MASCOT November-December 1984

ROADSTER SCENE

Dave True

At the end of Bill Haverly's article of a few months back on rear body cracks, the Editor threatened to investigate what I.Rabbitt, that fearless pioneer of Singer Roadster reconstruction, had to say on the matter many years ago. Please forgive his somewhat churlish style, he's not all bad. He had this information to pass on.

There can be no doubt that the Singer Motor Co. has a lot to learn about motor car bodies. Unfortunately it's too late now and we're lumbered with their designs. Take the back end of the Roadster for example - the bit below the boot is virtually just dangling there, so no wonder those horizontal cracks appear. I'm not quite sure how Singers fixed the aluminium tail piece to the rear quarters, but mine had been attached with some flimsy aluminium under the joint and pop riveted through. The joint had then been well plastered over with filler. Maybe this was the Singer method or perhaps this was done when the car was resprayed. Anyway I reformed the joint in the same way, except that I used much more substantial aluminium. I also put in a centre support to the tail piece by fixing a 1" x 2" hardwood batten on top of the chassis member immediately behind the petrol tank. This I fixed with small angle brackets at the ends screwed to the batten and pop riveted to the back of each wheel arch. It was fixed in the centre by a long bolt which also supports the petrol tank at its rear lug. This bolt runs right through the chassis cross member. Incidentally the batten came from an old wardrobe that I'd broken up some months before (hoots mon awa'). Having got the batten in position, it's a fairly easy matter to make a steel bracket screwed to the batten and screwed to the sloping underside of the wooden top framing of the tail piece. This bracket is about 8" long overall and 4" wide, bent at a right angle at the bottom and bent at 45 degrees at the top and with the sides bent at right angles for 1/2" to give rigidity. Of course, if your car isn't in bits in the first place, you will have to remove the boot floor. This last statement is in the finest Singer traditions as in their manuals they were very fond of saying something very quickly which would in fact take about a week to do. I intend to put further wooden blockings and brackets under the tail piece and secure everything as solidly as possible to the rear mudguards.

It's amazing how rapidly these cars get out of square, particularly at the back end. When I came to put the steel seat pan back, the rest of the car was at least 1" out of square and it took quite a lot of friendly and not so friendly persuasion and slackening off of body bolts to refit it. The pan was originally fixed rather crudely with drive nails but I have replaced these with 1" 8 gauge screws for relatively easy removal later if necessary. By drilling 1/4" holes where the nail holes were, the countersunk heads of the screws fit more or less flush with the metal pan. After this, Rabbitt moved onto something else, so we'll call it a day there.