Singer Owner January - February 2008

Roadster Repairs - Getting the scuttle in place

Ashley Crossland

To get on with the real job of renovating a 4AD Roadster, I suppose that there are basically 3 sorts of jobs - firstly checking over and putting back metal parts that are perfectly serviceable and if necessary cleaning (wire brushing?) and painting (as appropriate). Secondly there are badly corroded or missing parts to salvage or make or otherwise acquire - like body brackets that have totally rusted away, or were missing before you got the car. Then thirdly there's the woodwork, some parts of which invariable will have got into a very bad state and need remaking. If you are lucky you will have enough of the bit, or else enough from one side of the car from which you can use as a pattern to make the other side. However, these last two "categories" are where you can easily go wrong and make something not exactly right, although it's useful to have another Roadster to copy from. I'm fortunate, or am I? (The other jobs involve doing the bodywork and the upholstery and finally the electrics. Then there's the fuel supply, so it's not just 3 jobs but a million and one jobs!)

As far as Singer's wood goes, ash might have been the best timber to make car frames from - it is relatively rot-resistant, strong and "flexible" - but Roadsters were made in the age of post war austerity when the plan was for Singers to sell cars as cheaply as possible using available wood that nevertheless was considered fit for the purpose. I suppose it fair to say that Singers never thought that there would still be Roadsters running round after 50 years, and so they were a little more "enterprising" with the type and quality of the timber that they used for the framework. Hence we find all sorts of timbers originally used on the Roadster.

Treating old wood is a topic on its own, but my advice is to use wood preserver on as much of Singer's original wood that you uncover and want to re-use. Perhaps the dashboard won't need wood preserver, but you know how to use your common sense. Woodworm can be found on a variety of old Singer timber, and is best treated sooner rather than later. You will recall that I cut out the two "sole" plates (the two planks that sit on the chassis onto which the body fastens) from the new pieces of ash that I had got. I must confess that I have not treated these with wood preserver, but I have coated them with outdoor varnish, and I stress, outdoor varnish that will therefore stand some "wetness". And some other recommendations might be fairly obvious, but worth a mention: use waterproof glue on wooden bits that you might want to glue together, and if you are buying plywood for the floorboards etc, then get exterior ply. If you are screwing steel screws into woodwork and want to stop them from rusting, then you can coat them with lanolin first, although I suppose that zinc plated screws are a ready alternative these days. Ordinary gloss paint will do for most parts (excluding the body). Black seems to be the most popular colour for the chassis and odd brackets, although Singers appear to have mainly painted the engine / gearbox / differential in red oxide colour. And some parts not painted at all. Then I suppose the brake drums could get really hot and deserve some heat resisting paint if you want to go that far. And all this is to try and ensure that your Roadster will happily survive the next 50 years.

You will remember that to make the sole plates, I worked off a paper pattern that I had taken from my running car, a 4AC Roadster. As the 4AC was a prototype with all sorts of things different to a standard car, it was hardly the right car to choose to take any patterns from and I just hoped that the shape would be all right. So then the next thing was to fit the scuttle. I had remade the two steel brackets that go at the bottom of the scuttle and fasten it onto the sole plate. Then when I tried to see if the scuttle would fit to the sole plates - well it wouldn't fit!

When I offered up the scuttle, the two door posts would not pass the sole plate - I found out the hard way that unfortunately my original pattern for the front portion of the sole plate was not quite right. Luckily I suspected I might have had trouble here and I had erred on leaving the wood on the big side, as I do with most of the bits that I make because you can always take a bit more off, can't you? I bolted on the inner valence and bonnet side on the LH side to make sure that the scuttle was going to be in the correct location, and this helped fix what was happening at the base of the scuttle. I re-took a measurement from the 4AC to check what was happening. The distance between the two door pillars on the 4AC was near enough to 3 ft to make no difference, and as I convinced myself that Singers would have worked to whole numbers for this dimension, I was confident that this 3ft size would have been right. So a bit of trimming off of the wood on the sides at the front of the sole plates was called for.

