is a very fiddly job, made more so by having to work with the engine on the floor and concern that I might damage the cylinder head but both studs came out leaving clean threads in the head.

I then had to tackle the manifold face on the head which was badly rusted and eroded. Two hours of filing and lapping made a reasonable job of it, although if the head were off, the milling machine would have been quicker.

The water inlet stud was corroded down from 8mm to 5.5mm at one point so there was
no chance that it could be unscrewed. The boss in the cylinder block into which the stud screws is recessed within the water inlet and so is truly hard to access but I was at least able to lay the engine on its side making it much easier to work. I cut the stud off flush with the end of the inlet pipe and made an 8mm/6.35mm sleeve to guide the centre drill and followed this up with another sleeve to take a 4mm drill down the stud as a pilot for the 6.35mm drill. This worked really well and the hollowed out portion of the stud came away in one piece with a very thin wall (imagine a corroded 8mm with a bore of 6.35mm) leaving me with a nicely centred 4mm hole into the remains of the  stud in the block. However  I now discovered that the boss had already been drilled and tapped 9mm, and worse, the tapped hole in the boss was about 0.8mm eccentric relative to the boss. I made a new stud, having spotted that the hole on the aluminium outlet fitting was offset, optimistically thought that would accommodate the offset. No such luck as the aluminium casting ( a repro version) had been machined slightly skew and would not seat properly on the block with the new straight stud. I set it up true in my aged milling machine and relocated the hole so at last it all goes together with the water passage of block and casting aligned.

The next job is to make new studs, stainless steel for the water inlet (this had already been done for the outlet on the head) but what would be the most suitable steel for the exhaust studs? Instinct says stainless steel but this has a reputation for galling up and seizing in hot conditions, and the exhaust port on the Augusta gets truly hot, believe me.
There is no need for huge strength so I thought perhaps mild steel with a brass nut would be the best choice. Has anyone any thoughts on this?


Mike

[Mikenoangelo]

The next job was to remove the cylinder head to make sure there are no particular issues leading to excessive heat in the exhaust port area. Easier said than done as the stud holding the head at that corner was completely seized into the head and so had to be drilled out. Not easy as I could see no way of mounting the engine under the pillar drill to keep the job aligned. However I managed to drill the stud down to about 12 mm above the face of the block, then used a mini jack between the exhaust outlet and the bell housing to raise the head - very carefully after heating the corner of the head to 200C. The roller type stud remover was able to grip the remains of the stud and with heat, it unscrewed so no more nerve wracking drilling was needed. When I said I would retire to stud I didn’t mean this!!

With the head off I found that the waterway between block and head, right in the exhaust corner was just a tiny 5mm hole, whereas the gasket has an 11mm hole at this spot. I suspect the engine is rather a bitza and that the block and head are earlier than the 1936 date of the car. Later cars have a 10mm hole in block and head as per the gasket so perhaps this small hole was a factor - certainly the flow of water in this corner must be minute. I enlarged the hole, having to slightly offset it from the 5mm hole to line up with the gasket. The other water passageways which wriggle their way around the internal inlet and exhaust ports all seemed to be clear of crud and I soaked the head for 24hrs in Fernox F3 central heating descaler.

I’m mulling over whether to take the common route of adding a second exhaust port on the side of the head to divert the exhaust from cylinders one and two, or whether to seek another way of removing heat from the back corner with an extra water outlet at that point, or perhaps feeding more water in by means of an auxiliary electric pump. It’s not a case of general overheating, just that local hot spot. As the Augusta when new clearly worked in a hot Italy driven by hot shoe Italians, perhaps, having enlarged the hole, I need do nothing more.

Now for the good news, the head has all new guides and valves which will just need a light regrind, the bores are oversized to 71mm and seem unworn. It has new Alloylit pistons which look perfect. The crank has been reground but it is only about 0.35 mm undersize, the journals are unworn and the white metal bearings are perfect. The cam drive idler bearing and eccentric spigot is unworn, the camshaft bearing bores in the head have no play, the cams are slightly worn but the rocker arm cam follower faces need a regrind so I shall have to copy Morris Parry's grinding rig.

However it is just as well I’ve opened it up as the split pins on the conrod bolts were badly fitted and too thin so that some had worn and fallen out.  Why were they like this? Presumably because it is so damned fiddly to get the castle nuts and the hole on the bolt to line up, while at the same time trying to apply the right torque to the nut when the only access is via the open sides of the crankcase. One useful tip is to make a couple of small centre punch marks on the free end of the bolt, wiping them with white paint or Tippex so that the alignment of the hole can be seen as the nut is tightened. To get the alignment and torque right I had to skim a minute amount from the underside of the nut - not much as turning the nut by one flat only represents 0.16 mm. I would I have used all metal (Philidas) self locking nuts in this situation to avoid split pins but so far I have not found such nuts with the correct 1mm pitch and in any case my bolts are fractionally too short for the self lockers.

I need to get a new gasket - most likely from Johnson's Gaskets whom I have used before - he's speaking of a 2 week delivery time on receipt of my old gasket, which as seen in the photo is of the original type. The new gasket will be copper/asbestos substitute which I hope will better transfer heat than the more modern composition variety.

Mike

[Kari]

With great interest I follow your findings of your Augusta engine. Now you have reached the "hot spot". Many years ago this problem was raised initially by Kees Jan Boosman. I always wondered why I did'nt have any heat problems on my car but other Augusta owners had problems and even went to great lenghts to modifiy the cylinder head by fitting a second exhaust port.
Over time, I was able to inspect a number of cylinder heads and compare the connections of the water channels near the No. 4 Cylinder. I found that at some cylinder heads one or more water channels where blocked, this of course would impair the cooling of this particular hot spot. My guess is that on some cylinder heads, during the casting process, the very small sand cores have collapsed and closed up the water channels. On the photo I have marked the channels by colored wires. I have fond that on some cylinder heads the blue and/or the red channel were blocked. Obviously those cylinder heads will not stand up to the heat and cracking of the valve seats etc. can occur.
The diametre of the water way between block and head is 6 mm by original drawing, I did enlarge that to 11 mm as well.

Originally, there were treads for attaching the water outlet and tap, not studs.

Regarding the conrod bolts, I think it was a good idea to check the split pins. I once had a split pin gone astray and the result was the conrod going through the side cover. Some times a small mirror helps to align the castellated nut with the bore in the bolt.

Regards  Karl