Now when restoring a car it's not always possible to show a lot of progress all the time, and occasionally you do some measuring up just to give yourself a shopping list so that you can get to a job in the future. One such item proved to be the 1/4" diameter brake rods that go to the rear brakes (and front brakes on the beam-axle series of Roadsters). Conscious that metric bar is steadily supplanting all things imperial, I thought it best to try and get some bar before it was too late. At the beginning of November I found a local steel stockist who had some bar in stock, and so I went round to their spot for some. Unfortunately I fell foul of their minimum order charge, and had to get 4 lengths of 10-foot bar to make up the price. The minimum order charge was hardly worth worrying about, and a bit of a wipe down got most of the grease off the rods so that they could go in the back of the car, which was through the hole in the back seat and all the way up under the dashboard. Let me say that most "industrial" suppliers will be only too happy to deal with ordinary home restorers like what I suspect the majority of us are, but what you have to watch is their minimum order charge, and any delivery charge. It pays to plan ahead. Next I need some sheet metal, but how to get it home? Do I collect it or use their delivery service?

Back to brake rods, and I prefer to change all the rusty ones for new ones - several years of being next to wet and salty roads (at least in the UK) leaves them badly corroded and a safety hazard. So some new round bar and then die the ends yourself. At this point I must admit that the MOT man passed a comment about the 4AC at its last test to say that a universal joint on the prop shaft was badly worn, so this was the time to fix it and use the opportunity to measure up some of the brake rods and woodwork under the back seat. Changing the u/j in situ is possible, as shown by the photograph. Start by lifting out the back seat and unscrewing the seat pan, and then you can easily do the job from the top. Universal joints can be a struggle as I found out the hard way when I helped my brother with a series of Triumph Heralds that he had in the 1970's. Fortunately on the 4AC the flanged bit came away from the prop shaft, and I was able to continue my struggle in the vice. The alternative to doing this in situ is to remove the entire prop shaft, but I think that this might be harder than you think.

However, back once more to brake rods. The ones on the car had been renewed in the past, and I had some rusty ones for comparison, so it looked like the lengths of the rods that I had to make were as follows. If there's any re-thinking to do, I'll report this in a future Roadster Repairs:-

Relay lever to the compensator 7 ¹/₂"
Compensator to the off-side brake 9 ⁷/₈"
Compensator to the near-side brake 27 ³/₈"

Note that these are for a right hand drive car, and I've measured as best I can, which is not guaranteed to be exactly what Singers wanted.

One tip about screwing the brake rods is to start with the longest rod first, and then if you make a poor job of screwing the end, you can shorten it to make the next longest one. I've scrapped a few off in my time....

Then there's the shopping list for some sheet metal if you have to make some parts. These sizes were taken off actual Singer components. However, it's widely regarded that towards the end of Singer's as a private company that they were struggling for their existence, and variations might be found when they made do with whatever they had.

Rear inner wing 0.056"
Front inner wing flitch plate 0.050"
Boot floor, rear seat pan 0.050"
Tool deck panel 0.050"

Now 0.056" (1.4mm) is the old imperial 17 gauge, and 0.050" (1.3mm) is just a bit up on 18 gauge, but sheet metal is one area of manufacture that has definitely gone metric in the UK, and so there is no alternative but to buy a current metric size of which you can get 1mm, 1.25mm, 1.6mm, 2mm etc.

So back to brake rods, or rather to the rear brakes and one benefit of getting the scuttle on is that you then have something to fix the handbrake to, and thus you can progress to getting rear brakes. As the car is now starting to take shape, being able to brake the rear wheels might be a definite advantage. So I got round to putting the rear brakes back together, overhauling some Girling expanders that I had with some new rubber dust boots from my old stock (that I bought in 1988, Girling part no GIR64220369 ?). I cut the brake rods to the sizes just mentioned and screwed them reasonably well, and finally fitted all the bits to the rear axle with used forks but with new clevis pins and split pins of course. New bonded brake shoes with pull off springs let me put the chassis back on its wheels again. However, more brake parts need fitting before we actually have rear brakes, so more next time.